Head Girl’s Article - She Is Limitless

Ithink we can often view Boundaries as something fairly negative, something we need to stay within. However, in my year as Head Girl, and when I consider my whole time at Pipers, I think what really makes us unique, what makes us stand out as a school, is our inclination to push the boundaries. Girls here are taught to not just stick to the specification, to not just turn up at 0830 hours and leave at 1600 hours, to not just sit back and watch, but instead to push to achieve.

When I was first writing this article, I found it difficult to identify the meaning of ‘boundaries’ because it is such a multifaceted word, boundaries are subjective and personal. So I began to look within my own daily experiences of school to identify some examples of girls pushing their limits within the Pipers environment. During the last year, I have seen so many girls pushing the boundaries in ways both big and small.

There are the girls that wiped the floor with the competition and brought in the biggest haul of awards at the Young Enterprise Finals, the girl who cut her hair for the Princess Trust, the girl in the middle school who re-did her homework to improve her grade after a disappointing result and the girl who went home and did some wider reading in addition to her required homework. There are all the Year 12 students who work weekly with younger girls across the school, the girl that trains for that 5K, 10K or even half-marathon to raise money for a charity important to her, the girls that make the effort to always be kind. There is the girl in Prep who wins ‘Value of the Month’, the girl that goes and sits with someone alone at lunch and the girl who gets knocked down but keeps going regardless. The girl who leads #GeogSquad or the Inclusion and Diversity Committee, the girl that runs a charity initiative alongside her A Level studies and the girl that stands up in debating and speaks her mind without fear. There are all the girls involved in ‘Mum I Love You, I Promise I Won’t Die’, the girls that receive an Effort, Progress or Academic Award and the Prefect Team running brand-new initiatives.

“ALL OF THESE GIRLS HAVE PUSHED THE BOUNDARIES. ”

I think it is critical that, to achieve, boundaries have to be pushed in the right way; simply pushing harder within old, existing boundaries will not do. At Pipers, the opportunities for girls to identify new challenges to push themselves are endless. This year, the Prefect Team worked on an initiative entitled: ‘She Is Limitless’. The campaign was all about driving girls at Pipers to believe that they can achieve whatever they want to; they should never feel limited.

Girls, it is important to recognise that our generation is often categorised by society as the ‘snowflake generation’, a generation that is less resilient. This is just not true in my experience of this school community. We need to smash and crumble the ‘snowflakes’ that we are being defined by, because that is not what I see in Pipers girls. We have girls in Year 7 that stand up and lead school assemblies, we have girls in Year 2 identifying that women like Michelle Obama and Jessica Ennis-Hill inspire them these are not examples of the ‘snowflake generation’. Another factor that, for me, explodes this stereotype is our response to failure. Just like everyone else in the world, everyone at Pipers has seen failure and failure is good, but their response is key. It is those that push the boundaries repeatedly after failing that will achieve.

I encourage every girl at Pipers to push their boundaries. Simply sitting within the comfort zone and avoiding areas of weakness will not do. Boundaries are only temporary, they can be moved, they can be broken. We are not being placed in the suffocating boundary that is the ‘snowflake generation’, that cannot and will not be permanent. It is us, it is the girls at Pipers, our attitude, our determination, our resilience that I have seen in my role as Head Girl, that will totally abandon this idea. We can only break down these boundaries by pushing and when we push: we achieve.

C Ball, Head Girl