Hey, I'm Katie, your academic prefect for 2020. First of all I would like to congratulate everyone who received a blues award in assembly last week. These awards require a lot of hard work and I hope everyone keeps aiming to achieve high in the coming year. This is my Prefect speech from that assembly.

First I thought I would tell you a bit about me. I started here at Queen's at the end of Year 9. Before moving to Queen's I never had too much interest in school, I never put any effort into my school work and that showed. My class time was spent focusing on getting my hair ready for lunchtime with the boys rather than my school work. Once I moved to Queen's I started to focus more on the academic side of school mainly because the boys were gone. I started to learn to set goals for myself. After achieving a few goals I learnt the feeling of success. Every year after that I kept pushing myself to get better grades and I did achieve a fair bit of academic success. As my goals got higher, so did my stress. I think all my friends know that Katie does not cope too well with stress. At the end of last year after our NCEA exams, after a solid few weeks of stress eating I went backpacking through Cambodia and Laos with a group from King's and Queen's. This trip was incredible, we all experienced so much. Like thinking our plane was about to crash after it was hit by lightning, getting half our group lost in a massive night market, trying to use squat toilets and watching Olivia get dragged along by a tuktuk because she was a bit too keen to get out.

However, half of the trip I was still stressing about my exam results. I was so nervous to get back and see my results because I thought I was going to fail. Some people see success as an expectation. At the end of last year I saw it as an expectation. That expectation being if I didn't pass with top marks then I wasn't going to succeed. While I was away I realised academic success isn't always the top marks, endorsements and top scholars and that is what I wanted to talk about today.

Academic success is different for everyone. Some people including myself last year always thought of academic success only being when you are receiving top grades.

Although this may be academic success for some of us for others academic success is passing. But when it comes down to it success is a feeling. It is a feeling of achievement that you get when you set yourself a goal, you work towards it and then eventually you achieve it. You and your neighbours academic success can be completely different but yet it still is the exact same amount of achievement. As long as you are achieving your academic goals then that is an academic success. Success isn't about how your achievements look to others. It's about how it feels to you.

Academic success is also driven by you. It is up to you to put in the hard work and effort to achieve your academic goals. I know we hear this all the time but no one can put in the effort for you. You have to learn to be your own motivator. You have to be determined, organised and committed to achieving your goals. Remember that hard work never goes to waste.

With success always comes mistakes. There are always going to be times where you fall short of the grade you want, you miss out or you disappoint yourself. You can't even really call it a mistake because as our teachers would say “it's a learning curve”. But it is true. For every missed grade, opportunity or goal there's always another chance or a piece of learning you can take away from it. Maybe that learning is to not leave study till the night before! At the end of the day, no matter how much support you have from your teachers, parents and friends, it will always be up to you to do the work and how hard you work is your choice to make.

Overall, everyone is capable of academic success for it isn't an expectation. It is you putting in the hard work and achieving your work to the best of your ability. The academic blues recipients are great role models and the effort and commitment they have put into their studies is something to aspire to no matter what your area of strength is. Be focused, be determined, be hopeful and be empowered. Empower yourselves to a good education. Thank you.