High school musings

from 2009-10 Sydney (2)

Just for a ring

Elation? Nostalgia? Relief? How would you describe the moment in your life when that final school bell rang, on your very last day of school, and you’d found yourself looking back on the 13-year long journey, wondering where all that time went? The truth, as I have just recently experienced, is a bitter-sweet reality.

It is the high school days in particular that many of us will cherish and remember forever. Six years ago, I took my first small steps into a huge hall, full of boys much older and much bigger than me, almost looking down on me as they carried out the now fairly popular tradition of “clapping in” the new Year 7 students. Everything was a blur, and although the words did not strike me at the time, I now vividly remember the school captain’s words of advice, “You won’t believe me when I say it now, but the next 6 years of your life will go by in a flash ... Do you want to feel regret or satisfaction when you’re standing where I am?” And of course, as he had promised, none of us did believe him at the time. But last week, after being “clapped out” of the school, I found myself repeating these very words to a Year 7 student, taking me back to my first day at the school and what had been said to us then - if only remembering what my maths teacher said came back to me so impulsively!

So, first let’s take a look at the “bitter” half. There are so many things a student reminisces about at this stage of life – but what do we miss most? Memories? But these are supposed to stay with us forever! Our friends – but surely we’ll see them after school, and meet up often (besides, there is always Facebook!) The place? Hey, what’s stopping us from coming back here? After much deliberation I have decided that it is a more collective feeling of loss that we experience. Never again will it be the same group of friends, in the same place at the same time, with so many things uniting us all so tightly – like that unmatchable feeling of school spirit, the six years of memories we have shared in each other’s company, but as a friend recently told me, it is the little things that count. Like, for example, excusing yourself from class to “go to the toilet” (read: escape for five minutes) and meeting another kid along the way – you might not have talked to them in your life, and you probably only know them by sight – but all the same, you will exchange smiles and perhaps, as has become custom in boys’ schools of late, a “high-five”. In university, or even in the big world out there for that matter, smiling at someone you barely know may probably earn you a punch on the jaw. Perhaps you’ll miss that great rush of adrenaline you get when you skip class, opting to go to the local kebab shop instead - after these 6 years, skipping class will only set you back, and there will be no detention notices to complain about with your friends after. As is aptly put in the prescribed HSC English text Bladerunner, “All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain”.

It is not until you reach the twilight days of your school life that you look back and realise what a huge journey has just come to an end. Mathematically speaking (as we have been forced to do for much of the last year), 13 of my 17 years have been spent in school - this equates to more than threequarters of my life up till now! And this brings me, finally, to the “sweet” half – and it is a very generous half as many adults will tell you; this is just the beginning. The orientations are over, the characters have been introduced, now it’s time to write our own plots, resolve all our complications and live happily ever after. The journey is just beginning...

Sri Santoshamatha Jyothish Mandir

Indian Famous Astrologer Pandith Lakshmi Narayana Shasthri

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