Year 11 students of 2022, I would like to start by saying how delighted I am to be here this evening. From the day you joined ICHK, way back in the dim and distant days of 2017, you have been a truly outstanding group of learners.

If any further proof was required of that, above and beyond your fantastic staying power through the two and a half years of this still ongoing pandemic, the mere fact that we are gathered here now provides that proof. This event is yet further evidence of your year group’s tenacity, resilience, perseverance, and refusal to be cowed by circumstances. That the Year 11 Committee of Gladys, Karim, Leonie and Sera were able to coordinate and cajole and conjure this graduation celebration into being, is quite outstanding. Let’s give them a well-deserved round of applause.

However, looking back over the time you have spent at the school, one quickly realizes that your achievement doesn’t end there. COVID is just a part of the picture. Your tenure at ICHK has coincided with a series of calamities of truly biblical proportions: flood, conflict, and the plague.  In your five years, you have witnessed it all. 2017 – Typhoon Mangkhut, and the campus underwater and two weeks of school with the electricity knocked out. 2018 and 19 – Hong Kong’s civil unrest, with traffic in chaos, bus routes disrupted and school closed early for fear we couldn’t get you home before the streets closed down. And, then, to cap it all, 2020 to the present day, the never-ending, shape-shifting, energy-sapping strictures of COVID, with its greatest gift of all, Zoom School. You will not be short of memories - and I pity any of your children who, in years to come, have the misfortune to suggest to you that they have had a hard day at school … “Hard?! Hard!?” you’ll say, and, taking a deep breath, you’ll begin, “now, in my day …”

But despite experiencing a secondary school rollercoaster the likes of which would rarely be seen outside of a lurid soap opera in search of unlikely plotlines, you have risen to every challenge. You’ve taken everything in your stride; you’ve adjusted to back and forth to a situation that promised relief countless times, only to have it snatched it away once more. On each occasion, you’ve got back up and dusted yourselves down, and squared your shoulders and rejoined the fray. And you’ve done all that with amazing good humour and lightness of spirit.

All of which is to say, you’ve done yourselves proud. Your parents, sitting here alongside you, are brimming with pride. Your teachers are singing your praises. As the Head of the school that you’ve attended, I am filled with admiration. We’re all of us, parents and teachers alike, looking back on our own teenage selves, and wondering whether we would have coped with the challenges and inconvenience and anxieties that you have faced, not for week, not for a month, not for a year, but for the whole of your GCSE careers. We are not at all sure we would have managed it half as well as you have.

I’d like to finish with a couple of my favourite quotes, one from a famous nineteenth century German philosopher, and one from a famous twentieth century American novelist. In his 1888 collection of aphorisms, The Twilight of the Idols, philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche wrote Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker, what does not kill me makes me stronger. In his 1965 novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, novelist Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - "God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

In combination, I believe those two quotes offer excellent commentary and advice, for you, class of 2022. You’ve been tested and buffeted, you’ve been challenged and knocked about, but, here you are, it hasn’t killed you and you’re stronger for the experience. Quite how strong, I think you yourselves have yet to realise. And now, now that you’ve survived and come through the other side, well, welcome to post-GCSE earth. As Mr Vonnegut suggests and as you have already begun to realise, it's very hot in the summer, it’s a little cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, ex-Year 11s, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, class of ‘22 - "God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

Good luck with that life-time project.