Johannesburg - Irene Baladakis describes herself as someone who gives her all to the task at hand.
“I’m hard working. I try to do the most that I can,” she told The Star.
Irene, who did her matric at Saheti School, a Greek independent institution in Senderwood, Ekurhuleni, was expecting to achieve at least eight distinctions.
But she exceeded expectations and got a full house of nine, in accounting, Afrikaans, English, history, life orientation, mathematics, modern Greek, physical sciences and advanced programme mathematics.
She was ranked within the top 1% of Independent Examinations Board candidates nationally in English and life orientation.
Even though she described her final year in high school as having been stressful, the school said she was one of the matrics who had been expected “to do exceptionally well”.
So, how did she deal with the stress?
“I found myself playing a lot of sport,” Irene said.
This helped balance things while preparing for her exams.
Irene’s hard-work mantra pushed her to do something almost out of the ordinary in her matric.
“I took nine subjects. It was my choice. We had to do eight, and then I took an extra subject,” she said with pride.
A former prefect, Irene was always one of the star pupils at Saheti.
She was among the school’s learners who scooped an impressive 17 medals in the 2015 Eskom Expo for Young Scientists.
Irene won bronze at the expo, which was held at Wits University. The event drew hundreds of science projects from learners from schools across Gauteng.
In 2016, she was one of the school’s five top Grade 11 science learners invited to participate in an “integrated science experience” at Wits University.
She represented the school at Wits together with Pano Hadjipashalis, Katlego Lechalaba, Demetra Stephanou and Stelios Hajimarkos.
The team had to solve a mysterious murder case using forensic science and ultimately identify the victim’s killer or killers.
According to Saheti, in this Wits exercise Irene and her team were exposed to skills in chemistry, geophysics, geology, biology, computer coding, big data handling and astronomy while analysing evidence gathered on the case.
Irene has now been accepted at Wits and the University of Pretoria (UP) to study actuarial science.
She has not yet decided on which university she will attend, but having been exposed to
Wits twice, Irene believes it’s a great institution.
“They have a lot of nice facilities. I think I enjoyed that.”
However, she has not yet ruled out UP.
The whizkid reckons that UP could give her a semblance of independence.
“(I could) choose it for the independence aspect of it,” she said. “There are a lot of children at home.”
Asked why she wanted to study actuarial science, she said: “It’s because I enjoy maths.”