Southern Lights Salon Culinaire Competitors 2017Mac Kotchabang, Kla Thungkao, Hunter McBride, Jack Mullany, Matt Kennedy, Daniel Keen, Tim Lindbom, Gage Switalla, Matt Kennedy (front)  by TBHS

Rector's message - July 2017

Our term is almost ‘all over bar the shouting’ (or singing in the case of inter - house competition this Friday). We have covered a lot of ground these last 10 weeks and seen the boys excel in different situations and settings (all shared on Facebook and in our newsletters).

It has seemed like a long term with some boys and staff also battling illness and fatigue along the way; winter’s made its presence felt. As we head into the break, every boy is encouraged to take stock of his progress and achievement since April. To consider what has come to pass so that he can be better placed to take on what will follow. We want each boy to keep his sights set high and to stay on the path or ‘road’ right for him. Robert Frost’s famous poem, as below, speaks to the choices we have and the roads we take; to moments when we find ourselves needing to choose a path but without really knowing what lies down it. We urge each boy to take, where and when appropriate, the road ‘less travelled’ if for him it will make ‘all the difference’.  A new road or extension to his current one starts in Term 3.

 The Road Not Taken
 Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
 And sorry I could not travel both
 And be one traveler, long I stood
 And looked down one as far as I could

 To where it bent in the undergrowth;
 Then took the other, as just as fair,
 And having perhaps the better claim,
 Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
 Though as for that the passing there
 Had worn them really about the same,

 And both that morning equally lay
 In leaves no step had trodden black.
 Oh, I kept the first for another day!
 Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
 I doubted if I should ever come back.

 I shall be telling this with a sigh
 Somewhere ages and ages hence:
 Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
 I took the one less traveled by,
 And that has made all the difference.

 (Robert Frost, 1916)

Nick McIvor
Scientia Potestas Est
Mā te Mātauranga te Mana