Lower Sixth Go Marbles!

Careers Day At King’s (Otherwise known as productive panic)

Press Release, King’s Consulting, midday.

The tension builds, the crowd starts to hush, the adjudicator starts the stopwatch – ready, set! – oh. The marble falls. Whoops.

Today King’s School Rochester, an independent school saturated with competitive teenagers of dubious actual ability, is hosting a careers day for their Lower Sixth students. Resist turning away – it’s more exciting than it sounds.

Taking a selection of the consultants of the future (little do they know it), the school set about instructing the students in various missions sure to test not only their skills, but their bravery too, especially given the impromptu speech demands made periodically throughout the morning, both to sell products and to illustrate a level of confident professionalism – no mean feat for an otherwise bleak Wednesday in April.

To begin, what better than an array of coloured paper and the instruction: make a marble roller coaster, and make it go slow. Easier said than done. Looking around the hall, there was a variation in approaches, to put it lightly. The challenge did, admittedly, aim to highlight innovation, and innovation it did: on the left, the utter destruction of a table to little inevitable effect; on the right, alliteration to make the school’s english department swoon – the Terrific Treetop Tumble, a lengthy, slithering contraption built on pure faith, was the final victor, a treacherous trip for the tiny theme park-ees lasting just over 18 seconds. Amidst the shouts of would-be leaders, the screech of torn paper and the buzz of not-quite children given the freedom to wreck their usually immaculate school, the task had its purpose: to reveal characters, to encourage teamwork – of which one witness noted it was the best they’d seen in years – and to push the trainees out of their comfort zones. No rest for the wicked though – having watched their creations crumble under the keen eyes of the crowd, the prospective consultancy trainees were sent out and onto their next hurdles.

Now dispersed amongst a carousel of creative – and cruel, if you find your legs shaking at the idea of timed pressure – tasks, the students seek to whittle down their rivals and to impress the panel of experienced judges. There are prizes to be won, sure, but lessons to be learnt too, and friends to beat. Get ready; fallen tables certainly weren’t on the cards, so who knows what’ll come next.

The HEART of King’s never beat so loud.