nunoncastors

I hated school; loathed it, I think I’d rather have spent my formative years being apprenticed to a craftsman than sitting in the same featureless classrooms day after day. I resented the wasted hours spent in R.E* lessons, the tedium of ‘pretending to be an ice cube’ in Drama; I still have no idea why I had to choose two design and technology classes – or arts and crafts as I tend to think of them – instead of two extra humanities. Woodwork, or whatever the fuck it was called, has been approximately no use to me whereas Spanish, Spanish would have been useful. I’ve been to Spain, I’ve never built a table, I don’t intend to.

I was a disruptive pupil too, largely because I was bored and partially because I was a tit, which is something I regret. Then again, there’s little incentive to pay attention when you’ve just finished reading Catch-22 at home and are being forced through the joys of When the Whales Came because ‘it’s on the curriculum’. It’s not a bad book; it’s just not exactly gripping.

As a result, I never really tried. I can’t say for certain that this frustrated my teachers, but I suspect it did. There’s a certain self-preservation in not putting the effort in when you’re teased for using the word ‘humorous’.

Then there’s the social side of school, the popular kids, the unpopular, the outcasts and all the others. I think it’s perhaps telling that of all the people I knew at school, I’m still in contact with about five. Presumably this reflects badly on me, but I can’t honestly say I regret the way things turned out.

Which makes me sound rather pompous and bitter and, in truth, I probably am. But then again I was the awkward overweight kid, the one who wanted to hang out with the popular people and, on reflection, was a foil for more jokes about size than I care to recall. So it goes.

I imagine I took something positive from school, that there were genuinely good times; I just struggle to think of any from a distance of ten years. I just remember being an obnoxious fat kid who never really settled. Personal bias can be a funny thing.

*Religious Education. Yeah, it’s been really useful.