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EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD Jake Bailey is a final year student at Christchurch Boys’ high school in New Zealand, and was chosen to give a speech at the school’s awards ceremony last Wednesday.

Last week, Bailey was diagnosed with cancer, and doctors told him he would die if he did not receive treatment within three weeks.

Despite this, he was given day release from the hospital to deliver the speech from a wheelchair – he said his words had gained “a whole new spin” since his diagnosis.

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“Be gallant, be great, be gracious and be grateful for the opportunities you have,” he told his emotional classmates.

Forget about long-term dreams. Let’s be passionately dedicated to the pursuit of short-term goals. Work with passion and pride on what is in front of us… I don’t know where it goes from here, for any of us – for me, for you. But I wish you the very best in your journey, and I thank you all for being part of mine.

And he still managed to sneak in a bit of humour, too:

I’ve been absent for three weeks. Can you please stop sending my mother texts every morning, asking her if she knows where I am?

At the end of his address, Bailey’s classmates performed the haka especially for him.

A video of the speech has gone viral all around the world, and been watched hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube:

The school headmaster, Nic Hill, told the New Zealand Herald that despite the aggressive nature of Bailey’s cancer, they were still hopeful:

Jake is alive and it’s going to be very tough, incredibly tough, it will be very intensive treatment. However, the prognosis is good.

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