This article is adapted from Esther’s speech delivered at the Year 12 Farewell Assembly on Friday 26 October 2018.

If I earned a dollar for every time I hit backspace to delete this farewell and start again, I would probably have enough money to pay the Scotch school fees. For as long as I can remember I have always known what to say. I am often told I have too much to say. I have never been short of words.

Writing this farewell however, has been a different story.

Today is all about saying goodbye, but before we do so, I would really like to say thank you. The only problem is that the words ‘thank you’ don’t really feel like they cut it. In fact, if there was a word or phrase that trumped thank you, I would say that. But when it came time to decide what exactly to say thank you for, it became a lot harder than it seemed.

I think anyone who heard my speech or is reading this knows that we are all thankful for the opportunities and the facilities – all of that has already been said a million times. Before I leave Scotch, I would like to say thank you for something much bigger than teaching us our ABCs in a nice classroom. I would like to say thank you for keeping us safe.

When delivering this speech, I asked everyone to close their eyes. I know it’s a tired cliché, but it’s important. I even asked the cool kids in the back who never listen to do it. For those of you reading this, take a moment at the end of this article to close your eyes too.

When you close your eyes, I want you to let your mind wander, and take you to your safe place. Your own spot. The place in the world where you feel most safe, secure and protected. For some of you it will be your own bed or bedroom, maybe your couch at home, the playing field of your sports arena or a quiet hill where you go to watch the sunset. I want you to go there in your mind for a moment. It’s a wonderful feeling.

You see, when I think of my safe space, I never have to close my eyes. My safe place is right in front of me every day at Scotch. My safe place is here, with all of you. To me, you are not just school mates, staff and parents – you are a family. The buildings you see on Torrens Park Campus are not just classrooms and facilities – they are a home. A home I call my own, and one I wish I could call home forever.

To me, for a person to feel safe is the foundation of what makes a human being want to do well. Now, at Scotch, we all have a roof over our head and are far from homeless – this isn’t the safety I am talking about. This isn’t about four walls and a locked door to keep the world out. Scotch creates a sense of internal safety where you are proud of where you’ve come from, proud of what you’re doing, and proud of where you are heading. When you hear Scotchies past and present say things like this, it isn’t marketing. It isn’t to boost enrolments. We say things like this because we actually feel this way.

I don’t love Scotch because I have to. I love Scotch because Scotch loves me – for who I am.

What Scotch has is really rare. From the outside, Scotch doesn’t seem like much more than a castle on a hill, filled with too many Range Rovers and a bunch of rich kids in blazers. The thing is, that’s not the case at all. Those ‘rich kids’ are actually students of impact and the parents inside the Range Rovers demonstrate the definition of hard work for the kids, week-in and week-out. And this applies for the kids who leave with a 99.95 ATAR, and the ones who still get dessert and desert mixed up.

If there’s one message I want people to take away about this school, it’s that Scotch College accepts you for who you are, and helps you to be proud of yourself for who you are.

Scotch is a place where the First XVIII Captain can play a musical instrument. A College Captain can be gay and the popular boy’s favourite subject can be fashion. Scotch breaks down barriers and sits apart from your average private school. It’s only in a place like Scotch that kids feel the kind of safe that allows them to be themselves and I know I speak for my entire Year 12 cohort when I say that is something we will be forever grateful for.

Mums, dads, families – you have hit the jackpot. You have not just invested in an education, but an upbringing. You haven’t just given your child a sense of community, you have helped them to find their safe place. A place that, no matter where the world takes them, will always be home.

At the end of my speech and after our final assembly, the end of assembly was just like normal – we all heard the piper say, “Band. From the right. Start. March.”

And those pipes played, and everyone filed out the chapel doors as always. But this time it wasfor real. We weren’t just going to lunch, we were going forever. To go and start a new chapter of our lives. A chapter beyond the hedges.

As the Class of 2018 leaves Scotch for the final time as students, I ask you all one thing.

Scotch, please continue to be you. Continue to take risks. Never get comfortable or complacent and never settle for anything less than you deserve. You are not just mysafe place, you are oursafe place. Thank you for making us proud of who we are.

And finally, don’t forget us – we will never forget you. Thank you.

Esther Boles-Frahn
Class of 2018 Co-Captain

Editor's note: Esther earned the prestigious The Riewoldt Family AFL Excellence Scholarship for 2019 at Bond University on the Gold Coast soon after writing this story. She began her playing career as a junior at Central Augusta (Port Augusta) and is now on a fast-track pathway to the AFLW.