I got a few... ^^;
Primary school sucked. I attended two in my local area. The first one I went to I wasn't at for very long - probably a couple of months at best. There were a lot of things that were wrong with the place (lack of staff on duty during break times tend to lead to many accidents), I couldn't fit in, and apparently the teachers were always going off on maternity leave. The later was a problem for my grandmother, who'd walk all the way around to the school to drop me and my brother off, only to have to take us home again because there were no staff.
So mum enrolled me at another school. It's a Church of England school, and it wasn't my mother's first choice because she didn't like the idea of me and my brother being pounded with religion everyday (despite her being religious at the time). My reception teacher wasn't really nice to me - I'd always be playing with the wrong toy, drawing the wrong picture, not engaging with the other kids, etc... there was always a problem. I found a ladybird in the playground once and I thought it was cute, and some older kid called Patrick came up and killed it. I was upset, and I got shouted at for being upset... I was only about four or five.
Me and my brother both had it hard at that school. There was a lot of bullying, and no one really paid close attention to it. My brother had two friends, Ian and Paul, who I'd sometimes hang out with when I had no one else as the friends I made didn't seem to be friends for very long as they eventually became more popular. I had one friend, who has the same name as me, who pretty much was my friend from early on in my time at that school and my secondary school. But we used to argue lots because we had different interests, and we'd always end up accusing each other for "using" each other.
I had this really nice teacher for about two years while I was at school called Ms Jones. She was so supportive, and shared my love at the time for Egyptology. She brought lessons to life, and was always so encouraging. She made me feel confident, and eventually I ended up in the bullies "good books". Not for long. Something happened when I was playing with one of them called Shubby, and the next day his mother is around the school looking for my blood. I just remember this huge African lady come storming up to me, screaming her head off about me being racist, while Ms Jones tried to restrain her. I was ****ing petrified. There was this huge class discussion about what happened, and I didn't have a bloody clue as to what HAD happened. Word was out about me being a racist, everyone - even my friends I'd had for years - hated me, and I didn't know why. Two weeks of non-stop name calling, fights, tormenting, etc. Even Ms Jones didn't know what to make of me.
Eventually I broke down at home, and mum came up to the school the next day to speak with Ms Jones, and we had another class meeting. This time, she pushed Shubby to tell everyone what I'd done - something that SHOULD have been done the day I was confronted by his mother. Apparently, I called him "stupid", and he took great offence and thought I was being racist to all black people. Ms Jones had a word with him and his mum, who tried to apologise to me and my mum. Then Ms Jones came to me, half in tears, saying how sorry she was as well. I forgave her, but with everyone else, I just went back to the shadows with my drawings and books.
My Year 6 teacher wasn't nice to me. He had his class favourites, and would always sneer at me when he mentioned or praised them. That was upsetting. Life went on. Halfway through the year, there was a class trip to Kench Hill - those of you in the UK may or may not have heard of it and/or even been there. It was fun. Until the both of us were on the rope assault course at the end of the playground. He was jumping up and down on it, and shouting at me to get a move on. I was ****ing scared of falling off because he wasn't jumping on it lightly - I was jumping on it without even trying! Then, the next evening, it was my job to tidy the girls dorm while everyone went down to eat. I found this girls CD player on the floor, so I put it under her pillow so that it didn't get lost or damaged. Two of the other girls came in the room and asked about it, so I told them where I'd left it. I was none the wiser. Little more than half an hour later, I'm being confronted by the owner of the CD player, the two girls and my Year 6 teacher for stealing. Wtf. He was talking about getting me on the coach to go home the next day and shit, and I ran into Ms Jones who sorted it all out for me. Worst part was, the two girls who'd set me up weren't even threatened with going home early... -_-
When the SATs tests got closer, my Year 6 teacher sneered at me more and more, I got into trouble more and more, and I was beyond stressed. Mum helped me revise at home, I did the tests a week later, and spent the following week in fear of getting my results back. When he opened them up infront of the class, he asked who'd like there's to be read to the whole class. I CLEARLY said I didn't want the the class to know how bad I'd done, but he sneered and read them out anyway. You should have seen the bastards face! It went from a sneer, to confusion, to shock, then he looked at me and gave me my results - I'd gotten some of the highest grades in the class! I was happy to wipe that sneer off his face.
Secondary school was much better than primary school. I was still the quiet kid who sat with her book at the back of the classroom, got on with the work, didn't have many friends, etc... but I was mostly left alone by bullies. I'd made a few more friends and we got along great. A girl called Jodie joined my class, and she's mostly blind, so me and my other friend used to look after her. Summer came, and we didn't see her for six weeks, and when we got back, she'd made some other friends... which was cool, but then she started being a real bitch to me and my friend. Which isn't cool considering the amount of time we'd given up to help her around and do her work. Anyway, she eventually left us alone, and went on to pursue a music career. Maybe you'll hear about her in a few years.
Year 9 came along, and I was moved into a lower Maths class because my teacher thought I could do with making some friends. Nothing changed, really. I was still sitting at the back of the classroom and getting on with it. One lesson, I was really struggling on some extension work, and the girl infront of me showed me how to do it. Ella. We became friends, and then close friends. By Year 10, we were hanging out at lunch time, much to the dismay of my other friends who for some reason liked having me around to pester. Shortly, a rumour appeared about me and her being lesbians. Seriously... there were about a hundred and fifty girls in my year, and that was the BEST they could come up with?
I'm glad me and Ella became friends. I'd never had a friend who didn't judge me for the way I was and my choices, but was always there to back me up when I needed some help. We used to revise for GCSEs together, and I don't think I'd have done as well as I did without her help and support - if I'd stayed with my other friends, I'd have more detention slips to my name than GCSEs.
My tutor was also an amazing woman. She was way better than Ms Jones in some ways, and we were close and used to talk a lot. Her and my mum were friendly too. She gave me more support than I really needed, and I loved her as my teacher. Brilliant woman. My Head of Year was a strong and inspirational woman too. She'd offered many of my year support. She developed cancer, and was quite poorly. She still made the hour train journey and came into school everyday though, because she loved her job and seeing us everyday. There was one time when my whole class was being horrible to my tutor, so I shouted at them and stormed out the classroom. Sure, it was probably a really stupid move, but I was happy knowing that my teachers knew I was on their side. My tutor came up to me in the library that evening, as I spent extra time behind to use the computers (anything to keep me away from home at the time... things weren't so great), and pretty much said she admired me for what I'd said and done, but that I shouldn't let things get to me so much. My Head of Year, who'd heard about what had happened, came up to me in the hallway during an after school thing I was helping with, and said that she was proud of me. I almost cried right there infront of her (I'm almost welling up now).
The week before Christmas in Year 11 was horrible. It started okay. But there was this one morning when things were very, very different. Teachers looked glum, and had been called to an emergency staff meeting. I had a bag full of Christmas cards to give to some of my teachers and friends, so the first thing I did was make my way there to see if I could catch any of the teachers before they went up to their rooms. I was told to wait at my tutor room. About ten minutes later, my whole year was called down to an emergency assembly. Everyone's thinking "what did we do THIS time?" as we were the worst year to ever walk the halls, and we were a little confused. We all sat down, and one of the teachers at the side just burst into tears and ran out of the hall. By this point, we're panicking. Then we got told the news that our Head of Year had died overnight. Most of the room burst into tears. My heart sank, but I couldn't cry. I didn't believe it. I'd seen her just a few days before, and she looked "okay" for someone in her condition, and I still had her Christmas card to give her in my bag... =(
Rest of the year was a blur of grief and GCSE revision. NRA came, but it kind of sucked. We'd been told of plans for a boat party on the Thames, but that was cancelled. The dance floor was taken up by the popular girls in the school who thought that they were really something, the chocolate fountain tasted like... watered down chocolate crap, and everyone kind of said their goodbyes and left.
EDIT:
College was amazing. Wasn't as great as my secondary school, but I had a lot of fun in those two years. First day was really scary - I'd gone from the top of one school to the bottom of another in what felt like a second. I knew no one. I recognised a few people from my primary school all those years later, and a couple of girls from secondary school though. I wasn't really in the position to go and hang with them though - not only is that the chickening out option, but I didn't see eye to eye with them. I made my friend friend when I was buying some grapes in the cafeteria, a girl from my class. When we first started, my class had twenty-one students in it, and only three of us were girls. So that was scary as well.
But I quickly got along with the boys just as well as I got along with the girls. In fact, I got along with the boys waaay better than the girls (not in a flirty way - just a friend way - years of being a tomboy paid off, haha). We used to go down to this football pitch at lunchtimes with our lunch. The park keeper used to lend us a football. Before we played football, we used to hang out in the swing park area. It's mainly just for kids, but we had fun. One day we had a little too much fun I think, and the park keeper said we couldn't go in there any more, so that's when he started lending us a football. I have many videos on my phone from when we used to go there, most of them consisting of us spinning around on the merry-go-round really fast after we'd had lunch, haha.
One lunch break, my friend saw a girl who he really liked. So we were teasing him. He wanted to badly get up and ask her out, so he was asking us what he should say, if he should or not, if he had stuff in his teeth, etc... and just as he was halfway to her table, this HUGE, HENCH dude came out of nowhere and started talking to her, and gave my friend this really evil look. It was so funny, and we were at the table crying with laughter under the table as he walked back to us. We then got curious as to if this guy was her boyfriend - the look he gave was really protective. So we kind of followed discretely. Eventually, the girl noticed something funny was going on, so we dropped it.
Our lunch times in the second year were much shorter, so we couldn't go to the park. So we used to make our fun on the college grounds, or to and from the shop at lunch time. We started bringing cards in, and playing card games in the cafeteria. It became a trend with everyone else too, and everyone started playing. For some reason, we were cool for playing card games, and we got a lot of people joining us at the table. A few times a week, we were being chatted up by the lower year. Security got annoyed with us eventually because gambling isn't aloud on site... even though it was a harmless card game to us. So we stopped, but sneaked the cards out every now and then.
Stress hit us very much in the last month. There was a week in which I was barely sleeping to get the work done. Full work from 9am to 6pm, not including journey times. Then I'd do more work at home. I was surviving on Subway meal deals and Relentless energy drinks, sleeping a maximum of five hours a night, and by the end of it, my hands were so badly cramped up from all the fast typing AND amount of typing, I considered a change in career plans. The world cup was also on during that week. Yes, England sucked this year, but we were still allowed to have the games going on in the back of the class on a tv or radio. It boosted spirits a little.
Whew... sorry for the long post. I'd make it longer, but gaah. Too much to type and too much to read for you guys (if you're not put of by me or the length lol). ^^;
EDIT: Longest post I think I've done... x.x
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