Resilience. Resilience is; ‘the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.’ This toughness is going to be the defining trait that gets you through not only your education, but your life. VCE is a challenging couple of years that involves numerous hurdles and constant effort. If you don’t have the ‘toughness’ required, then VCE is only going to become more challenging. Here are a few thoughts to increase your ‘toughness’ and your resilience:
Be realistically optimistic with your expectations
Allowing yourself to be realistically optimistic with your expectations is a key characteristic of resilience and it certainly applies when it comes to perseverance! We always take on a lot more than we can handle, whether it be wishful thinking or grand expectations, and this is just human nature. Don’t dream smaller, plan better.
Accept that you can’t control everything
In VCE and in your life, there will be either situations or people that you cannot control. You must accept that. Not all situations can be influenced the way we want, but the outcomes can be interpreted the way we want. You may receive negative feedback from a teacher one day, and you can either be frustrated or use that feedback to better your work and better yourself!
Plan for success
Your final years of high school are so important. So, plan for them to be. Plan to work hard! Plan to help your fellow students! Plan to do your best with all that you’ve been given! It’s so easy to get stuck into these final years and go through the motions, but the most effective student is the one who plans for success! Take your time, decide what it is you need to prioritise and put that at the forefront of your attention. The more you plan, the more confident you will be going into your SAC’s and your exams.
Perseverance
Perseverance = Stubbornness with a purpose
Throughout these final years of school, you are constantly going to face adversity. So, you must decide for yourself what you will do in the face of these challenges. Whether it be a tough SAC, a demanding assignment or just committing to weekly study, your decisions will have an impact on your end of year results.
Now, perseverance is your ability to; ‘keep doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.’ With that in mind, no matter how hard the work gets, or how demanding it is of your time, you will get back up and do it again! Because at the end of your VCE studies, all you want to remember is that you were resilient, you persevered and you got the results deserved. :)
“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.” - Newt Gingrich
By Shannon Misso
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