In my community, the purpose of school is to allow students to try new things and explore to find and pursue their passions and interests.

I first began attending my school at the age of 11. Picture a short, braggadocious Asian girl with buck teeth and overconfidence in her mathematical abilities. Curious about the big-girl high school with red brick walls and science labs, I joined a club with a cool, big-girl sounding name — the “AI Network.” Standing for the “Algorithmics and Informatics Network,” the club encouraged us to learn to code, first using drag-and-drop coding programs such as Scratch, then quickly progressing to big-girl programming languages such as Python. As the club was eventually shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, when I was entering seventh grade, my interest in coding slowly waned.

As my peers and I progressed to the more senior years of high school, we suddenly found ourselves with up to 20 hours of independent study during school time per fortnight; this allowed us to learn to become independent and self-directed learners. Not only does it allow for the development of an intrinsic motivation to succeed, as well as key problem-solving skills to help us overcome challenges on our journey, the freedom afforded by independent study fosters creativity and innovation. The time allocated to independent study is not just a period to complete homework or review flashcards, but allows students to delve deeper into their own interests — whether academic or otherwise. Many of my friends who are very avid players of netball recently used this time to complete a netball coaching course and now coach for local clubs or our school’s team for younger students, while others are interested in nutrition and run a podcast using skills they have learned in media class.

For me, this time allowed me to rediscover my love for coding. The strong foundational coding skills I was able to develop as a pre-teen, in conjunction with my interest in mathematics, have led me to my passion for mathematical modeling, opening a whole new world of possibilities and allowing me to explore the intersection of my interests and apply what I have learned in math classes in practical, real-world scenarios using my coding knowledge. Now, every time I sit down with my team to solve a problem and code a solution for a real-world scenario, it feels like an echo of my beginnings, taking me back to the little girl from six years ago. Though I am slightly taller, less braggadocious, and no longer overly confident in my mathematical abilities, I still carry the same curious mind within the red brick walls of the big-girl high school. This school allows me to pursue my passion, just as it did when I joined the club with the cool, big-girl sounding name back in 2018.