The Old School Tie

The city where I live is one of those places where there are probably only two degrees of separation between any two people that live there. That degree is reduced further when it's between people who've lived here all their lives.

One of the first questions a native of Adelaide will ask is, "What school did you go to?" The question is partly to peg you socially. The other larger part, however, is to determine any mutual acquaintances you might have. And the chances are you will have some.

It's a question I love being asked. I loved my school when I was there and am still proud to have gone there. Every year it plays host to an afternoon tea for its "old girls". At that event, the prefects and house captains from fifty years before talk about their school days. It's always on the first Saturday of August and I've been going now for six years.

For me, the afternoon is an inspiration. I love the school and life stories of these women and I love being back in the school hall. The current women went to the girls' campus of the school before the school was amalgamated in the 1970s. I was in the last group of girls to enrol at the "Girls School". I spent Years 8, 9 and 10 there before we were moved to the "Boys School", completing the three year amalgamation.

It was - and still is - a very academic school. In those days we were streamed and I was in the top stream. There was an expectation of success at and from the school. There was never a sense of girls not being able to do as well as boys. (In fact, those of us in the top stream weren't able to do Home Economics. Hence my aversion to cooking.) The women that speak are testament to that. They often mention that the school motto, "Not for school but for life", stuck with them. They never forgot the school and its lessons and believe their success was because of the education and nurturing they received at high school.

I love their stories because they fill me with a sense of possibility. I look at these women and what they've accomplished and am filled with hope. They're older than me and are replete with life, passion and vibrancy. Rather than feel bitter that I've let my anxiety hold me back in many ways, I hear them speak and feel reassured that there is still much I can do and accomplish. We went to the same school and probably come from similar backgrounds. It's not as though I'm listening to some motivational speaker who's been paid to come and do it. I'm listening to women who sat in the same classrooms, played sports in the same fields and stared at the same school honour boards during assemblies in the same hall as me.

Being in the old school hall and seeing old friends triggers something else, as well. I'm with people who knew me before I was anxious, before I was someone's wife and before I was someone's mother. They simply knew me. I have trouble remembering sometimes who I was and what I was like so it's great to be reminded. Part of me and who I was walks invisibly through the corridors of that school and it's reassuring to get a glimpse of that "angelic rebel" sometimes.