Student Blog: The last word
Our Senior Leaders for 2018/19 wrapped up their duties at Assembly this week, with Olivia, Mya and Isobel summing up their initiative, ‘Perfectly Imperfect’.
“As we stand here for the final time we wanted to take a trip down memory lane to reflect on the past year.
A core part of our tenure as prefects has been to convey the message ‘Perfectly, Imperfect’. You have heard 20 different girls’ take on this initiative, and the lessons they have learnt throughout their life and time at 最新麻豆视频. We hope that you have taken the time to think about the meaning behind their messages and what the initiative means to you.
So to summarise, we wanted to encapsulate the key messages that have been presented to you over the past year.
We heard from Mercy that goals shift as you grow and that we need to celebrate this. No two people’s perfect is the same and therefore, the idea of a universal model of perfection is impossible.
Claudia noted that we live in a world of constant comparison and that it is all too easy to fall into the trap of perfection. So, we shouldn’t be striving for perfection because at the end of the day, perfect people aren’t real and real people aren’t perfect.
As we have taught you, perfectionism can be attributed to a fear of failure. But, as Molly emphasised to us, failure is knowledge and knowledge is success. We need to embrace failure, because every day presents us with an opportunity to learn from failure. We don’t learn anything by being perfect.
Our initiative has been illustrated by multiple different analogies. For Kate Liu, it was Newton’s Law of Motion which demonstrated to us that the only way to change our path is to break down our fear of imperfection. Accepting our imperfections is hard and it takes bravery and confidence every day to do so.
The whole of the 最新麻豆视频 community went into shaping the meaning of our initiative, with Lily gaining her understanding of ‘Perfectly Imperfect’ from Ms Webb, who taught her to ‘control the controllables’. There are some things in life we simply cannot change - much like our imperfections. We need to work hard at what we can change like our attitude, our resilience and our perspective.
Unlike the three of us standing here, some people in the prefect body are musically gifted, like Chloe who used her singing ability to get her message across. She showed us that fear of imperfection makes our life small and we need to break down these barriers to achieve great things.
Charlotte defined ‘Perfectly Imperfect’ as being ‘unapologetically you’. She taught us that we shouldn’t lower our expectations, compromise ourselves or be someone we are not, just to meet someone else’s idea of perfect. To paraphrase Zara’s sunscreen song speech, you need to OWN IT. Own your accomplishments and your failures.
Britta saw that the initiative was more about improving yourself rather than comparing, teaching us that the power of being kind to yourself and others has a far more powerful impact than trying to be perfect.
It was brought to our attention by Jess that imperfection is inherently perfect - pointing out that imperfect really spells ‘I’m perfect’. We are all human, and imperfection is a part of our humanity, so whether you are like our very own Lily who can’t swallow a tablet whole, or Maddy with her fake teeth, we all have imperfections - so celebrate them!
With her country charm and her constant ability to make us smile, Annabelle showed us the importance of finding what makes you tick and running with it. In the words of the woman herself, “what a boring lot of people we would be if we could do everything and do everything perfectly?”
Our feelings of imperfection can often be attributed to the media, dictating who we should be and what we should look like. Maddy pointed out that we are all guilty of falling under the influence of media, making us want to conform to one single idea of perfection. But we need to choose a different path. How can we represent the next generation of young women if we can’t be proud of our imperfections and use them to grow and make a difference in our world?
So on behalf of all the prefects from 2018/19, we would like to thank you for your support and for embracing the initiative. We hope that you have taken the time to consider at least one of these ideas over the past year, what it means to you, and how you can apply it to your own life.
It is important that as a community of young women we work together to fight back against the perfectionist forces in our lives, whether that be personally, within your group of friends or in the wider world. We need to be the ones to shift the conversations from competitive to collaborative, from comparing to supporting, and from perfection to imperfection.”
Olivia
Head Prefect 2018/19
Mya
Vice Head Prefect 2018/19
Isobel
Vice Head Prefect 2018/19