TheHallowian-2021Vol2 - Flipbook - Page 9
160 STORIES
Performance Anxiety
Anne Shardlow (Haley), Class of 1960
When I was about 14 years old, I won the Trinity College prize for the highest mark in the Brisbane
area for the Speech and Drama exam I had taken.
As a result, I had to attend the Trinity College prizegiving event which was held annually in the Albert
Street Methodist Church hall – and not just attend!! I was required to stand up on the stage, in my
school winter uniform, and recite one of my exam pieces to the packed hall – a daunting prospect.
My Speech and Drama teacher was Sister Mary Marguerite, before she became Principal of All
Hallows’ School, and, as I was both soft-voiced and extremely nervous, on the day of the event she
positioned herself at the very back of the high gallery at the back of the hall, having instructed me to
forget about everyone else in the hall and just to concentrate on projecting my voice to her.
Having this separate focus turned out to be very useful indeed, because, as I began my recitation,
my knees actually began shaking wildly (I had thought that that was just a figure of speech!), and all
I could think of was that everyone’s eyes would be riveted on my shaking, brown-stockinged knees!
What’s In A (Nick)Name?
Anne Shardlow (Haley), Class of 1960
Do all teachers wonder what their students’ nickname for them is?
Sister Mary Alpheus told us how she used to wonder what her nickname was, but
then, one day, her class was listening to a schools’ English broadcast in which the
poem ‘Kubla Khan” was read:
‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea…’
When the line about Alph, the sacred river, was read, the classroom was filled with
waves of barely suppressed giggling. ‘So then,’ she told us, ‘I knew.’
2021 | The Hallowian
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