I’m writing this blog after the comment that FourtyFour made on my last one. I appreciate her thoughts and ideas so very much.

From a very young age, well from as early as I can remember actually, I did well at school. I got good reports every year and sort of thing. The teachers always commented on how they liked teaching me a lot. How I was the friendly one. The comment on almost every report during primary school was something along the lines of “If she was to concentrate she could do a lot better” or “If she didn’t rush her work it would be a lot better”. Could always be better… yet never was.

Maths was always my weak point, and still is today. I’m the sort of person who needs to be pushed to succeed. I never got pushed. I never got helped along the way, never pushed. I did my work, but I didn’t really try. When I was in high school, for grade 7 I did well, then I met my friends, where it was somewhat “uncool” ( I hate using that term) to be smart, or do well. For grade 8 and 9 I didn’t do my best. I still got the OK reports, but nothing to write home about. Mum always said I did well; maybe she was just trying to make me feel good about it.

 In the last half of grade 10 I realized that I needed to do well, this was my final year and I hadn’t done anything. I tried to catch up, but mostly it was too far gone. For my TCE I got an outstanding achievement in Business Enterprise, which was a class that formed a company and sold products and things like that. The teacher thought me and a small group were the best in the class, where infact we spent half the class in another room listening to music, and just being ignorant. My other grades were all medium level. I wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t the worst. So I guess that was ok. I always enjoyed English. It was always one of my favourite subjects. The only thing I found annoying about it was that the teacher I had in grade 10 didn’t like my style of writing. I found that very ignorant myself, but who am I to challenge a teacher right?

 I enjoyed writing, but I found it difficult them giving me topics. I prefer to write what I want to write, and not be forced into writing about something I have no passion, or interest in. I enjoyed Shakespeare a lot. When the rest of the class were moaning and moping around about the thought of having to do Shakespeare, I was getting right into it.  I still didn’t have a teacher to push me. The thing with teachers they are too quick to point out the bad stuff, yet the good stuff, they just skim over. You might get a “Good Work” sticker ever once in a blue moon IF you’re lucky.

 I wish I had done better in school, tried harder, or as 44 put it, “realised my potential”. I guess I just never felt that I was going to be good enough to make anything of myself.

I never finished college. I did go for the first few months, but it was during that time that I hurt my leg for the first time. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I just joined a few classes, hoping that I would find my passion. It never came. So I left. It’s defiantly something that I regret to this day. I never really enjoyed it. It was just something that you had to do. So instead of finishing school, I went off to work, and work, and work. I’ve been working since I was 16, well up until March this year anyway.

 I would have loved to be one of those people who went on to do amazing things with their life. Most of the people I went to school with went on to become teachers or nurses or other professions that society looks up to.

I have thought about going back to school, maybe going back to university as a “mature age student”. I’m not sure what the age is for that, it might be something that I check out sometime. I could go to back to TAFE, maybe I should see what courses are available there. Maybe they have a writing class or something, which would be interesting. I don’t think I’m ready to make a choice about my future right now. I need to get myself well, get some self esteem going, and maybe take it from there.

So thank you FourtyFour for getting me to think about this sort of thing, appreciate it a lot.