Page 45 - Grundtvig International Secondary School Yearbook 2019

2019

VALEDICTORY SPEECH SIX YEARS OF SELF DISCOVERY

found it hard to believe, just about this time six years ago, that I would leave primary school for
secondary school, a place far away from my parents. I'm pretty sure that my mates felt the same
Iway too. For us, it seemed unimaginable and for our parents, although they generally said,
“Nothing's going to happen. You'll be fine”, they had their hearts in their mouths. I mean that sending
children at the very beginning of their teen ages into a new environment is not the most comfortable of
things that parents would do. They generally try to get the perfect place for their children. Therefore,
for most of, if not all of us, when we were in the last class of primary school, our parents made it a point
of duty to look for the best secondary school for us. While some of us might have originally planned to
be here at Grundtvig, some of us might have had plans for other schools, just likewise. However,
thanks to fate, we found ourselves in Grundtvig and I most certainly know that there would have been
no better place for us than Grundtvig.

Permit me to, at this point, take you through a journey I deem fit to call six years of self-discovery.’

Honestly, at the very beginning, boarding school was a nightmare for most of us. It wasn't easy to fit in
with people from different backgrounds and with different upbringings. It wasn't easy to be awoken by
the very loud bang of a metal bell by 5:00am every day. It wasn't easy to be the one doing your laundry
almost every day. It wasn't easy to be away from all of the TV shows that we were used to watching
everyday. There were days when some of us would cry to go home. There were days when some of us
questioned the importance of education as it seemed that academic work was very cumbersome. The
days of family visits were always anticipated. I vividly remember how my parents were the first to
arrive during our first visiting day and so the other parents of the then new JSS1 students. And
whenever it was time to go home, we would bring down the roof with our excitement and we would
start packing our bags from the first day of the week before mid-term breaks and vacation. And
whenever it was time to return to school, we would cry and mysteriously fall sick. Most of were only
acts intended to prevent us from going back to school.

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