School's out
Sep. 15th, 2010 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Day 21 – Your job and/or schooling
I find it amusing that I need to write this entry on the day that I found out my favourite primary school teacher is retiring at the end of this year. He was my year six teacher (incidentally, he was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lucubratae's teacher too) and he has been at that school since the 80s, apparently. I feel kind of melancholy about the whole thing.
SCHOOLING.
I went to preschool at Stokes Street Preschool, in Forrest in the ACT. It hasn't been a preschool for at least 15 years, because these days Forrest, like most of inner-south Canberra, doesn't have enough young children living there to sustain a preschool.
I hated preschool when I first went there. I was afraid of the other children (I've realised that this was because children were unpredictable, whereas adults, at least the adults in my life, behaved consistently) and spent the entire first term only talking to the parents who came over during morning tea. My mother made friends with two other mothers (incidentally, one was the mother of my 'first love' Alexander, and the other is now my editor at the newspaper). The three of them bonded over the fact that their children were the only ones who hated being at preschool (in fact, the son of my editor spent the entire year trying to climb over the front gate and escape, a feat he managed at least once).
After the first term, I made friends and got used to the other children. I mostly hung around with two other girls. We tended to play dress ups in this awesome cubby house that was like a real house with tables and pretend food and beds and stuff. We even got on the evening news, sitting on the steps outside the cubby, dressed in dress up clothing, for a news item about child care.
My primary school was Forrest Primary School, the local public school in my area. Some years there were better than others. I experienced the full range of public education in terms of quality, from my aforementioned awesome Year Six teacher, who introduced me to the awesomeness that is Victor Kelleher and Gillian Rubinstein, and with whom we wrote an awesome version of Robin Hood that we acted in front of the entire school, complete with hippie King Richard, a balding Robin, hold-up victim Lady Denman Drive (only Canberrans will get that) and a Guy of Gisbourne who couldn't pronounce the letter R and had a pet frog called Roderick (and who was acted by yours truly), to my atrocious Year Three teacher who spent most of the year playing golf with a metre-ruler in the bag room.
Some years were good in terms of friends, and some years were awful. Year Six was horrific, and ended up putting me in counselling. If I had been less awkward and self-conscious, I would've simply removed myself from my toxic group of 'friends' and spent all my time hanging out with my 'boyfriend', his friends (the nerdy boys of my grade) and my sister and her friends. I hung out with those people during lunch and recess, playing Tips and climbing on the ornamental plum trees, and at those times, I was happy. But I was too embarrassed about what other people would think of me, and so I remained with a group of people who made everything that I enjoyed a source of shame and unhappiness.
I went to high school at Telopea Park School, the local public high school for which Forrest was a feeder school. Over the summer between primary and high school, I made a promise to myself that I would never stay with friends who made me miserable, and I would never compromise myself for other people. I cut my hair, got my ears pierced, and stopped being known by my full name, instead introducing myself by my nickname, Ronni.
Year Seven was amazing. I made a great group of friends and I was truly happy. From Year Eight onwards, things started to go downhill because I stupidly boxed myself into an insular group of girls (the type who were neither 'popular' nor 'unpopular', neither academic nor into risk-taking) instead of hanging out with the insanely awesome nerdy group in my year (who were known as The Inbreeders for their tendency to only date within the group, and to have dated at least two other people from within that group). Year Eight contains the most mortifying experience of my school life: the day my 'best friend' told me she didn't want to be my best friend any more. I don't care about that, but I loathe myself for what happened next: I burst into tears, and allowed her to hug and comfort me for the distress that she herself had caused. Years Nine and Ten were better because I slowly disengaged myself from that toxic friendship group and hung out mostly with the Inbreeders.
I was in all the top classes at that school, and, for the most part, I think I got pretty good teaching there, although the Science faculty was in chaos the entire time and our teaching was kind of erratic (I remember one year, our teacher was Head of Department, would rarely show up on time, and there was a rule that if the door was closed, it meant a teacher was teaching, so we would go in, shut the door, and do whatever the hell we wanted. One day a girl in my class broke her knee line dancing in the classroom. They then changed that rule).
For college (in Canberra, the last two years of high school are at a separate school called a college) I went to Narrabundah College, which was a five-minute walk from my house and was the college for which Telopea was a feeder high school. Until I got to Cambridge, my years at 'Bundah were the happiest and most fulfilling of my life.
This was a school that genuinely prized quirkiness and nerdiness. It was an IB school, and I did the IB, along with a group that started at 80 and shrunk to about 35 others. The other nerdy kids hung around with the IB people, and we formed a zany, confident majority who thought it completely normal to show up to school wearing a bright orange sheet, shave your head in front of the entire school, set up a hammock on the oval, act out Hamlet using Transformers to fill the extra roles or walk through the school on the last day banging triangles and wearing placards saying 'The end is nigh'. It helped that the teachers loved us. We called the teachers by their first names, and they went out of their way to teach us properly (to the extent of having extra science tutorials before school to teach us the stuff in the IB syllabus that the ACT school syllabus couldn't cover). I think 'Bundah might've been a difficult place to be if you weren't nerdy, zany or arty, but for me it was heaven. Apart from some epic angst due to a two-year-long unrequited love for a guy, I was so happy there.
My undergrad degree was a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) at the University of Sydney. Academically, I loved it. I studied Linguistics, Arab and Middle Eastern Studies, Jewish Studies and English Literature, majoring in Jewish Studies and English, and doing my Honours thesis on 'The Alba Motif in Medieval Irish Literature' (through the English Department). I had some amazing teachers there and I found the work very intellectually engaging (although it confirmed in my mind that too many people go to uni, and those with little interest in intellectual things tend to study Arts, which means that most of them never engaged in the material and I found tutorials very frustrating for this reason).
Socially, though, I was miserable. I had some good friends, mainly science students met throughanya_1984, but I was incredibly depressed, wanted to be back in Canberra and generally felt like I'd been moved to Sydney without my consent. I spent many parties sulking and storming off in a huff. Looking back, my friends did the best they could to cheer me up, and I treated them appallingly, but there was no way things could've been any different. There was something wrong with me that my friends couldn't fix, and I resented them for not being able to fix it. I really appreciate them now for remaining friends with me in spite of what a nasty person my depression made me at the time.
After a two-year break, I returned to full-time education to do an MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNaC) at the University of Cambridge. The decision to come here for my MPhil was the scariest of my life. Apart from one disastrous year living in Canberra after undergrad, I had always lived at home, and was incredibly emotionally dependent on my mother. The idea of living on a whole different continent was terrifying. And it was the best thing I ever did in my life.
My MPhil year remains the best of my life. For the first time ever, I was happy with what I was doing, at the time I was doing it, rather than looking back with rose-tinted nostalgia at whatever I'd been doing before. The ASNaCs are my people. Aside from the sraffies, I've never felt as instant a connection with a group of people. I loved the subject of my dissertation ('Pressing on Boundaries: the motif of exile in select medieval Irish texts'), I loved the undergrad classes I sat in on (second-year medieval Irish, first-year Latin, first-year medieval Welsh), my supervisor and I got on perfectly and worked really well together. My MPhil year was a joy.
I've just finished the first year of my PhD at Cambridge, in the same department, with the same supervisor. It, too, has been wonderful so far.
What my 20 years (so far) of schooling have taught me is that I was very lucky in terms of the academic institutions which I attended, and very unlucky in the personality and upbringing which I have. I went to schools with strong academic records, and many excellent teachers, and, most importantly, where academic achievement was valued and nerds were cool. I don't know how I would've survived if my schools hadn't been like this.
However, I was not taught how to be cruel, I was not taught how to stand up for myself, I was terrified of people's bad opinion and I was prepared to put up with any kind of treatment rather than confront people and tell them they were upsetting me (or even remove myself from their presence). In the face of cruelty or bullying, I could only freeze. I had utterly no idea how to react or respond, because it was beyond my comprehension how people could behave in such a way. I still have all these personality flaws, to a certain extent, but I'm just much more selective and cautious about who I become friends with.
I'm going to do the second part of this question (my job) in a separate post because this one is getting very long.
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – Your sleeping habits
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favorite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your favorite foods/drinks
Day 30 – Your aspirations
I find it amusing that I need to write this entry on the day that I found out my favourite primary school teacher is retiring at the end of this year. He was my year six teacher (incidentally, he was
lucubratae's teacher too) and he has been at that school since the 80s, apparently. I feel kind of melancholy about the whole thing.SCHOOLING.
I went to preschool at Stokes Street Preschool, in Forrest in the ACT. It hasn't been a preschool for at least 15 years, because these days Forrest, like most of inner-south Canberra, doesn't have enough young children living there to sustain a preschool.
I hated preschool when I first went there. I was afraid of the other children (I've realised that this was because children were unpredictable, whereas adults, at least the adults in my life, behaved consistently) and spent the entire first term only talking to the parents who came over during morning tea. My mother made friends with two other mothers (incidentally, one was the mother of my 'first love' Alexander, and the other is now my editor at the newspaper). The three of them bonded over the fact that their children were the only ones who hated being at preschool (in fact, the son of my editor spent the entire year trying to climb over the front gate and escape, a feat he managed at least once).
After the first term, I made friends and got used to the other children. I mostly hung around with two other girls. We tended to play dress ups in this awesome cubby house that was like a real house with tables and pretend food and beds and stuff. We even got on the evening news, sitting on the steps outside the cubby, dressed in dress up clothing, for a news item about child care.
My primary school was Forrest Primary School, the local public school in my area. Some years there were better than others. I experienced the full range of public education in terms of quality, from my aforementioned awesome Year Six teacher, who introduced me to the awesomeness that is Victor Kelleher and Gillian Rubinstein, and with whom we wrote an awesome version of Robin Hood that we acted in front of the entire school, complete with hippie King Richard, a balding Robin, hold-up victim Lady Denman Drive (only Canberrans will get that) and a Guy of Gisbourne who couldn't pronounce the letter R and had a pet frog called Roderick (and who was acted by yours truly), to my atrocious Year Three teacher who spent most of the year playing golf with a metre-ruler in the bag room.
Some years were good in terms of friends, and some years were awful. Year Six was horrific, and ended up putting me in counselling. If I had been less awkward and self-conscious, I would've simply removed myself from my toxic group of 'friends' and spent all my time hanging out with my 'boyfriend', his friends (the nerdy boys of my grade) and my sister and her friends. I hung out with those people during lunch and recess, playing Tips and climbing on the ornamental plum trees, and at those times, I was happy. But I was too embarrassed about what other people would think of me, and so I remained with a group of people who made everything that I enjoyed a source of shame and unhappiness.
I went to high school at Telopea Park School, the local public high school for which Forrest was a feeder school. Over the summer between primary and high school, I made a promise to myself that I would never stay with friends who made me miserable, and I would never compromise myself for other people. I cut my hair, got my ears pierced, and stopped being known by my full name, instead introducing myself by my nickname, Ronni.
Year Seven was amazing. I made a great group of friends and I was truly happy. From Year Eight onwards, things started to go downhill because I stupidly boxed myself into an insular group of girls (the type who were neither 'popular' nor 'unpopular', neither academic nor into risk-taking) instead of hanging out with the insanely awesome nerdy group in my year (who were known as The Inbreeders for their tendency to only date within the group, and to have dated at least two other people from within that group). Year Eight contains the most mortifying experience of my school life: the day my 'best friend' told me she didn't want to be my best friend any more. I don't care about that, but I loathe myself for what happened next: I burst into tears, and allowed her to hug and comfort me for the distress that she herself had caused. Years Nine and Ten were better because I slowly disengaged myself from that toxic friendship group and hung out mostly with the Inbreeders.
I was in all the top classes at that school, and, for the most part, I think I got pretty good teaching there, although the Science faculty was in chaos the entire time and our teaching was kind of erratic (I remember one year, our teacher was Head of Department, would rarely show up on time, and there was a rule that if the door was closed, it meant a teacher was teaching, so we would go in, shut the door, and do whatever the hell we wanted. One day a girl in my class broke her knee line dancing in the classroom. They then changed that rule).
For college (in Canberra, the last two years of high school are at a separate school called a college) I went to Narrabundah College, which was a five-minute walk from my house and was the college for which Telopea was a feeder high school. Until I got to Cambridge, my years at 'Bundah were the happiest and most fulfilling of my life.
This was a school that genuinely prized quirkiness and nerdiness. It was an IB school, and I did the IB, along with a group that started at 80 and shrunk to about 35 others. The other nerdy kids hung around with the IB people, and we formed a zany, confident majority who thought it completely normal to show up to school wearing a bright orange sheet, shave your head in front of the entire school, set up a hammock on the oval, act out Hamlet using Transformers to fill the extra roles or walk through the school on the last day banging triangles and wearing placards saying 'The end is nigh'. It helped that the teachers loved us. We called the teachers by their first names, and they went out of their way to teach us properly (to the extent of having extra science tutorials before school to teach us the stuff in the IB syllabus that the ACT school syllabus couldn't cover). I think 'Bundah might've been a difficult place to be if you weren't nerdy, zany or arty, but for me it was heaven. Apart from some epic angst due to a two-year-long unrequited love for a guy, I was so happy there.
My undergrad degree was a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) at the University of Sydney. Academically, I loved it. I studied Linguistics, Arab and Middle Eastern Studies, Jewish Studies and English Literature, majoring in Jewish Studies and English, and doing my Honours thesis on 'The Alba Motif in Medieval Irish Literature' (through the English Department). I had some amazing teachers there and I found the work very intellectually engaging (although it confirmed in my mind that too many people go to uni, and those with little interest in intellectual things tend to study Arts, which means that most of them never engaged in the material and I found tutorials very frustrating for this reason).
Socially, though, I was miserable. I had some good friends, mainly science students met through
anya_1984, but I was incredibly depressed, wanted to be back in Canberra and generally felt like I'd been moved to Sydney without my consent. I spent many parties sulking and storming off in a huff. Looking back, my friends did the best they could to cheer me up, and I treated them appallingly, but there was no way things could've been any different. There was something wrong with me that my friends couldn't fix, and I resented them for not being able to fix it. I really appreciate them now for remaining friends with me in spite of what a nasty person my depression made me at the time.After a two-year break, I returned to full-time education to do an MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNaC) at the University of Cambridge. The decision to come here for my MPhil was the scariest of my life. Apart from one disastrous year living in Canberra after undergrad, I had always lived at home, and was incredibly emotionally dependent on my mother. The idea of living on a whole different continent was terrifying. And it was the best thing I ever did in my life.
My MPhil year remains the best of my life. For the first time ever, I was happy with what I was doing, at the time I was doing it, rather than looking back with rose-tinted nostalgia at whatever I'd been doing before. The ASNaCs are my people. Aside from the sraffies, I've never felt as instant a connection with a group of people. I loved the subject of my dissertation ('Pressing on Boundaries: the motif of exile in select medieval Irish texts'), I loved the undergrad classes I sat in on (second-year medieval Irish, first-year Latin, first-year medieval Welsh), my supervisor and I got on perfectly and worked really well together. My MPhil year was a joy.
I've just finished the first year of my PhD at Cambridge, in the same department, with the same supervisor. It, too, has been wonderful so far.
What my 20 years (so far) of schooling have taught me is that I was very lucky in terms of the academic institutions which I attended, and very unlucky in the personality and upbringing which I have. I went to schools with strong academic records, and many excellent teachers, and, most importantly, where academic achievement was valued and nerds were cool. I don't know how I would've survived if my schools hadn't been like this.
However, I was not taught how to be cruel, I was not taught how to stand up for myself, I was terrified of people's bad opinion and I was prepared to put up with any kind of treatment rather than confront people and tell them they were upsetting me (or even remove myself from their presence). In the face of cruelty or bullying, I could only freeze. I had utterly no idea how to react or respond, because it was beyond my comprehension how people could behave in such a way. I still have all these personality flaws, to a certain extent, but I'm just much more selective and cautious about who I become friends with.
I'm going to do the second part of this question (my job) in a separate post because this one is getting very long.
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – Your sleeping habits
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favorite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your favorite foods/drinks
Day 30 – Your aspirations
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 11:37 pm (UTC)Seriously though, I don't know what it is about being 14, but everyone seems to have had a really rough time around then... My friends all decided to start running away and told me they didn't want to hang out with me anymore. I've heard about other people's bags being stolen and thrown into toilets, and who knows what else. Everyone just got really mean! Luckily miss_foxy and angel_cc turned up, and then in year 9 all was miraculously reconciled...
no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 11:53 pm (UTC)I agree with you about Year Eight. It was my sister's worst year as well. There's something about it that turns teenage girls into beasts. I remember you telling me about the stuff that happened with you and your friends - it's so disgraceful. It's weird how everyone just calmed down and grew up in Year Nine.