My name is Zahra Fouladi. I am currently a year 10 student at Alpha Omega Senior College. I began last term and so far, I’m really enjoying it. The teachers here are very supportive. They cater to every individual student. And I feel like that really helps each and every one of us shine in our own ways. With the motto Belief Action Change, I feel as though the belief begins with the other people around you. So your parents, your support network, your teachers, and the other students help to inspire you. Your actions are the ones that shape your future and they’re the ones that spark change. Definitely, when I came to Alpha, it was like, the way I mentioned that every teacher caters to my needs, they’ve always opened different opportunities and definitely by coming here, I’ve learned that I’m good at a lot of things I never knew about and I’ve found new ways to excel.

So personal development or as we know it PD is a sort of way that students collaborate together on a call cause we’re on zoom right now. And basically, we learn from each other. So, Yousef allows us opportunities to talk with one another and learn from each other’s problems and it sort of collectively brings us all together. So, I remember recently there was a topic of boredom. And when we were talking about boredom, a lot of students talked about how they dealt with boredom and that really helped a student that was struggling with boredom. It really helped them to sort of look at it from a new light and understand that boredom isn’t really just boredom and that you can do so many other things. In personal development and studying, I feel like there is a correlation between them. Personal development allows us to sort of learn emotional skills that we can adapt into the classroom or to other places. It also allows us to strengthen our relationships and our ties with our teachers, fellow students, and family, and that in turn enhances the support network around us, which ultimately helps us to be better people.

I feel like the teachers and the environment here is so friendly, it’s not let down, but it’s so comfortable that students feel as though their teacher are their friends and that’s what encourages them to rock up every day and be who they are. Since I started at Alpha, the support network around me from my teachers in particular, since I started on Zoom too, it was a very difficult way to tackle all the learning. I had a lot more content to catch up on than other students. But I feel like with their support and their personal catering to all my needs, it really helped me to Excel. But Dalia, in particular, our year advisor, she’s really helped me. She’s helped me find friends, she’s helped me to get to know my teachers a little better, gets to know my way around and she’s always been there for me when I need her.

The slogan results beyond the expectations here at Alpha. I feel caters to every student in their own possible way because every student has something that they’re good at, and we also have our flaws and our weaknesses, but we were meant to try to help each other to be better. Personally, when I came, I had very low expectations of myself. I thought that I would be a mere C student or someone that would just try to get through school and then decide what I was going to do. But in the first week of coming here, it was so different from what I expected. Everyone here was so supportive. And I remember researching so many universities within the first month that I got here. Since I was a little girl. I’ve always wanted to help people. And found that the way I would help them was by becoming a doctor because doctors help people every single day. I feel that the term you can change the world, which is so frequently used here at Alpha. I feel like that really caters to us all individually and shows us that every single one of us has a particular role in shaping the world and that if we put our mind to something, we can do anything.