October 12, 2025 • 16 mins
Exam season is here — and with it, a tidal wave of pressure, late nights, and panic. But what if we’ve got it all wrong? In this short, punchy episode, Justin and Kylie Coulson share six powerful reminders to help your teen (and you!) survive exam stress with perspective, calm, and even joy. From why your ATAR doesn’t define your worth to why sleep, exercise, and connection matter more than cramming — this is the reality check every parent needs right now.
KEY POINTS:
- You are not your ATAR: Exams don’t measure intelligence, potential, or worth.
- Brains need breaks: Good sleep, nutrition, and exercise fuel real learning.
- Remembering requires forgetting: Relearning builds stronger memory.
- Connection over cramming: Fun, laughter, and time with loved ones reduce anxiety.
- Take a gap year: Exploration and “range” lead to deeper purpose and long-term success.
- Perspective is everything: In two years, none of this will matter as much as it feels now.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“You are not your ATAR. In two years, no one’s going to care — and you’ll be just fine.” — Dr Justin Coulson
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Range by David Epstein
- Join the waitlist to hear all the news on Justin's new book "Boys"
- The Art of Manliness
- A HF conversation with Amy Dyer on gap years & the real path to success after school
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
- Keep routines steady — protect your teen’s sleep, meals, and downtime.
- Encourage short study bursts, spaced repetition, and daily movement.
- Talk about why effort matters more than marks.
- Model calm and perspective — your energy sets the tone.
- Start conversations about gap years, growth, and finding direction beyond exams.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello and welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Year twelve
exam season kicks off this week in New South Wales
and around the country over the next few weeks. In
today's podcast, we're going to be short, sharp and focused.
If your kids are in year twelve or they've got
exams coming up, even if they're not in year twelve,
what matters? What doesn't? How do you get it right?
What do you do as a parent, how do the
kids navigate it? We're going to answer that and more
(00:28):
in just a moment. Stay with us. Hello and welcome
to the Happy Families Podcast. Real Paring Solutions every Day.
This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are Justin
and Kylie Colson. Kylie, today we're stepping into short and
sharp conversations about how to help kids to succeed as
they do their year twelve exams or any exams at all.
(00:49):
You've got three things that you've been thinking about. I've
got three things that I've jotted down and we are
going to kick that off right now. Let's do it
this way. I'm going to do one, then you can
do one, and then we'll sort of wrap it all up.
I'm going to go first. My first one is as follows,
you are not your atar. In two years, no one
is going to care about your atar. I know it
feels like it's big. I know it's big. I know
(01:10):
everybody's been telling you that this is the most important
time of your life. But it's just it's going to
be okay. You're not your atar, and you can be
successful in life even if you completely flunk year twelve.
It really just comes down to finding the thing that
you want to do and focusing on that. I think
that the year twelve exams are massively overrated. I think
(01:30):
that they're very much about This is going to sound awful,
but I think they're about a marketing ploy for schools
to say, look, how what our students did, so that
they can extract more money from families who want to
pay for their children to do just as well because
they really think that it matters. But in two years time,
no one's going to care and you are not your atar.
I also fundamentally believe that the overwhelming majority of people
(01:51):
should not go straight to the university out of high school.
You need at least a gap, you maybe two or
three years to grow up, have a think of a
little bit about what you want, and then maybe go
back if you want to go to UNI down the track. Controversial, provocative,
but that's my number one. Don't sweat it because it's
not that big a deal. Oh and I scored in
the bottom fifteenth cent of the state. I know so
many people who are like literally doctors or have PhDs
(02:12):
who completely failed high school or didn't even finish high school.
You can still have a successful life without doing well
at school. Not that I'm saying that education doesn't matter.
It matters a lot, but your performance on these exams
is not the be all and end all. That's my
number one. Any reaction, any response, or do you want
to do your first one? Straight up?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well, my number one actually marries beautifully with that. I
would say that it's so important for you to just
maintain a healthy diet, good sleep, and some form of exercise,
some form of outlet. Not because the exams matter so much,
but generally speaking, when we're stressed out, when we're not coping,
(02:49):
when we feel overwhelmed, they're actually the first three things
that go in order for us to live happy, healthy lives.
We need to tap into those three things. So there
is nothing so important that we should forego any.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Of those Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And if that's the case, then it's just so important.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
So you're not going to do well in your exams
if you're stressed, if you're sleep deprived, if you stayed
up or not the night before cramming. You might actually
hold onto it in short term memory sort of until
the next day ish. That's not really technically short term memory,
but it'll drop out again pretty soon. You're not going
to have learned it. You will have memorized it, but
you're not going to do that well with it. That
actually ties in I've kind of gone on attention from
(03:32):
what you were saying, but that ties you with my
second one, which is that let's work on the assumption
that these exams do have some value for some people,
like they will be important for some people in spite
of everything that I said in my first point. If
you want to do well, remembering requires forgetting. Remembering requires forgetting,
So slow down, lay yourself to forget stuff, and then
relearn it, because the second time you learn it, or
(03:52):
the third time you learn it, you're going to hang
onto it way better than the first time. Like you
just encode process in bed. The material in your brain
so much better when you learn it and then forget
it and then relearn it, and then forget it and
then relearn it. That's the way to do great learning.
So then my first two your first one. After the break,
we'll go through three more short, sharp, friendly, hopefully helpful
(04:16):
tips that will guide your children to success during this
year twelve or a term four exam period. Welcome back
to this is the Happy Family's podcast. I'm justin Colson.
I'm here with my wife, Kylie. Kylie, what is your
(04:37):
second one? If we want our kids to do well
on these exams or to get through this exam period
that everyone says is the most stressful and important period of
their lives.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Well, often we talk about this word balance. It doesn't exist,
so I don't like using it. But we've talked about
eating healthy, getting adequate sleep, and some form of exercise,
moving your body for well being to actually optimize just
our wellbeing. But my second one kind of taps into
(05:06):
that a little bit. It's about taking time out some
form of recreation. We call it recreation, but it is
actually about recreating ourselves, finding an outlet to feel rejuvenated
and the best way we can do that, generally speaking,
is connecting with people we love.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, it's so funny. I mean, if you do want
to do well in these exams, you get anxious about it.
You don't do well because you're anxious, right, high motions, echos,
low intelligence.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
We also think though, that in order to show people
that we're committed, we lock ourselves in our room for
days on end, you know, we don't go to bed,
all of those crazy things that stop us from doing
the things that will actually help.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah. Actually, just just adding on to that social media, like,
minimize your social media time. It's going to fray your brain.
Brain rot, hello, brain rot. Right there. My last one, Kylie,
is the gap years. A good gap year is a
good which again that we can take the pressure off.
We've been painstakingly explicit with our kids about how we
(06:05):
don't expect them to go straight on to further schooling
after high school. They've just done thirteen years, they've burnt
out there over it, they haven't enjoyed it for the
most part, and then they're going to buckle in for
another four years and just get through that so they
can get a degree and then go and work and
we've said, no, no, that's not what we're all about.
We would prefer that you get some range and depth.
I've got one of my favorite books on my bookshelf
(06:26):
is called Range by David Epstein, and he's looked at
a whole lot of research that shows that you can
leap ahead of the pack in your twenties and even
your thirties, but by the time your forties arrive, people
who have much broader range and depth. Of the ones
who start to I guess win the quote unquote race.
Life is not a race. Once you're out of high school.
(06:48):
There's no more finish lines. You just go and do
your thing. And I think Gap Years is just so good.
I've been writing about gap years in the boys book
that I've put together that is currently with the publisher,
and I'm just waiting on the final edit's come through.
And I wrote so much about gap years because they're
so valuable. Check this out. I want to read something
to you. This is the intro to the chapter about
(07:11):
gap years in the book. In one of my favorite
blog posts ever, Brett McKay, founder of the website and
podcast The Art of manlind this describes famous men of
previous generations. He points out the following. Before Steve McQueen's
eighteenth birthday, he'd worked on a farm, joined a circus,
salt pens at a traveling carnival, hitchhiked across the USA,
worked as a lumberjack, labor on a chain gang, served
illegally in the Merchant Marine under age, and joined the
(07:34):
Marine Corps. One more time for emphasis, he did it
all before the age of eighteen. Sean Connery served in
the Royal Navy as a teenager, worked as a milkman, lifeguard,
truck driver, and once took on six gang members, single
handedly fighting them and earning their respect. Writers like Jack London,
and tramped around the country by rail, sailed the Pacificate
board of seal hunting schooner, and ventured into Western Canada's
(07:56):
Klondike region seeking gold, all before the age of twenty two.
Of course, yes, there's some selection bias, but the stories
are compelling in a stark contrast to today's young men. Moreover,
these weren't cherry pick celebrities with exceptional backgrounds. Most young
men of previous generations accumulated rich, varied experiences, often physically demanding,
occasionally dangerous that built their capacity and character. They discovered
(08:19):
their capabilities by testing boundaries and real world contexts. Their
histories document purpose, satisfaction, and happiness. Today's boys encounter a
different landscape. Regulatory constraints, safety concerns, parental anxiety, supervised schedules,
and the need to win. The rat rays have crowded
out the space for autonomous and healthy exploration and risk taking.
(08:39):
As McKay notes, contemporary youth follow predictable, sanitized paths with
few opportunities for consequential choices and real world testing. Perhaps
he suggests our youth today are the least interesting generation.
And then I go on to look at what the
research evidence says about how gap years are beneficial. There's
a University of Sas Sydney study nine hundred first year
(09:01):
students taking a year off between high school and university
had positive effect on student motivation, translated to a real
boost and performance in the first semesters at UNI when
they went back. And there's a whole bunch of other
studies that show that gap years people do actually go
back to school and they do better and they feel
better about life. That's my last one. I know, that's
sort of a long long spill from me. But my
(09:21):
third thing is gap years. Take the pressure off your
twelve do well enough, but have a couple of years
off and then go back to school if that's what
you wish to do, or build a business, or go
and earn a trade. Those kinds of things will round
you out and give you a much richer, fuller life
than just racing from one school experience to the next
school experience. Former university lecturer, speaking from first hand experience.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I remember when you decided to go back to school
and you started off at Tafe because you had done
so poorly in high school. You actually needed to do
a bridging course, and your teachers just love you because
you were, you know, four or five years along in life.
You had a wife, children, I.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Think I was twenty seven. I think I was twenty seven,
twenty six or twenty seven, so I had almost a
decade out of high school with children and a wife
at a mortgage.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And you stood out because you were up against seventeen
eighteen year old school leaders who had no idea why
they were there.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And who were completely.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Burnt out, hated the process, and the teachers just lapped
you up because you had something to say. And then
you went to UNI, and I think it was probably
one of the hardest years of our marriage because you
had spent your whole education life up till that point
believing you were an idiot. You were absolutely dumb.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
I truly believed that. I still don't believe that. Well
now I don't believe that such a thing is smart
or dumb, because I was dumb. And then I blitzed UNI.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
And then you got into your first year of UNI
and it was like there's a brain explosion took place,
and you didn't want to come home, like you just
were gobbling up everything that you could, like just soaking
it up like a sponge. And I'm watching the same
thing happen with our twenty five year old daughter, who's
had this big gap and she's gone back to UNI
(11:13):
this year, and I get a phone call nearly every
day to tell me about something that she learned in class,
something she's observed in an appointment.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I don't want to cut you off, but you're almost
in tears saying this, and I just want to provide
the contrast. She's ringing you to say, guess what I
learned about at school today? Like how many teenagers come
home and say, guess what I learned at school today?
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Like, this is this twenty two year old, she's gone back,
she's had a couple of years off. She wants to
sit at the table and tell us all the names
of the bones in her hand.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
She wants to play cahoot so that we can learn
anatomy because she's loving anatomy so much. And she's like,
let's play Let's have Friday night cahot and go through
my anatomy textbook. How fun would that be? And we're
all like, we don't know, and she's like, yeah, but
then I'll win. But this is my point. We make this.
I mean, I've labored this far too long. This is
might be really quick, so I'll wrap this. We labor
(12:05):
the importance of school. You've got to get this education.
You've got to do well in your year twelve exams,
You've got to get a high etar. I just don't
believe it. I fundamentally don't believe it.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
You talk about this generation being one of the most
boring generations.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, the least interesting generation.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, it's because we're all going in a straight line.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yes, I love that that was a great metaphor.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
We're all going in a straight line. You look at
all of those other examples you shared and all of
the things. I love talking to old people and asking
them what their first job was and then kind of
just having that conversation and seeing where the twists and
turns of life took them, because it was no there
was no straight line.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I had a conversation just recently with a fellow who'd
be in his eighties. It was an impromptu, unexpected conversation.
We were having a chat. I asked him where he lived,
and he told me he's got He lives on a
huge parcel of land overlooking the ocean at ali Andra
Headland on the Sunshine Coast. And I asked him how
long he's been there and I said, I don't even
(13:04):
I can't even picture where it is, and I know
the area really well, and it's no, it's very hidden.
And told me a bit more about it. I said that,
I mean, that must be worth a fortune. It's got
incredible views. It's a huge blog. And he said to me, well,
we think we've done reasonably well. I said, how did
you get there? Like, how did you end up? What
did you do for work. He was so funny, he
(13:25):
cracked up. He said, I'm still doing a little bit
of it. I can't let go. I just love what
I do so much. But then he told me this convoluted,
bizarre story about how he was doing X and Y
and Z and he ended up in Japan, and they
ended up over in Taiwan. And now even now he's
still working on importing Asian car parts into the country
for people who are car enthusiasts. And it's just that
(13:46):
that has been what it took for him to end
up having this wonderful life that he's lived and have
this property with these beautiful views and all that sort
of thing. And again, you don't you don't have to
do well at school to do so many things, so
many things. You just need to find the thing that
you're willing to stick with and give it a really
(14:06):
good crack. Say yes to experiments, say yes to experiments,
and say no to commitments until you're at least thirty.
And then once you sort of get into your thirties,
you start to zero went on what you want to do.
You've had the range, so now you start saying no
to experiments and yes to commitments because you know what
you want to commit to. But gap years, gap years,
gap years. I've labored the point for too long. What's
(14:29):
your last one?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
It's perspectives everything right, We've been talking about it.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
It's not the b end, the be all and end all.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
It isn't. So just take a deep breath, do the
best you can, and remember that in two years time,
it's not even going to matter.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah. A quick personal anecdote. I don't know if it's
appropriate that I share this or not, but I'm plopping
in on the pot anyway or see what happens and
hopefully won't get in too much trouble. Our daughter who's
finishing year twelve right now, she's about to start all
of her exams as well. She's getting an atar because
she personally wants to do well. She just wants to
have the experience of doing well in year twelve. She's
conscientious like that. But she's already told us she's going
(15:10):
to have two to three gap years. She's going to
follow the example of her big sisters who are all
doing the same thing and have then subsequently gone back
to school because they know what they want to do
and why they're doing it, or at least they're willing
to give it a go. And it's been really nice
to see how low and light the pressure has been
because she knows that in two years time, her atar
(15:32):
doesn't mean squat. I don't know if that's impressive. I
don't know if that's distressing. I'm not sure how that
lands for you. But they're are bits and pieces of
advice as we headed into the year twelve exam season.
Don't cancel us. The Happy Families podcast is produced by
Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Mim Hammonds provides research, admin
and additional support. If you'd like more information about the
(15:54):
things we've talked about, I've got a whole chapter about
it in my upcoming Boys book. You can register your
interest at Happy Families dot com dot IU and visit
happy Families dot com dot au for more info about
making your family thrive. H
Hello and welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Year twelve
exam season kicks off this week in New South Wales
and around the country over the next few weeks. In
today's podcast, we're going to be short, sharp and focused.
If your kids are in year twelve or they've got
exams coming up, even if they're not in year twelve,
what matters? What doesn't? How do you get it right?
What do you do as a parent, how do the
kids navigate it? We're going to answer that and more
(00:28):
in just a moment. Stay with us. Hello and welcome
to the Happy Families Podcast. Real Paring Solutions every Day.
This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are Justin
and Kylie Colson. Kylie, today we're stepping into short and
sharp conversations about how to help kids to succeed as
they do their year twelve exams or any exams at all.
(00:49):
You've got three things that you've been thinking about. I've
got three things that I've jotted down and we are
going to kick that off right now. Let's do it
this way. I'm going to do one, then you can
do one, and then we'll sort of wrap it all up.
I'm going to go first. My first one is as follows,
you are not your atar. In two years, no one
is going to care about your atar. I know it
feels like it's big. I know it's big. I know
(01:10):
everybody's been telling you that this is the most important
time of your life. But it's just it's going to
be okay. You're not your atar, and you can be
successful in life even if you completely flunk year twelve.
It really just comes down to finding the thing that
you want to do and focusing on that. I think
that the year twelve exams are massively overrated. I think
(01:30):
that they're very much about This is going to sound awful,
but I think they're about a marketing ploy for schools
to say, look, how what our students did, so that
they can extract more money from families who want to
pay for their children to do just as well because
they really think that it matters. But in two years time,
no one's going to care and you are not your atar.
I also fundamentally believe that the overwhelming majority of people
(01:51):
should not go straight to the university out of high school.
You need at least a gap, you maybe two or
three years to grow up, have a think of a
little bit about what you want, and then maybe go
back if you want to go to UNI down the track. Controversial, provocative,
but that's my number one. Don't sweat it because it's
not that big a deal. Oh and I scored in
the bottom fifteenth cent of the state. I know so
many people who are like literally doctors or have PhDs
(02:12):
who completely failed high school or didn't even finish high school.
You can still have a successful life without doing well
at school. Not that I'm saying that education doesn't matter.
It matters a lot, but your performance on these exams
is not the be all and end all. That's my
number one. Any reaction, any response, or do you want
to do your first one? Straight up?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well, my number one actually marries beautifully with that. I
would say that it's so important for you to just
maintain a healthy diet, good sleep, and some form of exercise,
some form of outlet. Not because the exams matter so much,
but generally speaking, when we're stressed out, when we're not coping,
(02:49):
when we feel overwhelmed, they're actually the first three things
that go in order for us to live happy, healthy lives.
We need to tap into those three things. So there
is nothing so important that we should forego any.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Of those Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And if that's the case, then it's just so important.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
So you're not going to do well in your exams
if you're stressed, if you're sleep deprived, if you stayed
up or not the night before cramming. You might actually
hold onto it in short term memory sort of until
the next day ish. That's not really technically short term memory,
but it'll drop out again pretty soon. You're not going
to have learned it. You will have memorized it, but
you're not going to do that well with it. That
actually ties in I've kind of gone on attention from
(03:32):
what you were saying, but that ties you with my
second one, which is that let's work on the assumption
that these exams do have some value for some people,
like they will be important for some people in spite
of everything that I said in my first point. If
you want to do well, remembering requires forgetting. Remembering requires forgetting,
So slow down, lay yourself to forget stuff, and then
relearn it, because the second time you learn it, or
(03:52):
the third time you learn it, you're going to hang
onto it way better than the first time. Like you
just encode process in bed. The material in your brain
so much better when you learn it and then forget
it and then relearn it, and then forget it and
then relearn it. That's the way to do great learning.
So then my first two your first one. After the break,
we'll go through three more short, sharp, friendly, hopefully helpful
(04:16):
tips that will guide your children to success during this
year twelve or a term four exam period. Welcome back
to this is the Happy Family's podcast. I'm justin Colson.
I'm here with my wife, Kylie. Kylie, what is your
(04:37):
second one? If we want our kids to do well
on these exams or to get through this exam period
that everyone says is the most stressful and important period of
their lives.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Well, often we talk about this word balance. It doesn't exist,
so I don't like using it. But we've talked about
eating healthy, getting adequate sleep, and some form of exercise,
moving your body for well being to actually optimize just
our wellbeing. But my second one kind of taps into
(05:06):
that a little bit. It's about taking time out some
form of recreation. We call it recreation, but it is
actually about recreating ourselves, finding an outlet to feel rejuvenated
and the best way we can do that, generally speaking,
is connecting with people we love.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, it's so funny. I mean, if you do want
to do well in these exams, you get anxious about it.
You don't do well because you're anxious, right, high motions, echos,
low intelligence.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
We also think though, that in order to show people
that we're committed, we lock ourselves in our room for
days on end, you know, we don't go to bed,
all of those crazy things that stop us from doing
the things that will actually help.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah. Actually, just just adding on to that social media, like,
minimize your social media time. It's going to fray your brain.
Brain rot, hello, brain rot. Right there. My last one, Kylie,
is the gap years. A good gap year is a
good which again that we can take the pressure off.
We've been painstakingly explicit with our kids about how we
(06:05):
don't expect them to go straight on to further schooling
after high school. They've just done thirteen years, they've burnt
out there over it, they haven't enjoyed it for the
most part, and then they're going to buckle in for
another four years and just get through that so they
can get a degree and then go and work and
we've said, no, no, that's not what we're all about.
We would prefer that you get some range and depth.
I've got one of my favorite books on my bookshelf
(06:26):
is called Range by David Epstein, and he's looked at
a whole lot of research that shows that you can
leap ahead of the pack in your twenties and even
your thirties, but by the time your forties arrive, people
who have much broader range and depth. Of the ones
who start to I guess win the quote unquote race.
Life is not a race. Once you're out of high school.
(06:48):
There's no more finish lines. You just go and do
your thing. And I think Gap Years is just so good.
I've been writing about gap years in the boys book
that I've put together that is currently with the publisher,
and I'm just waiting on the final edit's come through.
And I wrote so much about gap years because they're
so valuable. Check this out. I want to read something
to you. This is the intro to the chapter about
(07:11):
gap years in the book. In one of my favorite
blog posts ever, Brett McKay, founder of the website and
podcast The Art of manlind this describes famous men of
previous generations. He points out the following. Before Steve McQueen's
eighteenth birthday, he'd worked on a farm, joined a circus,
salt pens at a traveling carnival, hitchhiked across the USA,
worked as a lumberjack, labor on a chain gang, served
illegally in the Merchant Marine under age, and joined the
(07:34):
Marine Corps. One more time for emphasis, he did it
all before the age of eighteen. Sean Connery served in
the Royal Navy as a teenager, worked as a milkman, lifeguard,
truck driver, and once took on six gang members, single
handedly fighting them and earning their respect. Writers like Jack London,
and tramped around the country by rail, sailed the Pacificate
board of seal hunting schooner, and ventured into Western Canada's
(07:56):
Klondike region seeking gold, all before the age of twenty two.
Of course, yes, there's some selection bias, but the stories
are compelling in a stark contrast to today's young men. Moreover,
these weren't cherry pick celebrities with exceptional backgrounds. Most young
men of previous generations accumulated rich, varied experiences, often physically demanding,
occasionally dangerous that built their capacity and character. They discovered
(08:19):
their capabilities by testing boundaries and real world contexts. Their
histories document purpose, satisfaction, and happiness. Today's boys encounter a
different landscape. Regulatory constraints, safety concerns, parental anxiety, supervised schedules,
and the need to win. The rat rays have crowded
out the space for autonomous and healthy exploration and risk taking.
(08:39):
As McKay notes, contemporary youth follow predictable, sanitized paths with
few opportunities for consequential choices and real world testing. Perhaps
he suggests our youth today are the least interesting generation.
And then I go on to look at what the
research evidence says about how gap years are beneficial. There's
a University of Sas Sydney study nine hundred first year
(09:01):
students taking a year off between high school and university
had positive effect on student motivation, translated to a real
boost and performance in the first semesters at UNI when
they went back. And there's a whole bunch of other
studies that show that gap years people do actually go
back to school and they do better and they feel
better about life. That's my last one. I know, that's
sort of a long long spill from me. But my
(09:21):
third thing is gap years. Take the pressure off your
twelve do well enough, but have a couple of years
off and then go back to school if that's what
you wish to do, or build a business, or go
and earn a trade. Those kinds of things will round
you out and give you a much richer, fuller life
than just racing from one school experience to the next
school experience. Former university lecturer, speaking from first hand experience.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I remember when you decided to go back to school
and you started off at Tafe because you had done
so poorly in high school. You actually needed to do
a bridging course, and your teachers just love you because
you were, you know, four or five years along in life.
You had a wife, children, I.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Think I was twenty seven. I think I was twenty seven,
twenty six or twenty seven, so I had almost a
decade out of high school with children and a wife
at a mortgage.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And you stood out because you were up against seventeen
eighteen year old school leaders who had no idea why
they were there.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And who were completely.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Burnt out, hated the process, and the teachers just lapped
you up because you had something to say. And then
you went to UNI, and I think it was probably
one of the hardest years of our marriage because you
had spent your whole education life up till that point
believing you were an idiot. You were absolutely dumb.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
I truly believed that. I still don't believe that. Well
now I don't believe that such a thing is smart
or dumb, because I was dumb. And then I blitzed UNI.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
And then you got into your first year of UNI
and it was like there's a brain explosion took place,
and you didn't want to come home, like you just
were gobbling up everything that you could, like just soaking
it up like a sponge. And I'm watching the same
thing happen with our twenty five year old daughter, who's
had this big gap and she's gone back to UNI
(11:13):
this year, and I get a phone call nearly every
day to tell me about something that she learned in class,
something she's observed in an appointment.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I don't want to cut you off, but you're almost
in tears saying this, and I just want to provide
the contrast. She's ringing you to say, guess what I
learned about at school today? Like how many teenagers come
home and say, guess what I learned at school today?
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Like, this is this twenty two year old, she's gone back,
she's had a couple of years off. She wants to
sit at the table and tell us all the names
of the bones in her hand.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
She wants to play cahoot so that we can learn
anatomy because she's loving anatomy so much. And she's like,
let's play Let's have Friday night cahot and go through
my anatomy textbook. How fun would that be? And we're
all like, we don't know, and she's like, yeah, but
then I'll win. But this is my point. We make this.
I mean, I've labored this far too long. This is
might be really quick, so I'll wrap this. We labor
(12:05):
the importance of school. You've got to get this education.
You've got to do well in your year twelve exams,
You've got to get a high etar. I just don't
believe it. I fundamentally don't believe it.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
You talk about this generation being one of the most
boring generations.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, the least interesting generation.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, it's because we're all going in a straight line.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yes, I love that that was a great metaphor.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
We're all going in a straight line. You look at
all of those other examples you shared and all of
the things. I love talking to old people and asking
them what their first job was and then kind of
just having that conversation and seeing where the twists and
turns of life took them, because it was no there
was no straight line.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I had a conversation just recently with a fellow who'd
be in his eighties. It was an impromptu, unexpected conversation.
We were having a chat. I asked him where he lived,
and he told me he's got He lives on a
huge parcel of land overlooking the ocean at ali Andra
Headland on the Sunshine Coast. And I asked him how
long he's been there and I said, I don't even
(13:04):
I can't even picture where it is, and I know
the area really well, and it's no, it's very hidden.
And told me a bit more about it. I said that,
I mean, that must be worth a fortune. It's got
incredible views. It's a huge blog. And he said to me, well,
we think we've done reasonably well. I said, how did
you get there? Like, how did you end up? What
did you do for work. He was so funny, he
(13:25):
cracked up. He said, I'm still doing a little bit
of it. I can't let go. I just love what
I do so much. But then he told me this convoluted,
bizarre story about how he was doing X and Y
and Z and he ended up in Japan, and they
ended up over in Taiwan. And now even now he's
still working on importing Asian car parts into the country
for people who are car enthusiasts. And it's just that
(13:46):
that has been what it took for him to end
up having this wonderful life that he's lived and have
this property with these beautiful views and all that sort
of thing. And again, you don't you don't have to
do well at school to do so many things, so
many things. You just need to find the thing that
you're willing to stick with and give it a really
(14:06):
good crack. Say yes to experiments, say yes to experiments,
and say no to commitments until you're at least thirty.
And then once you sort of get into your thirties,
you start to zero went on what you want to do.
You've had the range, so now you start saying no
to experiments and yes to commitments because you know what
you want to commit to. But gap years, gap years,
gap years. I've labored the point for too long. What's
(14:29):
your last one?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
It's perspectives everything right, We've been talking about it.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
It's not the b end, the be all and end all.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
It isn't. So just take a deep breath, do the
best you can, and remember that in two years time,
it's not even going to matter.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah. A quick personal anecdote. I don't know if it's
appropriate that I share this or not, but I'm plopping
in on the pot anyway or see what happens and
hopefully won't get in too much trouble. Our daughter who's
finishing year twelve right now, she's about to start all
of her exams as well. She's getting an atar because
she personally wants to do well. She just wants to
have the experience of doing well in year twelve. She's
conscientious like that. But she's already told us she's going
(15:10):
to have two to three gap years. She's going to
follow the example of her big sisters who are all
doing the same thing and have then subsequently gone back
to school because they know what they want to do
and why they're doing it, or at least they're willing
to give it a go. And it's been really nice
to see how low and light the pressure has been
because she knows that in two years time, her atar
(15:32):
doesn't mean squat. I don't know if that's impressive. I
don't know if that's distressing. I'm not sure how that
lands for you. But they're are bits and pieces of
advice as we headed into the year twelve exam season.
Don't cancel us. The Happy Families podcast is produced by
Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Mim Hammonds provides research, admin
and additional support. If you'd like more information about the
(15:54):
things we've talked about, I've got a whole chapter about
it in my upcoming Boys book. You can register your
interest at Happy Families dot com dot IU and visit
happy Families dot com dot au for more info about
making your family thrive. H
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