The Last Word

By Ben Sinnamon | Posted: Monday August 22, 2016

For all of us in the audience today we are students who are all in the second half of their OBHS schooling career. For Year 13 we have only 1 term, Year 12 5 terms and Year 11 9 terms left. 

Because time is ticking to a close for our time at OBHS we need not only look back to the great times we have had here and look forward to the challenges that are going to be laid before us but we should reflect on where we are now. Could you happily say that you have enjoyed a life here without a controlled regret? A controlled regret is something we have the power to change that we can do with our remaining time here.

A Year 8 boy approached me on Open Night this year and we had a normal conversation on what the school offers and what life here is like, but this boy asked a question I hadn’t been posed before. “What is your biggest regret at OBHS?” So I answered that I wished I had tried a greater variety of what the school offers. But then I thought about it. No matter what we do in our time here we will have regrets, no matter what we do we will always have some form of a regret whether it be missing that endorsement by 2 credits, just falling short in that sporting final or maybe even missing a house competition. We can choose to hold onto these regrets and let them damage us mentally or move forward and become stronger for it, as hard a task as this maybe.

We all hold onto something we regret, but that won’t help us. It's time to take up a challenge and back yourself to be better, be different, to be something else, to try something that you may have liked to try and still can, give it a go and put your regrets down to stupid mistakes that boys being boys will always make.  As per tradition I'll leave you with a quote, “In the end we only regret the choices we didn’t take."