Reading School changes lives

Reading School changes lives.

Picture a 10-year-old boy, slightly clammy from a bike ride from an end-terraced house in East Reading, in a suit that is too big, with trousers skimming the ground, and clutching a brand new bag, standing outside the green door at the bottom of South House with 22 other boys. A queue of boys who were to be taken to the top of the building in what was then Room 14, arranged in alphabetical order, and divested of their first names for the next seven years.

Picture a boy, now 17, leaving on the same bike along Addington Road, the saddle now precariously high above the frame, to the same end-terraced house in East Reading, in a suit that is too small, with trousers at half-mast and with a battered old bag strapped on the back. A boy with a place to read Natural Sciences at St John’s College, Cambridge.

A boy with so many stories about his time at school: the time he stumbled off the rugby pitch into A&E to have his head stitched up, the time the whole class was quarantined in the Lecture Room until someone owned up to carving something on a desk, the time his Chemistry teacher almost suffocated himself in the fume cupboard, the time one of his best friends projectile vomited out of the window of the maths classroom, and the time he ran out of Room 7 during an English class as he was so terrified at the prospect of presenting in front of his classmates.

Picture a young man, a year later, having driven himself to Cambridge, unloading whatever he could cram into a borrowed Saab 900 into his room at St John’s, as lost and bewildered as he was on that first day outside South House, but with the confidence and inner resolve not to be daunted at the prospect of being the first child in the family ever to attend University, let alone Cambridge.

Now picture an older man, a Deputy Lieutenant of the Royal County of Berkshire, in a slightly better fitting suit, with a Cambridge degree, a doctorate, and a 30 year career in law and technology, with the confidence and inner resolve not to be daunted at the prospect of addressing his School Senior Prize Giving assembly and not running away like he did from Room 7.

Those are parts of my story.

You will have your own stories about your time at Reading School. Those stories you will find yourselves retelling many decades later to those you shared your time here with and as though no time had passed at all. They will become memes and will never fail to reduce you to fits of naughty schoolboy laughter.

These micro-stories, and your time here, will influence and impact your own personal macro-story whatever that turns out to be. And while some of you will have a clear vision of what you want that story to be, others will be less certain. And that’s ok. When I was at school, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wasn’t sure then, and I’m still not entirely sure now. And my PS/5 and LEGO collection tells me that I’ve probably not entirely grown up either.

Each one of you has your own unique future story. The plot will have all sorts of twists as opportunities come your way. Take advantage of those opportunities and never be afraid to embrace change. This School has provided you with the foundations to do so – the knowledge, the skills, the resilience, the independence, the discipline – but it is up to you to build upon that foundation. Take what you have learned here and use it as a stepping stone to reach higher and further than you ever imagined possible.

You will face challenges – that is inevitable. There will be times when you doubt yourself, when the path seems too difficult, and the obstacles insurmountable. In those moments, remember that true strength comes from perseverance. Failure teaches us to deal better with disappointment, embarrassment, sadness, anger and fear. Remember that the world is full of second chances and alternative opportunities, provided your previous failure does not make you blind to them.

There is an African proverb which says: ‘Until lions have their own story tellers, tales of the hunt will always favour the hunter’. Stories are meaningless unless they are told. But if you are going to tell your story, then make sure you live a life worth telling stories about. And if you do something worth telling stories about then make sure you do tell those stories because they really matter.

And students of Reading School have been living lives worth telling stories about for the past 899 years. Stories with a common thread which combine to tell the Big Story of Reading School as a force for change, excellence, hope, good, inspiration and humanity.

Reading School changes lives.

Write a good story.

Tell your story.

Floreat Redingensis.