Your Time Starts... Now

Headmaster’s Routh Assembly Address
Monday 26th April 2021

Video recording of Routh Address

Good morning. I need to start with a correction to last week’s address. I welcomed you back to the Summer Term but that was a poor descriptor. I realised of course, that this is the Examination Term. Even with examinations cancelled this year, we should still think of it as the Examination Term. NOT the Summer Term.

Summer conjures up images of sunbathing, long lazy days, the stirring of the birds and the bees (and not just amongst the birds and the bees, if you know what I mean?). That is NOT where your heads need to be over the coming weeks. The majority of you face formal assessments this term, and whether they will open doors to universities or the Sixth Form, or simply provide a culmination for a year of hard work learning online, they must be your single-minded focus for a while.

So, leave thoughts of the sun & surf, BBQ’s & beaches, relationships & romance until July. Two short months of delayed gratification will buy you the long-lasting benefit of the best assessment results you can possibly get.

Hopefully, most of you are already studying hard and I know that many revised thoroughly over the Easter break. Therefore, perhaps the most important challenge I can give you this morning is not about the need to study, but how to do so.

Unfortunately, if you are prone to procrastination, the world has gifted your generation the greatest form of pointless, mind-numbing, time-sapping distraction since the invention of stamp collecting or daytime soap opera. To you has been given the gift of YouTube. If a few hours of sustained revision on a topic you find hard and don’t really like much anyway creates an itch, you can always scratch it by hopping online.
Your phone or laptop is just there. You were using to study anyway, right? Just a wee break. Physics is so hard – perhaps a quick trip down the rabbit hole of YouTube?

Well, if that is you, I’ve got a real treat. Try Googling “Grocery Grab” or “Supermarket Challenge” and watch a few clips. Simple premise - the winner of a competition at a local supermarket gets to push an empty shopping trolley around the aisles for a fixed time, loading whatever they choose. When time's up, usually about 90 seconds, they keep everything they have grabbed.

What is compelling about these videos is how frustratingly dumb the participants can be. They are in a shop with maximum choice. Everything anyone could want to eat or drink lies before them, yet so many seem to blow it. Having wasted nearly an hour of my life watching clips of grocery grabs on your behalf, I have concluded that there are six types of contestant:

The Slow & Unfit
These people dawdle along, wandering down the aisles, taking in the sights, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their time is limited. Either that, or they stop every five feet to catch their breath. Or try to wrestle six big turkeys, each one larger than themselves, into the trolley, only to find it's too heavy for them to push over the line. You find yourself yelling at the screen, “Why did you even enter??? Why not just stay in bed?”

The Instant Gratification Junkies
This group head straight for the junk food aisle and set to work piling in armloads of crisps and lollies. Apart from the fact that these are ridiculously cheap items that they could spend their own money on, they also take up way too much of their limited trolley space. And of course, it is food of no real value, and gone too quickly.

The Sleepwalkers
These folk act as if they were doing their normal weekly shopping. They are creatures of habit, starting in the Fruit & Vege section, umming and ahhhing over the ripest apples, following the same old route and routine they usually take every Sunday They can't seem to see the bigger picture, that this is their huge opportunity to break their regular patterns and really score big.

The Indecisive
Like the sleepwalkers, these contestants also seem to have forgotten the significance of the occasion. They waste precious seconds picking stuff up, weighing it in their minds. And then putting it back again. You can almost hear them thinking “Hmm, shall we have roast lamb or beef this weekend? Who’s coming for dinner and how many portions do I need?” By this time, you’re hitting the laptop again and yelling “For Goodness Sake, what does it matter? Cram it all in, the clock is ticking!”

The Crowd-Pleasers
Then there are those who get bamboozled by what other people think they should do. The conflicting demands of family and friends. You see them standing stationary in the aisle as the clock runs down, trying hard to hear what others are calling out for from the sidelines. You want to silence everyone else and just yell at the contestant “Whose trolley are you filling?”

The Strategists
Fortunately, not every grocery-grabber is terminally stupid. Occasionally, you find one of a special group, who know exactly how to get the best out of the deal. These people are winners. They know the layout of the shop intimately. They have mapped out the optimal route in their minds. Calculated the high value/low volume items and set themselves targets. You can see by the focused look in their eyes as they grip the trolley handles before the start, that they laid awake the night before, picturing the prize.

You know where I am going with this. The short time that you have left to revise for your assessments this term is the same as a grocery grab. Only in your case, the trolley is your brain, and the groceries are all the topics you could possibly revise. And here’s the thing:

What is on offer, is on offer to you all. Each of you starts with the same-sized shopping trolley – your brain. Despite the mistaken belief that some people are born smarter than others, the truth is you are all equipped with exactly the same mental capacity. It is only grit and determination that differentiates you. And a plan.

You each have the same opportunities. The aisles at Bromsgrove are open to all. You each have the same amount of time in front of you too. Likewise, the speed and energy with which you load your trolley is up to you. What is in your revision trolley at the end reflects who you are and what you value. What you wheel into the exam hall is down to the choices that you make now.

So, as you prepare to revise over the next few weeks, I am asking you, are you sprinting or dawdling? Or worse still, sleepwalking? Carrying on as if this was just another normal School week, doing your Prep in the same old way?

What are you choosing to study? Are you feeding your sweet tooth, reviewing only the easy topics that you already know, and which are worth fewer marks? Or are you trying to maintain a balanced diet, eating the greens of harder topics?

And who are you trying to please? Are you spending energy creating the appearance of full-time revision just to make Mum and Dad happy or keep your Houseparent off your back? Or not studying all, trying to impress others with how confident or nonchalant you are? Or are you trying to feed your own desires?
Perhaps most importantly, have you got a plan? The biggest winners in those Grocery Grabs are the strategists. The ones who went down to the supermarket the day before and checked out all the aisles. Identified where the highest value areas were and planned to attack them first. Is that how your revision will go? Are you being deliberate and selective about what you will study, or are you still unfocussed, making it up as you go along?

As you work through this short but important Assessment Term, I encourage you to attack it with a plan. If you can already picture what your revision trolley looks like, you are so much more likely to fill it. Which means when Summer really does arrive in July, you can enjoy fully.

Your time starts NOW.