Nine friends from the Class of 2016 passed on their advice and guidance to junior boys and caught up with their former teachers when they returned to the School for a reunion.
Eight of the group were from Broughton, so they duly dubbed odd man out Michael Yeung, of Leicester House, an honorary Broughtonian for the day.
First stop was a trip down memory lane with a visit to 7B’s form time, where Languages teacher Marie-Jo Jacquin is still the form tutor, just as she was in their day back in 2009. They then did a careers ‘speed-dating’ workshop in which they introduced their roles and industries, and the key skills and routes into it, to small groups of Year 8 boys.
It was an opportunity for younger boys to see the range of career paths that OEs are taking and to ask questions at a formative stage. Our visitors enjoyed catching up with a number of their former teachers (the Headmaster, Deputy Head (Pastoral) David Ryan, Sarah Westcott Assistant Head (Pupil Progress), Mathematics teacher & Head of Academic Administration Wendy Fung, Head of Physics Jonathan Brooke, and others) before taking a tour round the School to see the considerable change even since they were here.
In common with the visit of Max Curtis, mentioned in the Headmaster’s introduction, the visit began with an OE – in this case, Alexander Ng – reaching out to the Headmaster.
“It was good to learn that this group still retains great affection for their alma mater and to see that friendships formed at QE really do stand the test of time, even with some of this group having left before Year 13 (including one of their number, Brian Yoon, moving to South Korea as early as Year 9),” the Headmaster said.
The nine were:
- Three medical doctors: Alexander Ng, who went to UCL and is now at Barnet Hospital; David Hao, and Michael Yeung (Cambridge).
- Two engineers: mechanical engineer Lampojan Raveenthiranathan, who studied at UCL and now works for a company which designs and manufactures components for military aircraft ejector seats, and civil engineer Roderick Lee
- Brian Yoon, who works in finance
- Prahlad Patel, who studied Actuarial Science at City University, but is now in the film industry and currently working on Season 5 of Netflix’s The Crown, digitally refining the images.
- Lawyer Meer Gala-Shah
- David Dubinsky, who read Physics & Astronomy at Durham.