So today I had the opportunity to go back to my old high school (Westbourne Grammar School) to talk about our media course to the year 12 media class. What spurred me to do this was that being in the same position about 2 years ago where I had no idea what I wanted to do after high school, so I was there today to give them an idea what its like after high school with our media course in mind.
It was a nostalgic and refreshing experience. Nostalgic because I got to meet my old teachers from my graduating year (2014) and I got to see the same things I was going through back then with the students this year. Overall in my school, not much has changed, but I was told by several teachers that I was different. Most of them said I looked more free or more expressive, qualities that weren’t in abundance back in year 12. I think a major factor is rather than being forced to be going to school, I’m doing what I love for uni. I talked about the experience I had transitioning from high school to university, the different career paths available and ultimately finding what you want to do, which took me a year, and I talked about this process to them.
As usual, it was the same in my year level, they were keen listeners however it never showed in their facial expressions. They were interested, its a common theme among every year level at my old school, everyone’s interested about a guest speaker but they don’t tend to show it in their expression or ask lots of questions. I knew it was going to be like this, it wasn’t like they weren’t paying attention they just had a bunch of blank faces. It reminded me of when I was in their position at the time when a guest speaker came in. Now I get to experience that feeling first hand.
Anyway after my talk I stayed around in the class if they had some questions for me and as the class went on I got more questions on more and more things media related. More about the difference between studying media in high school and media in university. I would say at university is much more technical in its content as we are training practitioners in our field, and they are more about analysing the content and starting to create their content.
At the end of the day I felt I could come in every so often, about every 5-7 weeks to give them an update on the work I’ve been doing in this course and relate that to their work that they’re doing. Also to give them tips on editing, post/pre production, shooting etc.
So this was something when I left the school I never thought I’d do, come back to talk about well anything. The only thing is that this time I’m talking about what I love, which is media. And I just want to give back to the school that paved the way for my education, and perhaps help find the right path for the few that were like me, who didn’t know what they were gonna do after high school.
