Celebrating Year 12 and our community
A warm hello, from all of us here at your alma mater.
Whether you left the College in the last five or fifty years, I’m sure you remember your last few days as a Pymble girl. You might recall the anticipation of something new and promising being just up ahead for you to grasp. Perhaps you had mixed emotions or felt like you were in limbo; not quite sure of your next steps or where they would take you.
Term 3 is always a bittersweet time as we celebrate and say farewell to our Year 12 students before their HSC exams begin in Term 4. While sad to see our leaders go, we know it’s just goodbye for now, not forever. We are equally excited for all that lies ahead for them on their post-school journey and grateful to share our much-loved graduation traditions – Final Chapel Service, Speech Day and Valedictory Dinner – with students and families now that restrictions are a thing of the past.
We wish our Class of 2022 all the best and that their hard work pays dividends as they approach their final exams before joining your ranks as our newest Pymble alumnae.
It’s fair to say our community is in full flow again after a cautious start to the year, and we have loved welcoming families and friends to a wide range of Pymble events in Term 3. A few of the many highlights include a magical production of Peter Pan by our Co-curricular Drama students in Years 7 to 9, a Father’s Day lunch for Pymble dads and their daughters, hosting our third annual Research Conference, partnering with Macquarie University to create the inaugural [EX]plore conference for Science Extension students and teachers, and launching our first Think Pymble careers event. The latter is the first in a series of events for our community to find out more about working in academic, operational and administrative teams at Pymble. For those who may be interested, you can always find our current employment opportunities on our main College website. If you’re thinking of a career change, we’d love to hear from you!
Of course, the big news story of Term 3 is the triumphant return of our Garden Party – our first since 2019! Thank you to all who were involved in making the stalls and activities such a success, and to those who returned to Pymble purely to enjoy the fun and festivities. While we are still crunching the numbers to determine our net profit, this will shortly be donated to our three beneficiaries, The Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Women’s Shelter, Pymble Parent Association and Boarding Scholarship.
A common refrain was how special it was to share this day with family and friends for the first time in three years. Garden Party is a showcase of the strength of our community, and it lifted my heart to witness the outpouring of care and gratitude for each other as we rejoiced in being together again at this much-loved Pymble tradition.
Our next major community event on the calendar is a parent information session called Speaking of Teens: Holding On to Love, which will be held tomorrow at the College on Wednesday 12 October.
All parents of girls aged 10 or older are warmly invited to join the conversation with four experts on different aspects of adolescent health and wellbeing, led and moderated by Associate Professor John Vassiliadis, Emergency Medicine Specialist at Royal North Shore Hospital. John is also a Pymble parent and a member of our Health Care Advisory Group which meets with our leadership team on a termly basis to discuss and inform us on various topics related to our student wellbeing agenda at Pymble.
The panel will discuss key issues including: the role of sleep and nutrition; healthy screen time habits, gaming and social media; managing risky behaviour; and maintaining important relationships and connections.
The event is free and open to the public, but bookings are essential and can be made by clicking on the image below. We look forward to continuing this conversation for and about our teens, with love.
Speaking of teens, we hope you enjoy this video featuring music and lyrics of a famous Beatles song performed by 150 co-curricular music students in isolation during last year’s lockdown. Set to footage of students having fun with the theme following their return to campus, the message from our Pymble girls rings loud and clear – all you need is love.
Goodbye for now and remember to stay in touch!
Dr Kate Hadwen 