I have always liked speeches, writing them and giving them, and I also thought I was really good at them. In Year 9 I wrote my speech about how you can’t have the good without the bad, I thought I was so smart, so philosophical. Don’t get me wrong, my heart would still race with anxiety and nerves, but I loved it. So when I was asked to give a speech last year about Pink Shirt Day - as at the time I was running the Queen's Queer Straight Alliance group - I enthusiastically said yes. 

On Pink Shirt Day, I stood in front of the lectern and held the speech that I’d only finished the day before and that I hadn't practiced at all. I stood right down there - because assembly was zoomed to half the school for covid reasons - and I read off the paper in my hands, only to get halfway down the page and discover I'd printed off my draft, not my final edit. I stood there panicking, trying not to cry, my heart beating faster and faster, my legs shaking and still doing my best to remember what I had changed. That day I hated speeches, and I hated the overconfident attitude I'd had. I hated that I thought everything would be fine because I'm “good at speeches”.

Now I am up here, speaking in front of all of you. This time, however, I was careful not to repeat my mistakes. I am still nervous, and my legs are still wobbly, but I don't care. We all make mistakes, we all do embarrassing things, and yeah it sucks at the time. 

Often when I've made mistakes I wanted to just stop existing, let the ground swallow me up, but I know now that if that had happened I wouldn't have had the chance to try again, and use my mistake to do better. We don't always realise it, especially since high school seems like a long time and by the end of it we’re supposed to have our whole lives figured out, but that's not true. We don't realise just how much time we have, to try new things and to learn from our embarrassing moments and mistakes. 

It took until a few weeks into the first term for me to realise this, I was struggling mentally and the subjects that I’d chosen were making it worse, I couldn't handle the workload, so I went, and I talked with my teachers and I ended up moving to painting. I'm not a very good artist, and it shows in my earlier pieces. It was still difficult and stressful, but the work didn't feel like work to me, I was having fun, and I still am. I had never thought to try painting since I cannot draw, and it's such a different way of thinking compared to subjects like English or Maths. It took me a bit to get the ideas running, but I did in time.

I would've never learned just how much I love painting and using my creative mind if I'd just disappeared into the ground at the start of the year, even though I desperately wanted to. I learned I had more time. More time to try new things. More time to have fun. And I learned that I didn't have to put myself under constant stress that I knew would make me feel awful. 

It might take a while to be able to make those decisions, and during that time you might feel all kinds of horrible emotions. I can't tell you necessarily that it's worth it, but you will never know for sure if you let yourself be swallowed by the ground. By the time you get to where the Year 13’s and I are, it's all just memories of the past. The pain might still be there and there's likely more coming, but just like my Year 9 self said in their speech, you just can't have the good without the bad.