This year’s list of NSW year 12 students who received the Minister’s Award for Excellence in Student Achievement included one young woman from Inverell High School who is ready to take on the world.
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Madeleine Bower is one of 31 state students selected this year. Receiving the award meant a trip to Sydney where she mixed with the other recipients.
The experience made an impression.
“I was just blown away by the other people I was with and the interesting thing was, we all had very similar interests despite the fact we all did a lot of very different things.
“When I went down there, a lot of the people I was with-there were some that were so impressive.
“There was one girl who did volunteer work at Villawood Detention Centre and helped teach international students and refugees English. Some of the talent and some of the extra-curricular stuff is really mind-boggling.
“The level of people that were there, and how conscientious they were and the talent and some of them were incredibly intelligent, and you could tell and just from talking with them, their awareness what was happening. I’d love to be surrounded by these people.”
Considering her future, Madeleine explained, “I actually want to go into journalism to do media and communications at Sydney University.
“I don’t know if it’s actually the journalistic side of it that I like…it’s more, I’m very interested in politics and international and global sort of issues. I love languages, so I study Italian and I’d like to do more languages.”
Politics features highly on Madeleine’s list of passions and she has already formed some views of her own.
“What’s happening now in politics is you’ve got a lot of politicians who are going straight into the profession and they’ve not lived. The days of having a boilermaker become your local MP are over. I want to actually experience the world and experience it through the eyes of a different profession rather than entering into it. I can be politically-minded and join a political party while I’m at university which is what I’d like to do.”
Madeleine is grateful for her parents’ consistent support, and the quality of education she’s experienced in Inverell.
“The school’s fantastic. And that’s what is nice about going to a small school, is that fact that you don’t get lost. They go backwards for you. All the teachers have been really lovely and having that overall general community support has been really helpful.”
Not taking her achievements or the benefits she’s had for granted, Madeleine explained: “That’s what I realised, is that, talking to a lot of people, there are so many people out here who are far better than you, at absolutely everything.
“It’s more the circumstances that you’re brought up in and opportunities that you personally have been given in your life as opposed to someone else.”
