by Thomas Foody
Muck-Up Day at Alia always fills me with a pleasant sense of anticipation and wonder. It’s exciting to come in and see what the Year 12 cohort has done throughout the school. There’s usually a high amount of creativity involved, with former classes turning the foyer into a cardboard box maze, others creating sculptures out of dozens of chairs, and some filling entire classrooms with balloons.
This year, the Year 12 class showed off their imagination, with a nursery/play centre in the Art Room (featuring some “children’s” drawings), the Uber Eats HQ in Athil’s Castle, and a makeshift classroom on the front lawn. There was also the Señor Homeroom, decked out in full Mexican flair, with cacti, sombreros, colourful cloths and posters, and decorations. The Forum, where staff members Ashlee and Chloé work, had a wall dedicated to them, with plenty of old Facebook photos, and perhaps, worst of all, there were about 80 photos of me arranged high up on the main office wall for all to see. Truly terrifying, if you ask me.
At 9.00am, there was a special whole school meeting held to celebrate the “wedding” of Jess and Aaron; the culmination of a year-long joke between the two students and their classmates. “Sister” Scott, dressed in a nun’s habit, officiated the ceremony, before the school adjourned to the upstairs foyer for a short reception of speeches, cake, and photos.
As you can see, Muck-Up Day at Alia is very different: creative, inclusive, and humorous. It’s also a bittersweet occasion, as we farewell the Year 12s as they wrap up for exams for the last time. All of this makes it something worth celebrating.