Sometimes I hear people saying that their school days were the best of their lives and I always think, “Really? Those were your happy times? Being put into an institution with a bunch of random people and being made to follow rules you had no control over?”
For quite some time after I left my high school, I would have dreams where once again I was roaming the corridors, late for a class, or overdue on some essay or other. Whatever the content of these night-time visions, anxiety stalked me like a vengeful ghost.
I escaped, running away as far as I could and starting again. I don’t often think about high school nowadays, and I suppose in retrospect, it wasn’t all bad. I learned some stuff and I got to read non-stop in the library in between classes. But even now, if you offered to pay off my mortgage on the understanding that I went back there, I never would.
I had an interesting career, working in sales, academia, hospitality and the law, before going self-employed just before my first child was born and ending up as a freelance writer in 2008. I published my first novel in 2021 and finally got to achieve the dream I’d had as a child, when my answer to the question, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” was always, “I’m going to be a writer.”
These days, my favourite thing to do (apart from writing books) is to go into high schools and give inspirational talks. A few years ago, I got asked to go and speak in the library at World Book Day at Farlingaye High School, where all three of my children eventually went. Whichever ones were receiving an education there at the time were horrified by the news.
“Mum! Like, cringe! If you see me, pretend you don’t know me. Don’t talk in that loud, embarrassing voice. Or do the laugh. Just keep your head down.”
I did World Book Day again. Then I delivered a couple of inspirational workshops. I got an email from a friend who teaches at East Bergholt High School asking if I wanted to give some workshops at their Year Nine Careers Day. Since then, I’ve also picked up Year Nine Careers Day Speed Dating at Hadleigh and Claydon High Schools.
It’s great fun. In fact, it’s the highlight of any week it happens to be in. Speaking to a class on Tuesday, I pondered why it was that a nerdy school-phobic like me should actively enjoy coming into an educational setting full of bells and rules and classrooms and lanyards and all the stuff I hated when I was their age. Surely I should be triggered by it all. But I’m not.
I suspect that miserable, anxious Year Ten me has never really gone away, but comes with me in the car, watches as I carry two Aldi bags full of books and Summer Book Bundles into reception and set myself up in a hot classroom, and stands by in wonder as adult me talks confidently about her writing career to a classroom of hot, tired, tetchy teenagers.
“Let’s imagine we’ve got a time machine,” I tell the students. “We can go back in time to Year Ten me and make everything right for her. She’s a popular, sporty girl, she does really well in her GCSEs and A-Levels, goes to university, gets a great job and lives a fabulous life. Should we do that?”
Almost all of them shake their heads emphatically.
“But why not?” I ask. “Sounds pretty good to me.”
Someone raises a hand.
“You shouldn’t do that, Miss, because you wouldn’t be you. You wouldn’t have written all these books.”
And they’re right of course. I wouldn’t.
Then I tell them the most annoying life lesson I’ve ever learned. It’s not the fun, easy stuff that makes us who we are. It’s the challenges, the obstacles, the trauma.
Going to a high school these days lifts my spirits. The students give me just as much as I do them. This year, it was particularly encouraging. Some were confident, some not so much. Some loved the interaction, others shied away from it. But each one is a piece of the future, of the world they will build together, and based on the interactions I had, I don’t think we have to worry too much.