Waimea College: Where Dreams Go to Graduate... and Then Get Lost in the Binder Ah, Waimea College, a vibrant ecosystem of teenage dreams, youthful aspirations, and the grim reality of life after graduation, cleverly disguised between the cover of a dusty exercise book and the ominous clutches of a bound folder. Here, in the heart of Richmond, lies the hallowed halls that promise to turn bright-eyed youngsters into the architects of their own futures. But let's take a moment to peel back the pages and see what really happens inside this grand institution – a place where dreams go not just to die, but rather to immaculately fold themselves into neatly aligned binders, waiting in vain for a revival that will never come. Picture this: You’re 16, full of ambition, and excitedly scribbling down your vision board, fuelled by all the motivational posters plastered on the walls of Waimea’s corridors. “Believe in Yourself!” one declares. That’s the first lie. What they don’t tell you is that once you hit Year 11, “believing in yourself” becomes akin to trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. As you navigate through the hazy mire of NCEA assessments, the deflating reality of life begins to hit. “What do you mean I have to study?!” you think, as you drown in a sea of newspaper articles you meant to read but never did. The real artistry of Waimea College isn’t found in its impressive sportsmanship or the delightful scents wafting from the cafeteria; it lies in the intricately woven narratives of lost aspirations. Oh, the promissory notes of your early high school years! You envisioned scholarship applications, world travels, and university capstones. But alas, like the carefully art directed photo on the college website, reality has a way of making the shiny veneer duller than yesterday’s lunch leftovers. In Year 13, you finally come face-to-face with the scant reflection staring back from the mirror—a shadow of who you could have been. With the pressure of finals looming, the motivation that once burned brightly becomes nothing more than a flickering flame, and as you disentangle that meticulously curated Pinterest board, marked “Future Me,” it slowly drips into oblivion. Yes, who knew that four years would be compressed into a single keyword search in the school’s job application portal? Spoiler alert: You won't find your wildest dreams there. You manage to graduate, clad in a crisp gown, "hot and ready" like a pizza but without the delicious toppings and cheesy charisma. The perfect façade for a day that should be filled with joy now feels like a bittersweet farewell to your freshest hopes. As your name echoes through Waimea's gymnasium, you walk across the stage and finally “cross that finish line.” In reality, however, that finish line acts more as a portal to nowhere, because once you step off that stage, you might as well be stepping into the Bermuda Triangle of your plans. Post-graduation, it becomes abundantly clear that the world outside is unrelenting. The binders full of potential — assignments, awards, school spirit wristbands — turned into little more than voluminous histories awaiting the sadistic forces of tuck shop cleanliness to strike. You find yourself in an existential crisis reminiscent of a Shakespearean tragedy, questioning whether to pursue your passion for art or conform to societal pressures by studying something “reasonable” like accounting or, god forbid, law. And what about that cliché about how “what you learn in school prepares you for real life?” It’s about as accurate as saying a deep fryer is an essential tool for healthy cooking. Sure, you aced the biology exam and can name all the cells in the human body while your friends cheer for you from the sidelines, but you gasp for breath when you realize they never taught you how to file taxes or navigate the labyrinthine world of job hunting. So here you are, just another WAIM college dropout lingering on the fringes with your dreams crammed into a binder, a college diploma acting as parchment paper to commemorate a bygone era. Somewhere in that colossal warehouse of memories sits your ambition—a bundle of uncertainty amongst the greeting cards and half-eaten packets of chips. Perhaps it, too, is waiting for the next generation to awaken those dreams again, or it may just gather dust until the end of time. In the end, Waimea College, while nestled in the beautiful Tasman District, stands as a paradox—a monument to fleeting dreams and lost ambitions. So as the next cohort of eager students strides through the gates, dreaming of the unblemished futures that await, let us here at Waimea College remind them to embrace their aspirations with the understanding that they, too, will inevitably find themselves buried in the sacred archives of those who came before. May their dreams remain alive long enough to escape the confines of that ever-hungry binder.