Waking up on a normal school day tends to be hard enough.
But before the first school bell had gone in the morning, we had already experienced one of our biggest duties as head students to date.
This year, our school was selected to read the lessons at the Anzac Day dawn service.
This meant we had the biggest public speaking experience of our lives ahead of us.
Hearing that last year's turnout was in the thousands left us feeling a bit daunted.
The magnitude of the occasion surprised us, as neither of us had been to a dawn service before.
The thought of reading from a piece of paper wasn't so bad.
It was the fact that there were so many people watching and listening to every word we said. It made us even more nervous.
The number of people there was frightening and we later found out the number had reached over 10,000, including many media representatives.
We had expected lots of people, but this had exceeded our expectations.
After the guns fired, we sat and listened to many people speak, and we were able to reflect on the experiences and challenges faced by those who served.
We nervously awaited our turn to contribute to the service, our speeches held tightly in our shaking hands, aware of all the eyes that would be focused on us.
Thankfully, due to the brightness of the lights and darkness of the morning, those eyes of the crowd weren't visible - only dark silhouettes.
Taking our turn to speak, we nervously stood in front of the crowds of people, careful not to talk too fast or mix our words.
One at a time we read our lessons, relieved when we had finished.
The few minutes we were speaking for had gone smoothly and we felt proud of the contribution we had made.
Our last task to do was lay a wreath in honour of those who had fought and died at Gallipoli.
Holding a side each, we lay it down at the base of the Cenotaph.
At the conclusion of the service, we were surprised when some media people came and interviewed us, including students and radio stations.
We were asked about how we felt reading the lessons and what it meant to us.
It was a bit weird being interviewed but we enjoyed it nonetheless.
All in all, we were very honoured to be asked to read the lessons.
It was by far one of our highlights as head students for the year.
By Jessica Wilson and Ben Leasky, Year 13, Kaikorai Valley College
