Selectively Juggling

Unfortunately we moved around whilst I was in my teens, and attended 4 different high schools. I started high school as a fresh-faced, quasi exuberant girl, with an insatiable appetite for learning 11year-old. So, as the very reserved, softly-spoken, fly-under-the-radar 8th child of 10 kids, my first day of high school was extremely memorable. In primary school, I’d been a big fish in a small pond, I’d been a school prefect, sports captain, and captain of the girls netball and softball teams. I’d applied myself academically, as best as I could given the unfolding tragedies and trauma at home. I was (and still am) a geek (nerd). I was (am) very different from my older siblings, and this was made abundantly clear on my first day of year 7. Can you imagine I was already anxious about starting high school, especially about starting at a large co-ed. The night before school I’d lovingly ironed and pressed my new tunic (uniform) polished my beloved shiny new black school shoes. Shoes were important , especially given my family lived below the poverty line.

Come the first day of the new school year (here in Australia it’s after 6-weeks of Christmas Holidays) I wake up, a heady mix of excitement, trepidation and anxiety. I search in vain for my uniform and shoes, they are nowhere to be found. Instead I’m forced to wear my older sister’s shortened and taken-in school skirt and shirt. Instead of my prized school shoes I’m forced to wear summery casual shoes. The girl reflected in the tarnished mirror looks nothing like the girl I know. I feel violated. I feel unseen, unvalued and adrift. My very popular, rule-breaking, popular with rougher kids sister (3 years older than me) had purposely hidden my things, my things! Why? Because she said she didn’t want to be embarrassed by her “nerdy little sister!”

So, after dying a little on the inside I managed to walk to school. What the outside world saw, was not who I was. I felt vulnerable, exposed and alone. Sad, but true. What should have been a proud moment of further self-exploration and self-efficacy was replaced with anxiety, doubt and shame. No, I’m not overreacting!. I headed to the school hall for the year 7 assembly. We were called up, one by one and allocated home rooms. The deputy head, was also the Maths Master, a very formidable man, who towered over my small 11-year-old frame. He read my name out and with such unchecked disdain says “ if you’re anything like your sister, there’s no place for you at this school!” Inappropriate? Hell yeah! Memorable? Hell yeah!

What is did do was to galvanise just how different I was to my siblings. I showed that teacher, and all the others that I was reserved, quiet, diligent and respectful. My parents also saw that it was the wrong fit for me, and that I wouldn’t prosper or bloom at that school. They somehow scrapped the money together to send me to a private Catholic girls high school from year 8. That’s was wonderful until we moved the same year, and all of a sudden I’m now a just turned 13-year old, with no friends and needing to navigate my way through an even larger co-ed public high school. Once again, my first day was plagued by a dramatic entry. My parents didn’t have enough money for my new school uniforms, so instead they sent me in my old catholic girls school uniform. Doesn’t sound bad hey! Until my second day, which was sports day. My new schools sports uniform was school sports shorts under short netball-type skirts and school sports tops. My previous girls sports uniform was a very short tunic, with splits exposing running bloomers/undies. I literally had to walk through a school with my arse cheeks exposed. I felt humiliated by the incessant wolf-whistles, or cat-calls and lewd & nasty comments from boys and girls alike.

What did I learn? Resilience! Perseverance! Persistence! How to fly under the radar! How to try to adapt and make friends! How to befriend myself! How to stand up for myself and fight my own battles! Self-efficacy and self-determination! I also learned some maladaptive coping strategies, that have taken me a lifetime to unlearn.

Thankfully my final highschool was an inner Sydney girls high school, where the distance between highs and lows was tolerable. I’m still friends with many of those girls. That school was what I needed, when and where I needed. I learned to accept, love and embrace ‘me’ there, among a wonderfully cultural diverse group of girls. It was a rather underprivileged school, compared to the many surrounding private schools. However, I learned to keep my spirit alive, I learned to raise my voice, be seen and heard. I learned to trust me, my trajectory and others. I learned about friendships, with self and others.

And yes those words spoken to me by the Math’s Master in year 7, have stayed with me. Not in a negative sense, but just as a corner piece of my own jigsaw puzzle. A piece that has helped me work out my own ethical perimeters and ideals. I used those words as an impetus to carve my own path, not simply become what was socially and class-based expected of me. In fact, they’ve been part of the fuel that enabled my social mobility and personal propulsion through emotional quagmires. So yes, I’m the only one of my siblings to complete high school, and get a degree at University, and a prestigious University at that.