I co-founded my high school’s inaugural academic club, the XYZ Mathematics Club. Oakhill College had a long-standing tradition of sports. The Rugby Jocks were the ‘cool’ kids.
One day, my best friend Stefan and I asked our Extension 2 Maths teacher if we could continue studying after hours in her classroom. She replied, ‘Yes - so long as it’s maths related.’ That’s when we had the lightbulb moment. The next day we picked a name, sketched a logo, printed a sign-up list and went door-knocking to every maths class. In only thirty minutes, we were at full capacity.
Our debut drew attendance from students and teachers. We focused on filling the holes in the Australian maths curriculum. In our first session, we derived differential and integral calculus from first principles. We had a few aha moments amongst the students. Few things felt better than watching intuition suddenly click for someone else. The next sessions included advanced topics like linear algebra with matrices, the true beauty of complex numbers and frameworks for solving hard geometry problems. Student’s volunteered to teach, exchange solutions and discuss future topics. Soon it became a community.
We were just two nerds passionate about maths with no idea of how the butterfly effect worked. It wasn’t long before coding and hardware clubs emerged. It wouldn’t be long until the nerds became the cool kids. Five years later, I spoke with our principal again. He told me academics had come to occupy a much larger place in the school’s culture alongside sport.