I woke before my alarm on the Saturday of the Open Day, which was unusual for a teenager who normally treated weekends as sacred sleeping territory. The light outside was that pale January kind, already warm at seven in the morning, and I lay there for a moment listening to the cicadas starting their daily racket. My stomach felt tight, not with nerves exactly, but with something heavier—a sense that this day mattered more than I wanted to admit. I had been to Open Days before, trailing after my older sister while she picked up glossy brochures she never read. But this time I was the one choosing, and the brochures would be for subjects I actually had to pass.
I pulled on the school uniform I had laid out the night before, checking myself in the mirror twice. The blazer felt stiff, still smelling of the dry cleaner's plastic. My mum knocked and came in with a cup of tea, setting it on my desk without saying much. She knew I needed quiet more than pep talks. I sipped the tea and stared at the timetable I had printed from the school website: three subject taster sessions, a campus tour, and a Q&A with current students. It looked manageable on paper, but I had a creeping worry that I would walk into a room full of kids who already knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives.
The drive to the school took twenty minutes, and my dad kept the radio low, which was his way of being supportive without making a big deal out of it. We parked in a field that had been turned into a temporary carpark, and I joined a stream of families walking towards the main building. The school was older than mine, with sandstone walls and ivy creeping up one side, and it had that smell of floor polish and old wood that made everything feel serious. A student volunteer handed me a welcome pack with a map and a pen, and I suddenly felt very young, like a primary school kid on their first day of big school.
It looked manageable on paper, but I had a creeping worry that I would walk into a room full of kids who already knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives.
My first session was English Extension, held in a room with high windows and a whiteboard covered in quotes from a novel I had not read. The teacher, a woman with silver hair and a direct way of speaking, asked us to discuss a single line from the poem she had handed out. For a moment I panicked, sure I would say something stupid. But then I noticed the girl next to me was doodling on her handout, and the boy across the table was chewing his pen. Nobody looked like they had all the answers. I took a breath and said what I thought the line meant—something about memory and loss—and the teacher nodded and wrote my idea on the board.
The campus tour was led by a Year 12 student named Priya, who walked backwards as she talked, pointing out the library, the science block, and the oval where the sports teams trained. She told us about the time she had accidentally set off the fire alarm during a chemistry prac, and everyone laughed. That moment, more than any of the polished speeches from the principal, made me think I could belong here. Priya was smart but not intimidating, funny but not trying too hard. She answered questions about homework loads and lunch options with the same casual honesty, and I found myself relaxing into the idea that this place was made of real people, not just prospectus photos.
The last session was a Q&A in the hall, where parents asked about ATAR scores and scholarship deadlines while the students around me checked their phones. I wanted to ask something meaningful, but my mind went blank. Then a girl in the front row raised her hand and said, 'What do you wish someone had told you before you started Year 11?' The panel of students exchanged glances, and one of them, a guy with a nose ring, said, 'That it's okay to change your mind. I thought I wanted to do medicine, and now I'm doing drama.' The room laughed, but I felt something click. I had been so focused on picking the right subjects that I had forgotten I was allowed to change direction.
On the drive home, my dad asked how it went, and I said 'good' in a way that made him smile. I did not tell him about the moment in the English room when my idea got written on the board, or the way Priya had made a big school feel small, or the guy with the nose ring who gave me permission to be uncertain. Those things were mine to hold onto. I looked out the window at the paddocks sliding past and thought about the year ahead. The Open Day had not given me a perfect plan, but it had given me something better: the quiet confidence that I could figure it out as I went along.