Abingdonian 2020

84 The Abingdonian O’Doherty’s House In a break with tradition I tasked the Upper Sixth House Prefects to write some short reviews throughout the year so that you would get an insider’s perspective about what has gone on in O’Doherty’s House. It has not been a typical academic year but we have continued to be united as a house and have worked hard to be positive in our thinking and kind in our actions. I am immensely proud of how the boys dealt with lockdown and remote learning and I want to thank the tutors for their amazing pastoral care through the year. I also want to wish our Upper Sixth boys the very best of luck in their next life adventure. Emily O’Doherty House Themes The O’Doherty’s House theme in the Michaelmas Term was ‘Adventure’. Over the course of the term we explored how to find adventure in different aspects of life with many insightful house assemblies from Mrs O’Doherty and the sixth form. We were inspired by many famous acts of adventure but also learned how to incorporate it into our daily lives too. The main message from the term was that adventure is simply pushing the boundaries of what we know and are comfortable with - it doesn’t need to be especially daring or risky to be meaningful. James Coode, 7OTL For the Lent Term the theme was ‘Perspective and Viewpoint’. During one of Mrs O’Doherty’s house assemblies we were shown how artists manipulate perspective in a physical sense in their work, which can have various implications on how their work is viewed by others. Another house assembly given by Peter Mason and Hugh McKenna focused on how one’s perspective changes as we become older and more mature. A boy’s perspective is certainly very different when they arrive at Abingdon aged 11 to when they leave aged 18. Peter Mason, 7RMT Football & Pizza Evening The O’Doherty’s football and pizza evening proved to be a huge success and saw over 40 members of the house come together to play some extremely high quality football. Particular highlights included Mr Southwell Sander’s silky stepovers! It was a very enjoyable evening for all those participating and the pizza, as always, was enjoyed by everyone. Alexander Scott, 7RMT Quiz & Curry Evening This year’s curry and quiz was run by the house prefects and was a resounding success. James Lloyd and Hugh McKenna used their excellent pronunciation skills to great effect, whilst Ethan McLellan was fantastic in his role of scorer and adjudicator. The superb curry meant that everyone was a winner. Jake Sedgwick, 7OTL Inter-House Singing Competition The best things happen unexpectedly - and this was most certainly true of the result in the recent House Singing Competition. After a lot of rehearsals, we had finally got to a point where I was content as a conductor that we would do well in our song - but we did better than I could have hoped on the day itself. In the performance, it is certainly true that there were other houses who had more complicated sections and better dynamics. However, the adjudicator showed that he had the same principles in marking as we did as a house and that is that the heart of the performance we gave