By Natassia Chrysanthos and Monica Attia
Con Theocharous, a top student in 1981, is now a pathologist. Credit:Oscar Colman
Some 44 years ago, a Cypriot man named Nicholas Theocharous walked past an impressive-looking sandstone building on College Street, Darlinghurst, on his way to work in the city. He didn’t know what lay inside the heritage building but when he discovered it was a school – Sydney Grammar School – the man, himself a teacher, walked in and asked a question.
“He said: ‘My son is quite good academically, would you give him a scholarship?’,” his son Con Theocharous says. The family had only arrived from war-torn Cyprus a few years earlier but Con had shown promise, particularly in mathematics, back in his home country.
“I did an aptitude test, then did year 10, 11, 12 at Sydney Grammar. The headmaster was very supportive and took me under his wing. [I think he] was a bit ambivalent about how I would do with the smart kids, but I held my own and got on with it.”
A few years later, following the 1981 Higher School Certificate, The Sydney Morning Herald’s front page reported that same student – Con Theocharous, described as a boy from Rooty Hill who had spoken no English when he first came to Australia as a refugee five years ago – had finished in the top 1 per cent of the state.
Theocharous received those fateful results via a letter in the post, which his parents put aside for him until he returned home from his summer job at a tile factory. “It was a life-changing experience for us. We needed to work to make it, so it was elation,” he says.
“The success story of the 1981 HSC examinations is Sydney Grammar School student Con Theocharous, of Rooty Hill. When he came to Australia five years ago as a refugee from Cyprus, he could speak no English,” the Herald reported alongside this photograph on January 11, 1982.Credit:Fairfax Media
Forty years later, about 68,700 students are anticipating the results of their year 12 exams after one of the most challenging and disrupted final years on record. These days they discover their marks online or receive them via text. Owing to the delays brought by the pandemic, the 2021 results will be released on January 20.
But if all goes well, students will soon be off to university, apprenticeships, part-time work or gap years, following the rites of passage charted by hundreds of thousands of HSC students before them. The Herald has tracked down some of the top achievers we interviewed in earlier decades, to ask about their paths post-school and any advice they have for the class of 2021.
1981: Forty years later
Theocharous was one of 20 Sydney Grammar students who graduated in 1981 to snag a top mark: his score of 486 was the third-highest in his school. “He wants to study medicine like his older brother, but at the moment he is more intent in making some money from his vacation job – working in a tile factory,” the Herald wrote.
Nicholas wanted Theocharous to follow himself and his mother into the teaching profession. “But I said no. I followed [my brother’s] footsteps,” Theocharous says. “I went to straight to uni, did the five-year medical course at Sydney Uni. I’m pretty boring really. I chose pathology as a career and I was very focused on that as well – internships, residences, five years of specialist training. And I’ve been in one job since then, at St George Hospital in Kogarah all along.”
Theocharous says he is a firm believer in what migrants can offer this country. “Some people who come from overseas have a chip on their shoulder, they want to achieve. If the country can harness that sort of ambition we can do quite well,” he says.
“It makes you more focused, harnesses your energy in the right way. I have empathy for people who have been through war-torn countries. All I can say is I’m very grateful my parents did decide to come, I’m very happy with my life in Australia.”
Theocharous’ classmate Andrew Serdy, who lived in Castlecrag, was also among the school’s top achievers profiled by this newspaper. He told reporters he was surprised to do as well as he had.
“I am going to the University of Sydney to study Arts/Law, but I don’t have any burning ambition to do anything in particular,” said a young Serdy. “It is possible I could go into the Public Service or go into a legal career but I want to study languages.”
Andrew Serdy recorded a score of 487 in the 1981 HSC.Credit:Fairfax Media
Serdy has since dabbled in all three. He continued with his combined arts and law degree at Sydney, majoring in German. After graduation he worked at a corporate law firm for six months, before giving 16 years to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. That job took him across the world; he spent a year and a half in Tokyo and three in Warsaw, with a year of language training included.
Serdy returned to Canberra and spent 10 years working for DFAT in the area of international law of the sea. He then obtained a doctorate in international fishery law and has worked at the UK’s University of Southhampton, where he is now a professor, for the last 16 years.
“I often think of how differently things might have turned out if the cards hadn’t fallen quite the way they had but I suppose you just have to make the best of what life deals you,” he says.
He tells today’s graduates to follow their interests and do what they want, rather than think about what could have been. “You’ll never know what turns up. [There’s] absolutely no point studying something that you’re not interested in just because you’ll get a job at the end of it.”
1991: Thirty years later
Ten years after Sydney Grammar students Theocharous and Serdy graduated, the inner Sydney school had a new set of star pupils. Marcus Lim and Hung Ta were great friends during their time at the selective private school. But their fortunes were truly tied when they came equal first in the 1991 HSC.
The Herald at the time reported Lim was the son of Malaysian parents while Ta had come to Australia as a refugee from Vietnam in 1979: “They say they each have a ‘friendly competitive’ streak, a desire to succeed, an organised method of study, and a passion for spaghetti”.
Marcus Lim, 17, right, and his best friend Hung Ta, 18, left, gained the top marks in the 1991 HSC, the Herald reported on January 13, 1992.Credit:Fairfax Media
The teenagers told this masthead that they had spent much of their HSC relaxation time eating spaghetti bolognaise and sipping cappuccinos together at an east Sydney restaurant (now revealed to be the iconic Bill and Toni’s on Stanley Street). Both said they wanted to study a combined commerce and law degree at UNSW, and that is what they did.
After five years of studying together, Ta pursued a legal career while Lim went into management consulting. They both spent time in New York around 2000, but while Lim had a stint in London before moving back to Sydney, Ta set up his roots in the American city and has lived there ever since.
These days Lim is the managing director of his own private equity firm, investing in small to medium size businesses and helping them grow, while Ta is the managing director of his own litigation firm.
“We chat on WhatsApp most days – it used to be phone calls,” Lim says from Sydney. Before the pandemic Ta would visit Australia twice a year, and the pair coordinated their travel diaries so they overlapped during overseas work trips.
“He hasn’t lived here for 20 years, but I think the best thing, if I come back to that day [we received our HSC results], is that Hung and I are still really good friends,” Lim says.
Marcus Lim today.Credit:Wolter Peeters
Lim says the element of his career he’s consistently enjoyed – from his time at UNSW Law School to the present – has been the people. Each stage has involved learning from others and meeting “interesting people from diverse backgrounds who are smart, driven, and end up doing interesting things”.
Lim says he takes a middle ground in debate surrounding the HSC: “It’s really worth knuckling down because it does smooth your path, but it doesn’t mean your life is over if you don’t get the mark you want,” he says.
“I have friends who didn’t get into [the law] courses they wanted, but they worked their arses off in their first year and they’re both barristers now.”
But the most important advice he gives to the UNSW students he mentors is: “You’ve got to find what you’re passionate about. Life’s too short to slug it out just for a salary. It might not be in your job, it might be an external hobby. But you’ve got to find it.”
2001: Twenty years later
Amid all the fanfare that comes with topping the state in two subjects – award ceremonies, media attention and interviews – Alex Khlentzos remembers purchasing fancy footwear. “I didn’t really have any really nice shoes [to wear to those occasions], so dad took me and we got some nice shiny shoes,” he says.
Khlentzos, a student from The Armidale School, was on a family holiday in New Zealand when the 2001 HSC results were released online; the next step was to find a WiFi connection. “I think we just went to an internet cafe, and it was pretty exciting to learn those results,” he says.
Alex Khlentzos from the Armidale School came first in two subjects in 2001.Credit:Andrew Taylor
His HSC year had been one of balance: he played piano, captained the soccer team and dyed his hair blue, between the hours spent studying. But it was still a “big surprise” to find out he had come first in mathematics and biology.
Khlentzos remembers leafing through university guides to determine his next steps: he landed on a Bachelor of Science at the University of Queensland, majoring in drug design and development.
But after two years working at the university’s therapeutic research unit he found it wasn’t the right path. “I realised that my gifts and passion lay more in caring for people. The life experiences I’d had outside of my studies to that point had helped me enjoy relating to people from all backgrounds and walks of life,” he says.
Alex Khlentzos now.
Khlentzos then studied medicine at Sydney University, where he could combine his love of science and desire for human connection. These days he works as a GP in Dubbo. “I don’t even think about [medicine] as a career, I think about it as a vocation or calling,” he says. “Having that chance to care for people who are incredibly valuable, I think that’s just wonderful.”
He encourages this year’s students to find good counsel in loved ones, follow their passions and seek out mentors. “Don’t feel rushed, there is plenty of time to figure things out,” Khlentzos says. “I just say congratulations, especially doing it in such challenging circumstances in the last year or two.”
2011: Ten years later
By the time 2011 came around, the selective Sydney Boys High School at Moore Park was producing some of the state’s highest achievers. That year, it was Dennis Kim and Austin Ly who the Herald photographed after they received the highest ATAR of 99.95.
Like several of the top students from decades before him, Ly also comes from a refugee background. “My parents and their siblings came from Vietnam as refugees. They definitely pushed me to work really hard in school, and I think that is where a lot of what I’ve achieved has come from as well,” he says.
Dennis Kim, left, and Austin Ly, right, were some of the many high achievers at Sydney Boys High School, the Herald reported in 2011.Credit:Janie Barrett
He’s an only child but comes from a large extended family, and each year through high school his cousins would graduate with successively better marks. Then along came his top score. “I thought I’d set the bar too high for everyone else,” he says. “It’s a bit of a blur now, but I don’t think I was expecting it at all.”
Ly had set his mind on pursuing dentistry. Despite offers to study medicine in Sydney, he left his family and moved to Queensland, which was offering the only undergraduate degree in the subject. He finished after five years and has worked at a dental surgery in Brisbane ever since.
But 10 years later, he no longer believes the pathway he was so attached to at 17 suits him. “I’ve come to the point where I’m thinking of leaving dentistry and starting from scratch,” he says. “It’s been a gradual realisation that there are probably other areas and things that would suit my personality better that I wouldn’t have thought about when I was graduating.”
Ly has found himself in the same position as many current year 12 students, albeit a decade on: stepping back, evaluating what’s most important to him, and taking risks to get there. He spent the last six months cutting down on his dentistry hours and studying a graduate certificate in IT, to test the waters in the technology space. Now he’s considering a move to Canberra, and applying for roles aimed at career-switchers seeking to upskill in coding and software.
He believes his experience has offered him fresh perspective on how those early post-school years played out. “I think I over-committed to [the firm idea of dentistry] before I had a chance to properly grow and understand myself and I what I wanted,” he says.
Austin Ly, who received an ATAR of 99.95 in 2011, says: “”I think I over-committed to [the firm idea of dentistry] before I had a chance to properly grow and understand myself and I what I wanted.”
Ly’s advice to students receiving their results this week is: “don’t take it too seriously”. “The thing I appreciate most about the last 10 years is not my career but what I’ve learnt from growing as a person through moving out, developing relationships with people,” he says.
“The fact I’ve been exposed to people through my work has been really important. No matter how you get to that point – part-time work, hospitality, retail – anything that exposes you to more people, perspectives and experiences.”
Most Viewed in National
Source: Read Full Article
