Hey Sweeties,

Secondary school is a minefield. Of challenge, of change and navigating your way through it all is no mean feat. Primary school is full of innocence and cuteness… Big school for some reason becomes this consuming place of expectation and little about education.

Let’s get one thing straight first though, in England we do not call high school, high school… its secondary school but for blog post title purposes, ‘high school and the teen experience’ sounds good and captures what I want to achieve in this post and what I want you guys to take away. Admittedly I think I hope some younger readers might stumble upon this but equally I hope my older, regular followers read this and acknowledge very similar experiences –if you have, please tell me in the comments!

Ok, here goes.

Being a Young Teen, Growing Up and Sprouting

Until GCSE time, I went through secondary school without any real self-awareness which I think is good. I did what I enjoyed, had a good group of friends, and dressed how I wanted which was mostly out of charity/thrift shops because I wasn’t really into fashion and I liked being a bit different to others. I had a real sense of individuality back then and I like that I was proud to stand for that and be regarded for it. My Mum recently said to me which to be honest I had never really acknowledged, but she said that I was a late developer, and I would totally agree. I was so in love with everything horse related that until year 10 I think I hardly noticed boys or how I really looked. Of course I had crushes but it was nothing more than blushing every time they went past me, and with my appearance I was probably more attractive than I thought I was but on the whole I was care-free as they say.

The only thing I do remember suffering though during the early part of Secondary school is being bullied for not shaving my legs. This was I think in years 8 or 9, maybe earlier to be honest, and a group of spiteful bitches (even some boys joined in too unfortunately) found themselves staring at my legs long enough to notice they still had hair on them. I until this point had never even considered my legs needed shaving; I was like 13 or something, why should I have done? But this group taunted me for ages about them at any opportunity until I eventually told my Mum who wrote a letter to my Head of Year who dealt with it. This same group I think also taunted me one day when I wore a flower accessory in my hair, loads of other girls in my year wore similar but mine apparently looked as though I had a flower growing out of my head. Honestly, I look back on this now and I just can’t help but think what a sad bunch of twats they were. Fortunately I declined all their friend requests on Facebook in later years but there will be people from my school reading this that know exactly who these pathetic individuals are.

I will also add that at this time I also had to give up swimming. My legs I could ignore, hairs sprouting down the side of my swimming costume, you know, down there, I couldn’t. I was round my friends’ house one time and quite at random, they wanted to go swimming. I didn’t have my costume with me so they offered me theirs, you know, the high cut type. I had to pretend I didn’t want to go which was a nightmare to get out of but I couldn’t say the truth could I?!

These early years on the whole though despite hair and pube issues were all about being naïve, playing in fields and having sleepovers… just how they should be!

Boys

My first boyfriend was in year 7 and we lasted a year, but it was innocent and grounded by friendship which is exactly how it should have been. Holding hands was HUGE in front of parents and kissing was considered a ‘stage’ in the relationship… I remember that it was months before we properly tried snogging and that saw us lip-locked for the remaining months. But it was fun, we just hung out, went swimming and he spent lots of time with my brothers on the PlayStation!

I got with my first proper boyfriend when I was in year 10 because it was cool to have one but on reflection, he did nothing for my self- esteem and my insecurities plummeted, primarily because I always felt there were other girls he would prefer to be with and I did things (ya’ know, THINGS) because it was expected and a measure on your relationship rather than actually wanting to. After about 8 months Boyfriend later went off with one of my best friends, a mere 3 weeks after we broke up which I outrageously predicted to the day to friends in hysterics at the time of ‘the dumping’. Of course I am not stupid and expected things between them both had started long before I knew about it but for a teen to suffer being dumped and stabbed in the back by your best friend is pretty much at the top of the scale in regards to worst things to happen (remember we’re talking for a teenager here). Following this episode I spiralled into depression that I got sucked into throughout 6th form and on and off for several years after and something that I am never truly rid of to this day. (If you want me to talk more about my experiences of depression then please request it in the comments, I am happy to talk about it should there be demand).

Let me just be clear though, it wasn’t this boyfriend that kicked off depression (which by the way is a genetic strain), it was my lack of self-confidence, my deepening insecurities, the weight of peer pressure and watching my body change and trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life that got too much for me and rather than fight through it I went instead to a very dark place which must have been horrible for my parents to see, particularly my Mum.

Deciding the Future

You should not be expected to know who you are when in secondary school, nor are you expected to know what you want, what you want to be, do and go. Secondary school opens up a lot of questions, but stupidly expects you to answer them while you are there. Things like what to do beyond GCSE’s and A-Level’s… for me, for many years I wanted to go to art college and be a designer, I was absolutely convinced of this and in every tutor-student review/appraisal thing this is what I said I was going to do. I figured though it would still be a good idea to do my A-Levels for back up… but my tutor didn’t agree. He said that I was probably only going to scrape through my GCSE’s so I should just toddle off to Art College and forget A-Levels. I am sure he didn’t mean it as bad as I heard it but that session has never ever left me and for years following, everything I did I felt I had to do in order to prove myself rather than do them because I knew I could. For an insecure teenager to lose the belief of someone you confided in and trusted, there are no words really at how damaging that is.

My writing came to me during 6^th form (yes I passed all 9 of my GCSE’s with 8 of the grades achieving a B or C, stick that in your pipe and smoke it!!), I abandoned the idea of art college following the fees going up at the time and I asked my Dad if I really needed to go, he said I didn’t… so I didn’t. I could’ve gone to University and pursued English or Creative Writing but I figured if I wanted to write, I needed things to write about and spending three years in a classroom didn’t for me seem to be an appropriate solution to this. Of course now I appreciate the value of attending University but at the time it was completely not what I wanted to do and I am glad I stuck with that. Attending University in later life was though the best decision I have ever made for myself (read about that experience here).

…But imagine if I had listened to my tutor all those years ago and did just abandon any thought of doing my A-levels for fear I wasn’t going to do well in my GCSEs and just toddled off to Art College. Where would my life have gone then? Mental!

But that’s why you need to be true to yourself, your abilities and your ambitions. If you want to do something, whether that is now or in the future, you do it/them because you want to and when you’re ready. How many people/friends do you know that went straight to University after college because it was the expected thing to do, and now realise that if they had waited and/or spent a bit more time being allowed to work out what they wanted to do they would have done something completely different? Probably lots! But this whole aspect of being ready in your own time is the one thing that should be injected into young people, why do teenagers do things and make others do things that are simply beyond their years for the sake of looking older? What on earth is the rush? Earlier I mentioned I did things with a boyfriend… I didn’t do them because I wanted to; I did them because it was expected.

But f*** me I am so glad that social media and the internet didn’t exist when I was at school, well of course the internet existed but nothing like the scale it exists at now! I cannot imagine what life must be like for teens today. On the one hand I think it’s tougher, but on the other there is so much information, channels for advice and communities outside of your immediate friendship group to join that maybe it’s not as bad as I think it is. Boy band crushes are on a much larger scale… but they are still there as they were in mine, but 21^st century fandom is something else! You young things have One Direction, I had A1, 5ive and for me particularly, Hanson and later, Mark Owen!

I am sure –if you have read this far- are asking how this relates to my high school experience, but all of the above happened while I was at high (ok, secondary) school. These pressures, the changing of your body, of friendships, of boys, of life it happens in that place which so many people look back on and despite it being such a small chapter of life, it is one of the most significant. A person flourishes and becomes themselves in the years following so if I have some advice for modern teens of today it’s this:

“Be yourself and listen to your mind, if you’re not ready for something -and that can be anything- don’t succumb to it because your friends say you should. They are not your friends. Allow yourself to fall crazily in lust with boy bands, its normal to! You have enough shit going on in your life to worry about what others think and have them dictate how you are and should be. And remember, even if something seems bad, there are always other options, other paths and people waiting to steer you right. And don’t diet, you’re growing, your body needs food… but equally don’t go crazy in Krispy Kreme, there are limits! If you want a role model on fashion, beauty and lifestyle, watch YouTube, particularly Zoella, I wish I had advice on ways to do my hair, make-up and fashion back then. But most importantly, do what feels right to you!”

Until next time x