1. Where our story begins…
For students, mid-August sometimes feels more like a genuine “New Year”. Each year at this time, SCIE welcomes new students from across the country as they begin their brand-new academic journeys.
New classmates, new teachers, new environments, new curriculum, new culture—every student trying to find their place in this school inevitably goes through rounds of anxiety and adjustment. Alumni from all past cohorts have walked this same path.
From the warm welcomes from the Principal Team, to the enthusiastic conversations with Prefects, to the first exchanges among yourselves, every voice carries anticipation for a new life, eagerness for new challenges, and boundless hope for the future.
On this campus, you need not fear loneliness — the path you are walking has surely been attempted by someone before you.
The Prefects from the Student Leadership Body began preparing intensively for Induction Week as early as the beginning of summer. Generations of Prefects strive to make every cohort’s first encounter with SCIE—and with each other—more memorable and meaningful.
As the Song of SCIE says, “We are SCIE family.” Yet how to help every one of you —coming from different backgrounds, different regions, and different education systems—smoothly integrate into this “big family” has always been a great challenge.
Your seniors have ambitious goals: to give you the courage and strength to explore your own potential, to pursue your own hopes and futures, and to leave your own unique, irreplaceable mark at SCIE.
Whilst documenting the moments of Induction Week (Week 0), take a moment to also get to know the senior students in black uniforms around you— feel their genuine love for their “new family members”, as well as their unwavering efforts to support the legacy of the spirit of SCIE.
2. When we meet Antuo Hill…
You may be anxious about adapting, but SCIE cannot be more excited to get to know you. Prefects ecstatically raise their cameras to capture your entry. Who could say what kind of remarkable scholar you will become after four years of growth and experience at SCIE?
As you arrive, you receive your first “identity” at SCIE from pastoral staff —your House. The colourful wristbands, symbolising elements, accompany you through every journey during this first week, and your years at SCIE.
Getting to know a school naturally begins with becoming familiar with every corner of it. You gather in the Halo Theatre, receiving “challenge missions” from the Prefects of the Student Inclusion Division, then set off in all directions across the campus, onwards to a campus-wide treasure hunt.
This is your first time venturing out together with your form group. Prefects enthusiastically guide you through SCIE, introducing every facility on campus, exploring every mysterious corner, and sharing many small stories and secrets hidden within these spaces.
Here, the spirit of SCIE once again passes from one generation to the next. In the days ahead, whether facing academic confusion or life’s unexpected twists, that SCIE spirit will steadily protect you, leading you through every challenge—you will never be alone.
As early as before the summer holiday, Prefects from the Peer Support Division had already started carefully preparingnumerousinduction guides for new students.
Generations of Prefects continue to refine this work, striving to provide new students with the most comprehensive and vivid “survival guide”. Behind this generous gift lies countless days and nights of discussion and revision—all for a solid encouragement for you.
Some of you cleverly brought along this “secret weapon” to the treasure hunt, winning gifts prepared by the Prefects. From campus postcards to house-themedbadges, SCIE is embracing every newly joined family member in its own special way.
Back in the Halo Theatre, principals, teachers, senior students, and alumni had prepared an even richer “welcome gift” for you—a “crash course” on the academic life at SCIE.
We worked together to unveil the mysteries of this new life with you, guiding you to find your own direction in SCIE, so you could shine at SCIE.
You came to understand the delights found in the English language, experience the advantages of digital learning, grasp the tricks of independence, and comprehend the wisdom of proactivity—all these laid a solid foundation for your life at SCIE.
Please always remember the encouragement your seniors have placed in you. Carry their experience to enrich your life and studies at SCIE.
After exploring the campus and daily life, you arrive at the sports hall, beginning your encounter with SCIE’s unique academic atmosphere, where you explore the booths set up by subject teachers.
This may be your first true experience of independent exploration and critical thinking, putting together the puzzle of your desired academic journey. Perhaps there was a flicker of uncertainty at first, but rest assured: you will surely find your best answer here.
3. Where we meet each other…
From primary school to junior high, and onward through the open gates of senior years, each step upward is paved with fragments of old times and reunion. A reunion with new faces, new selves, new possibilities. The unknown of new spaces meets the prism of your curiosity, and through it refracts into countless tomorrows yet. Forget about the intricate rules; you step in, you stand between Auster and Boreas, you socialise in classrooms and entrench.
Enter through the East Gate, climb to that floor of the dormitory. The twilight of move-in day welcomes you to the island of warmth built by prefects. Their words gleam with the pearl of experience, catching every question of yours. The Residence Department quietly supports like invisible threads stitching strangers together.
Shadows waver as the sharing draws to a close. Some stay behind, leaning by hushed conversation with Prefects, twining like vines around shared curiosities. Others follow footsteps into the moonlit campus, shining as if your future paths. Others push open dormitory doors and tumble into another round of talk, pulling new conversations from the silence. They might seem unremarkable, butthey willaccompany you for four years of your life, tiny invaluable moments in your long-lasting memory.
Step out from that floor into the crowd. Prefects brought you into the Residence Activity Day. Yet more precious than any pigment of the games is that – you stepped out. You relish in hide and seek; you extract paper planes from sushi; you squash board games with strategy; you replace dorm doors with creativity; you join the family.
Four houses fight till last; four houses heart to heart. On Wednesday, you surrender your steps to the sports ground, your sweat to the sun, glimpsing the heartbeat of the campus through the rhythm of sport.
To where does that dodgeball fly? At to where it will land? Results remain unwritten. The only certainty is that you started, and that makes all the difference: you are steps closer to success. You try to catch that dodgeball. Maybe you succeeded, achieving your goal, and becoming your team’s hero. Maybe you were short of luck; the fast ball slipped from your hands. But it remains in the court for your team to use, for you to stay and continue to contribute.
Balls go high and low, fast and slow, yet the sky always reserves a route for it to pass. Plunge, and embrace a definite victory. Burgeon, and emerge into stars of the universe.
4. To where we belong…
“A new semester, a new atmosphere.” Nonetheless, when novelty slowly fades, confusion never surges in replacement. What arrives instead is much quieter, like a piece of candy slipped into your schoolbag, like that window that saves a sliver of dusk light for you each evening.
You might have wandered past the Wall of Hope – a modest whiteboard standing quietly at the corner of the first floor. Each question, each answer, each sticker performs its own small duty in tranquil coexistence. Posting a question is like casting a message in a bottle into a great family, sending ripples outward from all directions, each ring an open palm extended by seniors unknown. Standing at the point where questions and answers converge, you carry on.
Wandering from Auster Building to Boreas Building, from the Selene Apartment to the Helius Residence, the more you walk, the more you discover the infinite richness concealed within finite space. The teaching buildings are not grand, but the skybridges merge into an intricate web. You may find yourself at a dead end, suddenly encompassed.
But getting lost is part of knowing. Turn around and observe: morning glories gaze at you, poems in the boxes hoping for your eyes, classrooms looking forward to your arrival. A gentle breeze passes through as if you become part of it and us. You are an unwritten footnote standing at Auster; the world of Boreas awaits you ahead, harder, tighter, but better.
You are never in the scarcity of methods to make friends. Clubs, classes, interactions, and dining bond to form a socialisation tsunami that can rush into you at any second. Perhaps a helping hand extended, an accidental conversation in the lift, a contact left behind in a temporary team, bringing all this to beyond imagination.
Friends are not assigned through some grand ceremony, appearing rather simply beside you one day, walking shoulder to shoulder. You walk together through the school’s corridors, sit through the same classes, and paste your own wishes on that same wall.
Years later, when you recall this autumn when you joined SCIE, you will realise it had no clear beginning. There may have been no spectacular opening, no sudden turning point. Rather, it was more like something that joined your life drop by drop, seeping into your state of mind like ink slowly blooming on rice paper, like stars flickering one by one. Until one night you suddenly lift your head, and find that all around you, a complete sky of stars has already formed.
- Article / Eatawha
- Photography | Albert, Lorris, Admissions
