Hello everybody, my name is Liv and I have the honour of being the House Prefect for Ballard.

I would like to start off by saying that I am extremely proud of the effort and enthusiasm you all showed on our House Day. Everyone did so well. I am looking forward to our future house events where all my fellow purple dinosaurs will shine. Most importantly though it was great to see everyone outside together having fun especially during these challenging times.

Oprah Winfrey once said “When you meet obstacles with gratitude, your perception starts to shift, resistance loses its power, and grace finds a home within you."

My speech to you today will be about challenges that life throws at us and how good things can come from those challenges.  

An example of this is Miss Jean Ballard and how she got awarded her OBE for her services to education.  Miss Ballard had to overcome many challenges to get to where she did, as our first principal of Queen's High School, and to ensure that young women had the same opportunities as young men.

Another example of life's challenges is when I started my journey to New Zealand in April of 2020, when a little 16 year old me got on a plane with my family to move here from the UK. This journey meant leaving behind my friends, my family and the home I had known most of my life. In hindsight, we didn't think it would be during a global pandemic.

But here I am, standing in front of you nearly 2 years later with new amazing friends, a great home and as a New Zealand resident!  A day I thought would never come.

Sometimes as scary as it can be, change is good, I can honestly tell you I was a completely different person before coming to New Zealand and before coming to Queens.  I attended a school with thousands of students which was a challenge on its own, but I didn't do so well in school and it made me frustrated.  So although I was extremely scared to move to the other side of the world and sad to leave my friends and family behind, coming to New Zealand and attending Queens has changed my life.

Since being in New Zealand I have made new amazing friends, did a bungee jump, found out I was dyslexic, struggled with my diabetes, lost a friend from the UK and had an epic fall during a game of Four Square.

Although I am still recovering from some of these challenges,  like learning not to be so clumsy, I feel it's important to see how people can get through all of these challenges. That it is good to have hope and hear about how, although things seem really messy, it does get better.

What I am trying to say is.. life is challenging.  We see challenges all around us everyday but what we don't see or hear about nearly enough is how people get through those challenges.

Challenges are just another way of saying “ have another go”.