I spent this morning in bed reading Spud, a book about a kid who encounters havoc while living at a boarding school. To get the book part out of the way, it's brilliant.
The point of mentioning the book is that it drew my line of thought to way back when I was scouting high schools and had the option to board at an out-of-the-city semi-private school, to be technical only if I received a scholarship, which I didn't, but looking back if I pressed the matter and made certain concessions I could have actually gone.
When I think back to my tragic time at the local high school one short bus ride up the hill (but one very long wait for the bus) my immediate thought is that if I could do it all over I would have rather gone to the boarding school.
Firstly because although it sounds snotty I really hated taking the bus; not because I felt like a proletarian but because it was a devastating drain on the amount of time I had at home, and occupied much of my thoughts. I was involved in several extra-curricular activities which all ended at different times. Debating on mondays meant that I finished school at 15:30, which would make me miss the 15:45 bus unless I ran the two kilometres to the bus stop. The next bus usually showed up at 16:30, but occasionally a bus came at 16:05 or slightly later so I kept a constant look out in case I could catch an earlier ride home. This complicated reading, because I needed to look up every few seconds unless someone else was waiting at the bus stop. Tuesdays & Thursdays I did First Aid and finished at 16:30, the next bus was at 17:00. Wednesdays and Fridays school came out an hour earlier than any of the buses so I stayed in the library (in the early years, as a junior I dropped first aid and worked as a student librarian most afternoons) until I could walk down for the 15:15 bus, which was the earliest one with any predictable time pattern.
Needless to say most of my school career was spent waiting for the right time to get to the bus, my constant deadline. I DO NOT work well with deadlines. I get nervous thinking about the ever decreasing amount of time I have left. Rather than motivate me I tend to freak out under the pressure.
The second reason I would have gone to the boarding school is because I am a hopeless PC game addict. I can't really explain it that well... maybe it's because in computer games you actually feel like you're actions have some impact on the world you're living in. Maybe I just like to feel powerful, or brave and heroic and all those things that the real world beats the crap out of.
Yeah, that's probably it. Anyway, I spent almost every moment I could in front of my computer playing games with my brain on 'fuzz' mode. The problem with Virtual Reality, I've since found, is that it takes a vampiric hold over the real world, sucking up time and ensuring that nothing ever gets done, I never developed my social skills or really any other skills because I only really cared about the world past the flickering screen. Trouble is, I realised I didn't want to be that kind of person.
I wanted to care about this world too, and be bold and brave and powerful. Unfortunately, as I said, the real world kicks people like that in the face.
I know that I require a certain degree of forced discipline, and boarding school may have been what I needed. I would have had more time to think of my schoolwork without concentrating on the bus schedule (sounds lame, but it's true) and I would be cut off from my precious virtual reality, forced into the real world, where I might have adapted quicker. If it were that clear cut, it would have been perfect.
I would have spent my days in the library reading books, studying, perhaps even have plucked up the courage to get into a relationship. I can almost feel a happy me in a parallel universe looking back and being thankful for never chasing his emotions to a public school.
Of course, when I look back at who I was when I was thirteen I know I was an arrogant snot rag who learned some important things in high school.
What strikes me with the deepest dread is the books: what if I had never read all the books I read in public school. I'm sitting here thinking that my life would have been a ghastlier horror than Lovecraft could produce if I had never read Herbert, Hardinge, Wooding, or Scott... I would forgo the human beings I met in high school in an instant for a chance to have turned out as a more capable human being, but my books... that would be inconceivable. They shaped me. They are, as only a librarian could say, my true friends.
Anything else that occurred; such as the bus and my PC game addiction, are regrettable, yet my life as is stands as a whole is regrettably unregrettable, because I cannot regret the books I've read.
The point of mentioning the book is that it drew my line of thought to way back when I was scouting high schools and had the option to board at an out-of-the-city semi-private school, to be technical only if I received a scholarship, which I didn't, but looking back if I pressed the matter and made certain concessions I could have actually gone.
When I think back to my tragic time at the local high school one short bus ride up the hill (but one very long wait for the bus) my immediate thought is that if I could do it all over I would have rather gone to the boarding school.
Firstly because although it sounds snotty I really hated taking the bus; not because I felt like a proletarian but because it was a devastating drain on the amount of time I had at home, and occupied much of my thoughts. I was involved in several extra-curricular activities which all ended at different times. Debating on mondays meant that I finished school at 15:30, which would make me miss the 15:45 bus unless I ran the two kilometres to the bus stop. The next bus usually showed up at 16:30, but occasionally a bus came at 16:05 or slightly later so I kept a constant look out in case I could catch an earlier ride home. This complicated reading, because I needed to look up every few seconds unless someone else was waiting at the bus stop. Tuesdays & Thursdays I did First Aid and finished at 16:30, the next bus was at 17:00. Wednesdays and Fridays school came out an hour earlier than any of the buses so I stayed in the library (in the early years, as a junior I dropped first aid and worked as a student librarian most afternoons) until I could walk down for the 15:15 bus, which was the earliest one with any predictable time pattern.
Needless to say most of my school career was spent waiting for the right time to get to the bus, my constant deadline. I DO NOT work well with deadlines. I get nervous thinking about the ever decreasing amount of time I have left. Rather than motivate me I tend to freak out under the pressure.
The second reason I would have gone to the boarding school is because I am a hopeless PC game addict. I can't really explain it that well... maybe it's because in computer games you actually feel like you're actions have some impact on the world you're living in. Maybe I just like to feel powerful, or brave and heroic and all those things that the real world beats the crap out of.
Yeah, that's probably it. Anyway, I spent almost every moment I could in front of my computer playing games with my brain on 'fuzz' mode. The problem with Virtual Reality, I've since found, is that it takes a vampiric hold over the real world, sucking up time and ensuring that nothing ever gets done, I never developed my social skills or really any other skills because I only really cared about the world past the flickering screen. Trouble is, I realised I didn't want to be that kind of person.
I wanted to care about this world too, and be bold and brave and powerful. Unfortunately, as I said, the real world kicks people like that in the face.
I know that I require a certain degree of forced discipline, and boarding school may have been what I needed. I would have had more time to think of my schoolwork without concentrating on the bus schedule (sounds lame, but it's true) and I would be cut off from my precious virtual reality, forced into the real world, where I might have adapted quicker. If it were that clear cut, it would have been perfect.
I would have spent my days in the library reading books, studying, perhaps even have plucked up the courage to get into a relationship. I can almost feel a happy me in a parallel universe looking back and being thankful for never chasing his emotions to a public school.
Of course, when I look back at who I was when I was thirteen I know I was an arrogant snot rag who learned some important things in high school.
What strikes me with the deepest dread is the books: what if I had never read all the books I read in public school. I'm sitting here thinking that my life would have been a ghastlier horror than Lovecraft could produce if I had never read Herbert, Hardinge, Wooding, or Scott... I would forgo the human beings I met in high school in an instant for a chance to have turned out as a more capable human being, but my books... that would be inconceivable. They shaped me. They are, as only a librarian could say, my true friends.
Anything else that occurred; such as the bus and my PC game addiction, are regrettable, yet my life as is stands as a whole is regrettably unregrettable, because I cannot regret the books I've read.
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