On Thursday, 10 June we had the privilege to have Jake Bailey visit to talk to our year 12’s and year 13’s about resilience and how to cherish each day we are alive.

Jake is the ex-Christchurch Boys’ High School senior monitor, whose end of year speech made worldwide headlines after going viral in November 2015. A week before he was due to deliver this speech, Jake fell ill and was diagnosed with Burkitt’s Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, the fastest growing cancer known to man. Jake was given two weeks to live if this was left untreated. Luckily he went into remission in 2016 and now he shares his experience and the positive impact that it brought to his life.

As Jake says “I wouldn’t change it for the world. Getting cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me because it taught me so much more about life than I would ever have learned otherwise”.

We have Jake’s book “What cancer taught me” available in the library.