Blog
Tomorrow is an opportunity
I have been writing these blogs, now, for a while and - if you have also been reading them for a time - you will know that I consider the start of a new academic year as a period of reflection, and an ideal moment for new resolutions.
As we are reminded through the quote from L. M. Montgomery, not only is tomorrow a pristine new day, the whole new year stretches ahead of us - ours for the taking, and ready to be punctuated by our choices, decisions and - yes - even our mistakes.
Today could feel rather like ‘empty page syndrome’ in some ways: knowing there is a whole year to fill, and thinking of it as a huge hill to climb. However, it is only as daunting as we let it be…
After all, how would we begin to fill an empty page with a well-structured, coherently-argued essay? It could be short half-page, or a weighty dissertation, but the process is nevertheless similar for both. We would think less, initially, about the individual words and we would instead plan the outline. What would we hope to convey? What would be the overall message? How would we find out the facts that we need but don’t yet know? How would the piece build to the perfect crescendo? How will we, ultimately, measure success?
What we don’t typically do at the planning stage is worry about the errors we might make when typing out the detail. Or the spelling inaccuracies that might happen whilst we scribble out the words rapidly, at that heady time when they flow faster than the ink does out of the pen! We know that we can go back to those and adjust them later. As we can with our mistakes in real life.
So, as we all move into that fresh new page of our lives this week, either as a brand new Valley Park student or colleague (in which case, a very warm welcome to you!), or as someone returning to us, already knowing the ropes - tomorrow is an opportunity. Knowing our mistakes of yesterday and yesteryear: what shall we achieve between now and July 2022? What will we look like as we leave school for the summer break next year? And how shall we start making it happen?
Welcome back everyone, I can’t wait to get started on our collective next steps!
