Follow your passion
24 Nov 2023
Don’t do something you think you should do because it might please someone else. Do it because you want to. Follow your passion and do what you are good at.
That was the clear advice from Old Boy Richard Fry to our Year 11s as part of our annual Finding your Pathway programme.
Richard’s journey started in the Army where he was commissioned as an Officer at just 20 years old. He spent a decade as a regular and reserve Officer, largely specialising in communication systems and technology. During that time, he exercised in Malaysia and Australia, and was deployed operationally to Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands.
While Richard now has a BA & BCom, he earlier abandoned his post-College uni studies after just scraping by. He later returned and achieved top grades.
“Not going to uni straight from school would have been good in hindsight. It wasn’t a natural progression for me.”
Since leaving the Army, Richard’s career has included stints at Tait Communications, and Airways New Zealand. For the past two years, he has been Group Manager of Service Delivery at Abley, a national location and transport consultancy.
George McKnight, an Architectural Graduate at Sheppard & Rout Architects, talked with the boys about his pathway, which included a six month exchange in Mexico.
Echoing Richard’s earlier thoughts, he told the boys, “if you love something, just keep doing it. If you don’t, don’t keep doing it.”
The fortnight’s Pathway programme aims to showcase a range of career opportunities.
“You don’t know what you don’t know,” as Assistant Principal Nicole Billante succinctly summarises.
Other Old Boys sharing their career journeys were Senior Manager of Assurance at PWC Will Lovell; lawyers Chris Anderson and Andrew Neill; Senior Engineering Geologist Jono Claridge; property developer Oliver Hickman; Matthew Moore who is in his final year studying medicine; and sustainable construction innovator Marty Murchison.
