Year 12 Examinations
Lucie Rice - Assistant Deputy Principal Year 12
Good luck to all our Year 12 students who are undertaking Semester One Examinations in the coming fortnight. It can be a tense time for students and their families and whilst a certain amount of stress is to be expected we hope that it remains well and truly in the 'healthy zone'. It is critically important for students to maintain a balance in life, particularly in the next few weeks. We encourage the students to get enough rest, take regular study breaks, spend some quality time with family and enjoy a good diet. There are plenty of people available to support the students, but essentially preparing for and sitting the exams are tasks that need to be tackled by the individual. I have included the story we used at a recent Year Assembly for reflection upon this idea of ownership of challenges for personal growth.
Butterfly Story . . . our struggles make us stronger!
"A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further.
So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shrivelled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shrivelled wings. It never was able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly!"
