For you lucky chums by the sea, school’s only been open for the past 3 weekdays. For the rest of us though, it’s back into the swing of things on the sports field and in the classroom, the holidays now a distant memory or, for some, a wishful dream.

It’s a new year and the beginning of new things. For me the most significant of these are my new appointment as a South African brand ambassador for HIP2B2 and my promotion to grade 10. It’s unbelievable how time flies once you’re in high school, don’t you think? One minute you’re beginning grade 8, the next you’re deciding which subjects to drop like hot potatoes and which ones you’re going to keep until you write matric (or its equivalent). For me it feels as though it were only yesterday that I walked through those foreign school gates wearing the new school uniform for the first time, or maybe I just have a good memory…

One of the other things I’m getting involved in this year is my school’s new ‘Formula One In Schools’ team. The team consists of 6 people: Matthew Bray, Ricky Bowman, Christopher Fleming, Megan Mina and myself. We’ve chosen GEARS as our team name. What is the significance of this, you ask? Well it’s actually an acronym for Graphics Engineers And Racing Scientists. Cool huh? (Oh and we know that, grammatically, you’re not supposed to include the word “And” in an acronym, but hey, it works, so sue us).

Formula One In Schools is a competition held all over the world where teams are required to design, construct and race a scaled Formula One car. Competitions are held at regional, national and international level. There’s a year of hard work ahead of my team as we strive to meet and perhaps exceed the achievements of the former F1 team at Northcliff High: Team FIRE. They came 5th during the international competition held in Australia. Wow!

Well that’s me signing off. See you next week. If you’d like to find out more about the Formula One In Schools Competition you can check out www.f1inschools.com. And good luck to the matriculants of 2008. Make South Africa proud!