Every year in July, the Premier’s VCE Awards are presented to the most deserving students from the previous year who excelled in their VCE exams.

This year, the ceremony took place on July 17 with a total of 332 awards handed out in front of over 1000 participants.

Among the awardees for Italian were Greta Guerrini and Asia Orsini, who shared their very different experiences with us.

In her VCE Italian exam, Asia Orsini achieved the maximum score of 50/50.

Asia, who moved from Fano in the region of Marche to Melbourne in 2022 at the age of 17, emphasised that her success was not an easy feat.

“I’m proud to have made it to that stage and for my efforts to be recognised because knowing the language alone, without attending the VSL (Victorian School of Languages) course, would not have been enough,” she said.

“Thanks to the lessons, I understood how the program worked before the exam. My teacher, Rosa Vitelli, encouraged me to work hard, setting a very high standard for me.”

Asia exuded great maturity when discussing her decision to move to Australia. “The move was quick, but it wasn’t easy to leave everything and everyone and come to Melbourne,” she said.

Upon arrival, she enrolled in Year 12 at Mount Alexander College, facing a far from simple transition. “I had no social life, no friends, and I didn’t know anyone,” she recalled, “So I focused on my studies.”

Education was one of the main reasons she got on the plane to Melbourne, where she came to study astrophysics at university.

“I enrolled at Swinburne University where I’ll get a bachelor’s degree before pursuing a PhD, and then I’d like to teach or continue research,” she shared.

Greater opportunities and the ability to choose a study path suited to her interests were the driving forces behind her decision to leave the Bel Paese.

“Here, I found that schools are more open to students’ interests,” she said. “In Italy, I’d have struggled to find a degree program that could fully accommodate my interests.”

Gradually, things also improved on the social front for Asia. She made friends and learnt that there was a great interest in getting to know her.

“Australians are more open than Italians are when it comes to meeting people from overseas.”

Naturally, her connection to Italy is still very strong, especially since most of the people she cares about are there. However, she already experiences that feeling, familiar to anyone who has emigrated, of not fully belonging to either world.

One of the things Asia would like to do is make her knowledge of Italian available to new batches of VCE students. “I’d like to help them with conversation,” she said.

Meanwhile, Greta Guerrini is currently attending Year 12 at Mount Waverley Secondary College, although she already took the VCE Italian exam a year early in 2023.

Her formal study of the language only began in Year 10 with the VSL, since her school did not offer Italian among the language options.

Having moved to Melbourne with her family when she was just six years old, Greta has always spoken Italian with her parents.

“But,” she admitted, “English is easier for me, as I think in English.

“But as soon as I enter the house and see my parents, it feels natural to communicate with them in Italian.”

Before it had academic benefits, Italian was primarily a way to communicate with her parents and the rest of her family and friends in Italy.

“I used to write to my grandmother, telling her what I did during my day,” Greta recalled.

Greta Guerrini receiving her award from the premier

And although she studied grammar during her lessons, the student draws mainly from her experience with the spoken language, even when it comes to writing.

“When I received the news that I would receive the Premier’s VCE Award, it was a huge surprise for me, and I was very happy,” revealed Greta.

She added that going on stage and shaking the hand of the Premier of Victoria, Jacinta Allan, gave her a great feeling.

Greta is quite comfortable on stage. Passionate about musicals, she recently performed at her school’s production of Mamma Mia! where she played one of the main characters.

“I love being on stage, and I would like to continue doing musicals and studying music; I play the double bass,” she shared.

Greta is now focused on preparing for her final VCE exams and thinking about next year, when she will enrol in university to study psychology.