What do you aspire to be when you grow up? We’ve probably all been asked that question on multiple occasions and as we move through our school days I suspect our perspectives and aspirations change. At 5, I wanted to be a train driver, at 11 the ambition was to work for NASA, at 13 to become a doctor… by the time I was 16 it was to be a drummer in a rock band whilst at 39 I wanted to run a pub. Of these I only achieved the last (albeit briefly) but it was also important to have had those other aspirations, however unattainable they ultimately proved to be or indeed ever were.
Many of you will be looking forward this weekend to watching the first F1 race of the year from Australia. And this year the youngest driver on the grid will be Arvid Lindblad who is just 18. Why is that so significant to us? Well just a few years ago as I am sure many of you will know, Arvid was sat in this hall listening to a Reflection as a First Form student at the RGS.
I was reading an interview he gave to the BBC last week in which he said: “A big turning point for me was when I was about four. My dad was sitting on the sofa and had the F1 on. I came and sat down next to him and was watching the race and asked him, ‘Is it possible to be there? Could I do that?’ I believed for some reason that I could. I don’t know if that was false hope or what, but from five I believed I could be in F1 and that was always what I was working towards.”
Thinking about what I wanted to say to you this morning, I was reflecting on the 21 years that I have been Head of Careers and Higher Education at the RGS and the students I have met. Some of their names are on the boards at the back of this hall as captains of sports teams or Heads of School. At some point during their time here they will have had the aspiration to achieve that accolade and success. Jack Clifford and Tom Humphries have both gone on to be professional sportsman whilst, amongst the School Captains from my time here, there are many who have gone on to achieve notable success in medicine, law, finance and the public sector.
What those boards don’t list are the other 3,000 plus students that I have had the privilege to support and guide, so many of whom have gone on to have similar success. There’s Harry the Chess Grand Master, Alex the Bank of America VP, Jack the Actor, Joe the travel writer who is the only person to have visited all 15 former soviet countries since the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, James the environmentalist who spoke at COP26 in 2021 as a 19 year old, Emmanuel the professional musician, Marcus who cycled from the UK to Australia. I could go on but I don’t have the time to list the achievements of everyone who has sat where you are. The ones I mentioned are just the ones I have heard news of in the last few weeks.
What they, and so many other had in common was self-belief or, to put it another way, aspiration. And linked to that were those core attributes such as imagination, courage, reflection, perseverance and engagement – just some of our other School Values and Learning Habits.
Whilst we can, like Arvid, all have big dreams what also matters are those smaller day-to-day aspirations. To achieve that better mark in that subject we perhaps struggle with, to master a particular piece of music, to perfectly execute a skill in sport, to resolve to do that little bit extra to support a friend, to admit that there are occasions when our parents or teachers really do know better or to deliver that inspirational reflection in an assembly.
As you reach my age you will inevitably reflect on and regret those things you should have aspired to but didn’t attempt (for me it was having the courage to make an Oxbridge application – I doubt I would have got in but I still wish I had aspired to give it a go). And you can still keep aspiring so, for those of you who have been on the wrong end of one of my umpiring decisions in hockey, I still aspire to do better.
Martin Luther King the American Civil Rights Activist is perhaps most well known for his I have a Dream speech. It is doubtful (but not impossible) that anyone in this room will attain the recognition that he achieved but to have our own dreams and to take steps every day to achieve them is a philosophy I think we can all aspire to.
Mr PJ Dunscombe
Director of Higher Education