Leading film director and screenwriter, Greta Gerwig, was the inspirational special guest and speaker at this year’s Harrodian prizegiving event in the second week of September.
Prizegiving evening is always an uplifting and joyous moment in our school calendar. The evening brings together both current Harrodian Sixth Formers and last year’s A Level students and their parents to acknowledge the achievements of our Senior pupils and departing Harrodians across all aspects of school life
As well as providing our community with a well-deserved opportunity to let their hair down and celebrate, this year’s event provided Harrodians with a unique opportunity to learn about the distinctive personal qualities the Director of global hits such as Barbie and Ladybird considers essential to success and happiness in life.
Ms Gerwig began her speech by praising the ‘humaneness and thoughtful kindness’ she has discovered at Harrodian. Kindness and friendship she said might seem ‘peripheral’ in a career plan but she views them as the ‘rocket fuel’ for her own path. ‘I made my first film in my home town working with my two best friends from high school and the star of Barbie, Kate McKinnon, was my college roommate,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it’s the people who are right beside you who go on the journey with you.’
Keep your eyes on things that draw your curiosity Allow yourself to become lost. Practise it. Being lost is how you learn to use your internal compass.’
Greta Gerwig
Ms Gerwig stressed how important the sometimes undervalued quality of curiosity had been to her own success: ‘Keep your eyes and your edge of awareness not just on what’s in front of you but on things that draw your curiosity,’ she said. ‘Allow yourself to become lost in things. Practise it. Being lost is how you learn to use your internal compass.’
To see more pictures of our prizewinners, please follow the link
Resilience seems to be top of Ms Gerwig’s list of essential attributes for surviving and thriving in a tough world. ‘All successful people I’ve met have had a very close relationship with failure’, she said. She is herself, she pointed out, a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks. ‘Don’t let the false starts and missteps throw you off,’ she advised the audience, embarking on a list of her own ‘fails’: five unsuccessful applications to acting school, three to writing programmes, 3 long years of futile acting auditions and 19 fruitless pitches to film financiers until she succeeded in raising the money to make Ladybird, the film that made her name.
Don't let the false starts throw you off. Running towards difficulties and embracing so-called failures is where you will find success and where you will find your character.
‘You have to know,’ she concluded. ‘That running towards difficulties and embracing those so-called failures is where you will find success and where you will find your character.’
Ms Gerwig very kindly agreed to present all Harrodian’s prizewinners with their awards. All the pictures we took accompanying this article or can be seen in our special prizewinners gallery..
