2022 VCE Awards: Looking Forward

Female 1:

This is me in prep, I think it's in my first week of school.

Male 1:

This is young Jesse.

He was already a massive nerd by this age, I will be honest.

Male 2:

So this photo was taken I think at primary school. So I was in prep, very  young as you can see.

Yeah, I've got my baby brother now he's in year nine.

Male 3:

This is me. When, in prep. So I was probably five.

Male 4:

Me.

Yeah, went to Rowville Primary. It's pretty cool. Pretty cool school.

Male 1:

He was very friendly. I always loved to wave.

Still love to wave and just like, say g’day to people. That's kind of.. it's one of my favourite pastimes I’d say.

Female 2:

This is my prep photo.

So I think in 2010, yeah, when I was about six or five.

Female 1:

I was a very, very curious kid growing up.

I've always really been interested in being outdoors and in nature and also just learning about, I guess, the world.

Female 3:

My mum would always, especially in prep, she would always we’d always spend so much time in the mornings finding new hairstyles to do together.

Male 2:

Not at this age. I know that when I was seven I wanted to be a theoretical physicist and I'm still on the track.

When I was five, I probably, I probably wanted to be a dinosaur or something.

Male 1:

Oh, I think I was very aspirational as a child.

I had heard that doing medicine at Oxford sounded cool, so that was the aspiration at the time. Didn't really know, but I thought maybe something in medicine. So it's nice to be going in that direction.

Male 2:

Yeah, that's pretty interesting. What would I tell him?

Maybe just continue to be you and continue to have self-confidence. I think, that's the main thing.

Female 2:

I think to just keep going at it because just keep believing in yourself and just see where life takes you with your experiences.

Male 4:

Don't, don't listen to others when they're trying to put you down and telling you you can't be something that you that you are. So, yeah.

Female 3:

What am I doing now?

I'm studying a Bachelor of Nutrition Science at Deakin.

Female 2:

I'm studying law arts at Monash University.

Female 1:

In the future, I would love to kind of continue to explore photography as an option.

Male 4:

Oh, I really want to teach.

I was also thinking of becoming a cruise ship musician. I've always wanted to do that.

Male 2:

Yeah, so currently I'm studying medicine at Monash Uni.

Male 3:

So right now I'm at Melbourne University and I'm studying a Bachelor of Science.

Male 1:

I’m studying biomedicine at Uni Melb, and I'm living at a college and I'm having a great old time.

Male 2:

When it comes to how can we improve the world around us, my mantra has always been to be the best version of yourself.

That's what I've always tried to do, you know, in VCE, even though I was in the classroom and everyone around me was technically competing against me, I always thought that helping others would be really good, always help people around me. Or other people would always help me.

And it was it was very important, I think, to be the best version of yourself, but also just help people around you, empower those around you, just supporting everyone.

But in the end, I think as long as you're working towards your own goals and improving areas of your own life, you'll always motivate others
and improve theirs as well.

So that's really the golden thing that I think it comes down to.

[End of transcript]

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