Senior School
Michel Nehme- School Captain
MICHEL NEHME SCHOOL CAPTAIN
Our voices ringing truly in a world urging our contribution
School Captain Michel Nehme spoke at School are inscribed in the minds of one another, and Assembly during the investiture of the prefects imprinted in the traditional red bricks which bear early in Term 1. This is an edited version of Michel ' s witness to our legacy every day. Your interest and address. diligence set alight your teachers and mentors,
How do we make our voices resonate and give meaning to their work. Your sweating in a crowd of 1400 dynamic boys, and 150 endeavours enrich the vivid grass of our sporting impassioned teaching staff? How do we allow our fields, and your melodies sing across the vast personality, our uniqueness, to ring true rather than spaces of the music school. Your humour, cheek echo hollow, in a hall emblazoned with the deeds and contagious liveliness radiate joy, and your of boys past? diversity enlivens this campus with the glow of Dedicated students will challenge themselves character and culture. with this question, in some form, every day;
But perhaps most importantly, boys, your through the excellence they pursue, the initiatives kindness, your integrity, and your ability to they incite, and the myriad activities they engage with others- no matter their ethnicity or undertake. beliefs- will disarm your critics, and unify your
Every great school will equip its students supporters. May we leverage the privilege we have to answer that same question with resounding been granted by pure chance to the benefit of not confidence and vigour. Every great school will only those near us, but of those many miles and ignite within its students ' minds the need to fulfil worlds away. that question- the need to test ourselves until All that you do and seize allows this school to we begin to understand our nature, and to test leap into a promising future. And equally, know that others with the knowledge that we are very much a all you don ' t do- every moment you choose to product of the efforts of each other. flippantly discard, and every time you allow yourself
For an academic institution, overused words to isolate a friend- leads to the same apathy like ' potential ' and ' opportunities ' are simply not which has halted so many institutions in recent enough, until the promise they carry is realised. years. As students of this school, we are morally And that long process of fulfilment extends past obliged to enable change and improvement. The you, the individuals who compose this school. school we have now has been built through the
To the teachers for 2017: you entered your audacity and vision of students gone by, just as profession to communicate your passions, and to the Scotch of 1 0 years past has been built on your give rise to passion in your students. Welcome to audacity, and your vision. another year of ebbs and flows; of finally breaking And it is for that very purpose of breathing through with one student, and being just a little out life into your visions that we sit here today, at the of your comfort zone with another. Embrace even induction ceremony of the prefects for 2017. These the smallest successes, and let your teaching style boys stand before you not for the sake of their and methods attest to your own flair. Just as I can own ego, but because they are willing to sacrifice see in this hall the teachers who have made their their time to listen, and raise their voices to amplify amazing mark on me, so too am I sure the boys yours. In this group, the variety within our school will reminisce fondly on the time and enthusiasm community is exemplified. Among them are brilliant you invested in them- and perhaps a little less athletes, musicians, debaters, orators, thinkers, fondly on the hours of homework you ruthlessly performers, mathematicians, linguists; boys dealt them.
And to you the boys, the students of 2017. Your discussions, your debates, your speeches
from different backgrounds, and bearing suitably different lenses to the ' Scotch experience '.
Knowing that they will do many subtle and uncelebrated deeds over the course of this year, I think it ' s apt that we congratulate them for their commitment to the students and staff of this College.
Prefects: all eyes are on you for a year. I can do nothing more than encourage you to prove your title, and be in a perpetual state of discomfort. There is no fun, ambition or growth in comfort.
As for every other boy in this hall, this prefect ceremony precludes none of us from our responsibility to extend a compassionate hand to those grasping for one. If anything, what we do outside of a formal position testifies more strongly to the weight we place on our intrinsic values.
Staff, students, welcome to our school in 2017. If it ' s not exciting to be back, seek change until it is. If it ' s not exciting to be back, take a moment to appreciate the burgeoning talents and ardent minds which reside in Memorial Hall. And if it is exciting to be back- which hopefully is the case for all of us- let ' s reflect on why that is so, and how we can revive that tingling sensation for next time. Because soon, our challenge will not be to make our voice resonate in a crowd of 1400 students and 150 staff, but to hear it ring truly amid the seven billion people in our world urging our contribution.
Here ' s to a momentous 2017. MICHEL NEHME- SCHOOL CAPTAIN 2016
RIGHT TOP: GUY STARKINS, MICHEL NEHME( SCHOOL CAPTAIN), WILLIAM SUTHERLAND( VICE CAPTAIN), PETER HO BELOW: GUY STARKINS, WILLIAM SUTHERLAND, PETER HO, MICHEL NEHME
22 Great Scot Number 150- April 2017