Accomplishment

 

It felt extremely refreshing spending the afternoon watching accomplished students do their thing in an accomplished manner without having to worry about some of their less-accomplished peers falling well short of what might be, indeed, should be deemed reasonable standards of behaviour. I won't go into the gory details concerning the latter - just lately a particular irritant, I'm afraid - preferring to enjoy thinking over the former.

For once I felt distinctly relaxed watching the final of the Plain English Speaking Competition for the older students of this Far Place. In previous years I've sometimes felt a little bit nervous that one of them is going to mess up and have a less than enjoyable experience such that I only really breathe easy when the last contestant clears the hurdle of speaking impromptu on a given theme for the stipulated four minutes or so. (Try it yourself, by the way, if you want to get a sense of the stress that might be involved in doing this on stage.) Today it struck me that the seven contestants were uniformly more than able to keep going confidently and put together ideas worth listening to, and in several instances most engagingly so.

I also got a distinct sense that although the competition mattered it didn't matter enough to distort a general sense of supportiveness. Our school took a number of 'supporters' and they did just that: listened and supported everyone. Nice.