Page 46 - Hull's School Yearbook 2018-2019

Graduation address 2019
In the ceremony that follows you will be receiving a certificate confirming that you have been a valued Final Year student. As you know, we will only receive the results of the June examinations at the end of August; when we do, you will receive a confirmation of subjects and grades. This will, amongst other things, enable you to clinch your place at a university. End of August you will also be ordering the remaining A-level Diplomas, which will arrive in December. Remember, you will be the ones to order the A-level diplomas as you decide, whether the grade attained is sufficient for your aims.
The diploma you are receiving today is therefore more of a symbol, and yet it means a great deal. The diploma you are receiving is also a token of our appreciation of your commitment to learning and your future. We have tried to respond with our commitment to helping you succeed.
Your educational background now opens many doors. All of you have passed enough examinations to study in the USA, in England and in most European countries. So all of you already have a ‘Matura’ now, regardless of the results in the June examinations. It is essential that you remember this as you apply for summer jobs, internships in international companies or charitable organisations, should you be planning a Gap Year.
The situation you find yourselves in is in many ways unique, it is both exhilarating and unbearable. Ending your school days may be the answer to many a secret prayer, particularly of those of you who hate examinations. Giving up an environment which, perhaps, has become something like a second home over the past four years might seem a bit worrying, even terrifying. It is the point in your lives where the influence of your parents or guardian wanes and you need to take your lives more into your own hands. You are moving from an education with reports, parents’ evenings and extra study prep to more independence, where your parents are less responsible for you and you have to actually involve them when you feel it is necessary. To many the next step will as yet be largely unknown. It means giving up all the habits, many of the relationships, the familiarity of your room at home for new habits, new relationships, a new environment. Turning-points of this kind place us just for a bit in a vacuum and often feel simultaneously unpleasant, scary, exciting and liberating. Which of these feelings is true of you now? Just one or is it a mixture? There is much we can learn from such turning-points, they allow us to see how quick we are to fill a vacuum with new plans and projects. We cannot in fact bear it so easily when old routines suddenly disappear. So we hurry to create new ones, as if we had a resistance to awakening even just a bit and needed to find new habits in which we could again fall comfortably asleep.
Have you ever thought about the school motto?
The first two years up to IGCSE were about knowledge, the Latin 'scire'. The final two years up to A-level combined yet more knowledge with understanding or 'intellegere' in Latin. We tend to think that we know what both terms mean. Knowledge is often regarded as data stored in our heads. Knowledge comes in the shape of words, symbols, rules and mathematical formulae. It is possible to pass IGCSE History or Biology by learning the necessary facts off by heart. At A-level, however, more is needed, such as the ability to make connections, solve open-ended problems and think critically, as when we analyse historical sources. All this belongs to the realm of understanding and what is expected of you at university. I have so far touched on academic knowledge and academic understanding.