St Mary’s School pupil in top 12 in national Olympiad
Grade 12 pupil, Thalia Rogers from St Mary’s School, Waverley was placed twelfth overall in the 2014 De Beers English Olympiad, quiet achieving considering over 7000 students participated.
According to Kathy Mittendorf, the school’s marketing manager, the De Beers English Olympiad is a national English competition that draws more than 7 000 entries each year and is open to all learners in grades 10, 11 and 12.
She said, “The competition is organised jointly by the Grahamstown Foundation and the South African Council for English Education.”
The primary objectives of the project were to enrich pupils through the study of English, and encourage them to explore it beyond the scope of the school syllabus. The project also encouraged critical thinking and creative writing as pupils enjoyed the challenges of preparing for and writing the examination.
The shy and quiet Rogers said she had a fantastic week in Grahamstown, meeting and getting to know interesting people, exploring the Rhodes campus, watching brilliant plays and being exposed to new and exciting ideas. She left Johannesburg on 13 July and returned five days later. Rodgers flew from OR Tambo Airport to Port Elizabeth and took a shuttle to Grahamstown. Rodgers said, “I attended workshops on short story writing, journalism, partner work in physical theatre and characterisation.” The workshops that she attended also entailed exploring the structure of short stories, experimenting with different styles of writing, and discussing the role of journalists.
The matriculant said, “They also included the sharing of different ideas and creating and exploring diverse characters on stage. I learned a lot about different styles of writing and the stage.” Rodgers also had some words of wisdom for prospective pupils who would like to achieve in olympiads. She advised them to think out of the box and not to ‘dismiss any of their ideas as too weird’. She said her best moment at the festival was watching a play called The God Complex which she said was absolutely brilliant.
“It explored human existence in multiple layers of human experience and left many questions unanswered which were open to audience speculation,” Rodgers explained.
