Growing Pains

This could be another post about how icky I feel and how dull work was but I suspect the headache is hanging around cos red wine really doesn't agree with me... So I shall resist... Maybe I should delve into my past... Maybe I can think of something interesting to talk about...

Maybe I should talk about how I survived school with my love of learning and books intact... I went to school like any other child but I wasn't happy. I liked adults far more than I liked other children. I didn't entirely get other children and they certainly didn't entirely get me. I was a bright happy child who would leave my parents and find people to talk to, my parents had to work very hard to stop me doing this!

I remember having one or two girl friends but not being all that close to them really. I remember that I was starting to discover that i liked playing with the boys more than I liked playing with the girls, just before I changed schools. I remember standing at the side of the playground and catching crickets with my hands from the grasses in the bank. I remember learning the word look on my first day and being so pleased. I remember playing organised games in the playground. I remember that my friend L and I would always be the two with the most stars.

My parents had already moved my sister to another school and because I was unhappy they decided to move me sooner than planned. The school I was to go to was a girls boarding school although I would not board. Unfortunately my date of birth was close to the year cut off point in state schools. My new school managed to put me up a year without even realising. They then discovered I was horrifically behind, tested me for dyslexia (I suspect i am on the spectrum as I do have some traits...) and put me in the lunch time catch up classes...

Time passed and no matter what prizes I won at Prizegiving, I never actually got over the knowledge that I was one of the less able. No one ever actually told me I had caught up or why I had been behind. Not till a lot later. My sister is less academic than I am and in order to preserve her confidence, my achievements were also seldom discussed. Not surprisingly they held little meaning to me.

I was never a girly girl and my strengths of maths and science didn't really help. Of course neither did being a day girl in boarding school. So much happened at night and at weekends that us day girls were always on the outside of things. Of course looking back I know these girls were separated from their families, often from an early age, and must have been pretty homesick. Many lived in far off countries and some did not even know English when they first arrived at the school. They must have envied me the ability to go home to my family each night.

By the time I got to my GCSE's I was a quiet, hard working girl who according to one of my teachers seldom smiled. When I received my grades, I finally realised that I was more suited to study than some others. I thought that everyone would receive the grades I had. The pain on one girls face as I asked what she had got is not something that I ever forgot.

So I left school and went to Sixth Form College to do my A-Levels and everything was different overnight.... In a place where there was over a thousand 16 and 17 year olds, it would be pretty impossible to not find some others like you. Of course I did find others like me, who studied maths and physics and liked the same music as me. For the first time I found a place where I was accepted and happy and was not seen as being a little nerdy...

Of course I now know that most people of that age have many of the same feelings as I did. I would never ever want to go back to being a teenager unless I could take all my knowledge and experience with me...

So how did I maintain my love of learning? I think that is for tomorrow now...