The academic achievements that give me the greatest pride are the ones that show a progression and extension of my abilities across my years at Canberra Grammar School. My personal approach to school has always been with learning forefront of my mind. I have always selected the most interesting, instead of the simplest path, because I believe that it is our duty but also to our personal benefit as learners at CGS to take the years that we have here and attempt to learn as much as we possibly can. Whether these be an extension of my current skills or the chance to learn something out of my comfort zone, my priority has always been to learn and to try to find joy in the things I have the chance to study, motivating me to pursue new information, goals and achievements with every effort I can with the knowledge that the scores will follow.
The subjects in which I experience this drive are most often those that I enjoy and find easier to succeed at, such as Geography. Since Year 7, I have relished my semesters of Geography as a chance to mix my preexisting skills of writing and comprehension with a new perspective on the physical and social organisation of the world. This interest prompted me to select the subject at a Higher Level in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. I believe that my greatest academic achievement was in my external selection for the International Geography Olympiad (iGeo) as one of four students to represent Australia in Dublin, Ireland in August 2024. All CGS Geography cohorts from Years 7 to 12 take the Australian Geography competition annually, and it is from the results of this multiple-choice geographical and cartographical competition that the highest male and female scorer from each state is chosen to attend a fieldwork camp called the Geography Big Week Out. My camp occurred in September 2023 in Litchfield National Park, near Darwin, NT, and consisted of a combination of onsite fieldwork, data processing, and exploration of the natural processes at work in this biome. Although this selection camp was external to my CGS Geography classes, it both informed my previously theoretical understanding of that environment and the ways in which human visitors impact it, while also providing me an outlet to utilise the skills that I had developed inside and out of the CGS classrooms. The weeklong experience concluded with a written assessment to determine which four of the seventeen students would represent Australia. Although I was successfully chosen for this team after the task, I would have considered attending the camp itself as one of my greatest academic achievements regardless of my placement; I consider academic success to be learning as much about the diverse applications of your favourite subjects as possible.
While my achievements during my week in Litchfield were mine alone, there is no question that my success at the GBWO was due to a range of other factors: my selection based on my gender, my other competition within the Combined Territories, and most of all the support from the CGS Geography Department to send both myself and another student across the continent to complete fieldwork in a completely new environment. While throughout the week, I held the ultimate purpose of the camp- to select the Olympiad team- in the back of my mind, I held my primary goal to be to learn as much as I could from as many interesting people as possible.
Although it is easy to recognise a trajectory of success in a particular subject as an academic achievement (such as my continual success in Geography since Year 7), I am also very proud of my ability to lift my performance in subjects that I was previously less successful at. Academic success does not necessarily mean being the absolute best at something, particularly in the unranked IB Diploma; rather for me, it means a mindset shift to love the learning of a course beyond a grade. This is particularly applicable to me in Mathematics, a subject I have not historically succeeded at compared to my standards for my other classes. In my junior years, I rarely broke higher than a B in the subject and tried my best to improve only for the sake of my grades. I was not invested in Maths itself and consequently struggled to follow the teacher or find the motivation to persist. However, this mindset shifted in Year 11 when I began Mathematics Applications and Interpretations SL with Mrs Watt, a teacher who has had one of the greatest impacts on my perspective as a learner. Through my enjoyment of the classroom learning style and the relaxed and safe atmosphere of the classroom, I felt comfortable trying my hardest and developing my mathematics skills without fear of failure, and in the process developed a genuine enjoyment and interest in this branch of mathematics. In the end, my growing investment in this part of my academic journey paid off immensely, as I was able to lift my grade by the end of Year 11. My goal now is to maintain my personal interest in the subject while continuing to perform to the best of my ability. In this way, my growth in mathematics illustrates how academic achievement is not always found in a learner’s strongest areas; likewise, my true academic success is extending my goal beyond attaining a particular score to prioritising my true learning.
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