I Did Everything Right and Still Got Rejected: Sarah Kechayas on the Long Way Round to Pevan & Sarah

What happens when your child does everything right and still hits a wall? For any parent of a driven, high-achieving young person, Sarah Kechayas' (co-founder of Pevan & Sarah) story is both honest and reassuring. This is part one of a two-part conversation. Sarah is a musician, performer and co-founder, with her partner Manny Kechayas, of the much-loved children's kids entertainment group Pevan & Sarah. (Now found on ABC iView!). Sarah left a specialist music school as a high achiever who had cleaned up at her Year 12 awards and been told all her life that she could be whatever she wanted. Then she auditioned for every major performing arts course in the country and got into none of them. At seventeen, having done everything she'd been told would lead to her dream, it felt like a rude awakening. But Sarah didn't stop. She took a music certificate at the Adelaide Conservatorium, kept performing, kept making connections, and eventually completed a Bachelor of Music, only to discover how little a degree alone guarantees in the arts. From there, her path wound through instrumental teaching, running children's parties, integration aide work, special needs teaching, and years in the classroom. None of it looked linear, but all of it tied together: teaching, music and the work with kids combined into Pevan & Sarah, a national brand and company she and Manny took full-time in 2021, and which now reaches children right across the country. We talk about the teachers who championed her, the rejection that taught her what awards never could, the trap of measuring yourself against a single path, and her honest reflections on ambition that never quite feels satisfied. Her advice for any young person who feels behind is simple: keep your passion, but diversify, take the blinkers off, and stay open to possibilities you can't yet see. If your child is comparing themselves to a tidier path, this conversation is a reminder that no score or rejection defines where they can end up. This is part one, so after you listen to this, tune into Part two, where the conversation continues with her co-founder Manny Kechayas. What You'll Discover: • Why doing everything right still doesn't guarantee the outcome you planned (and why that's not a failure). • What a wall of audition rejections taught Sarah that awards and accolades never could. • How a "long and messy" path through teaching, music and work with kids quietly built the foundation for a national brand. • Why a Bachelor of Music, or any degree, is a starting point rather than a guarantee, and how that realisation reshaped her thinking. • How Sarah and Manny knew it was time to take Pevan & Sarah full-time, and the leap of faith behind it. • Sarah's honest reflection on ambition that never feels satisfied, and what she's learning about pausing to celebrate. • Practical advice for any young person who feels behind: keep the passion, diversify your toolkit, and take the blinkers off. More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning school leader on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. New episodes fortnightly. Subscribe to follow along.