Five Years of High School

Posting again as part of the Five Minute Friday Link up!

The prompt this week is FIVE


My daughter has recently started high school after being homeschooled. In South Africa, high school begins in Grade 8 and goes on until Grade 12 - five years of your life, from thirteen to eighteen. She's half a year in, and walking this road with her brings back memories of my own high school years at an almost a hundred-year-old traditional girls school more than two decades ago now.

What do I remember?

I remember being UNCOMFORTABLE in my uniform. Scratchy stockings, an ill-fitting skirt that got shinier each time it was ironed. A shirt with a collar and a tie. A blazer - blazers are NOT warm. I could have had a scarf but I never did, and I mostly rode my bike to school. I was so cold in winter. In summer we wore blue dresses that buttoned up the front and belted at the middle. Almost exactly the same style as the dresses my grandmother wore to play bowls. Ick. And the girls at that school still wear them now!

I remember being bored a lot. Waiting around in corridors, waiting before exams, listening to long announcements in assembly.

I remember rushing to Afrikaans because the teacher would lock us out if we were late. I remember loving Art and wishing the bell would never ring. I remember my amazing friends and how we sat in the sun at breaks.

I remember knowing for sure I was not a cool girl, but not the worst of the rejects either, and in the self-absorption of youth didn't feel too guilty about thinking other girls were rejects. I remember wanting to obey the rules and dreading getting into trouble.

Five minutes are up! Those years weren't terrible. My daughter's experience is very different - Apartheid was abolished while I was at high school so I was in a class with thirty other white girls. My daughter is one of  two or three white girls in her class! (I think. I don't notice as much as I might have in the past!) The rest are boys and girls of various other colours of the wonderful South African rainbow. My five years weren't terrible, but they sure as anything weren't anything like a picture of the real world!