“Worksop College is the kind of place that you never forget. The building is steeped in history and when you walk on the slightly uneven cobbled floor, you feel the footsteps of the students who have walked there before you. The chapel is a special place, even if you aren’t religious. When the whole school is singing the same hymn, there’s a sense of community, of sharing a place and time.

In the College, everyone has a house. Your house gives you a home away from home, a family, and a place to relax and to work. The best way I can describe it is like having 30 sisters, some younger and some older. There’s always someone who has been where you are, to give advice. Someone who needs your advice. Someone who can teach you valuable life lessons and someone to teach your life lessons to. If you’re struggling with work or with your peers, there’s always someone who can relate to you and help you out. The house staff are wonderful, they are there if you need a helping hand and to keep some order in a place with 30 teenagers, but they know when to step back and let the other girls help out.

Lessons at the College will always stay with me, as a shining example of student-centred teaching. History lessons about British politics in the 1970s where we were free to discuss and make parallels with our present time; where we could debate, share thoughts, and learn through conversation. RS lessons with the class in uproar over the ethics of Peter Singer, over the usefulness of Utilitarianism in business ethics and the theological approach of St Augustine and St Irenaeus on the problem of evil. We were never told what to think, never told we were wrong, we learned through our class discussions, with the teacher gently challenging us to broaden our minds. Walking with the heroes of old, with Odysseus and Aeneas, in Classical Civilisation and learning what it meant to be a hero and what it might mean now. I loved lessons in a way I never had done at any other school because I could learn from the teacher and from my peers equally and I hope they learnt something from me.

Often, the things that really stick with you about the College are special events. House Song - where we all dress up and perform a song to the rest of the school - is a particular favourite of mine. There are plenty of competitions within the College, but House Song isn’t one of them. We all turn out to laugh at ourselves and support our friends, no matter how silly we all end up looking. That said, competitiveness between houses is a part of life at the College and we will all claim that our house is the best. Competitions such as Debating, Tennis, Hockey, House Challenge, DT, Cooking, Rowing and Cycling are a chance to do your best for the house or turn out to support it.

This year has been strange for the College, because of lockdown, and especially so for us who are leaving. I have been at Worksop for 2 years and I still feel the end of my time there keenly; I can’t imagine how those who have been there for 5 years must be feeling. We haven’t been able to have Speech Day or Final Chapel as we normally would, but all credit must go to the school for putting on virtual versions. I’m not ashamed to admit, watching the end of the Final Chapel video with the staff clapping those of us leaving the (virtual) chapel for the final time as students, tears ran down my cheeks.

I’m proud to have been a Worksopian and leaving is bittersweet, knowing that I’ll never be a student again but that I’m going out to the big wide world as prepared for it as I can be, as an Old Worksopian. No matter where I am, or what I’m doing, Worksop College will always be a part of me and I’m looking forward to joining the wider Worksop College community as an OW, class of 2020.

Semper ad Coelestia - Always to the heavens”