If being 14 was like being invisible, being 17 was not. It was like suddenly realising you belonged to this large long-lost family after years of assuming yourself to be an orphan, and upon realising your heritage, relatives become naturally inquisitive, only, the more questions they ask and the more they pry, the more you feel you’re being ripped to shreds by savage dogs, having your identity picked at with their claws and jaws, all the while wishing you were an orphan again as you sit in your new bedroom of your affluent father’s mansion, staring at the intricate furniture that has suddenly been bestowed upon you, all of which is built with the intent of evoking character and feeling but still void of your own soul and love, stroking the emotionless Victorian letter opener and its detailed handle that depicts a seaside forest in Cornwall and the smiling children playing with the sticks, then rubbing its slender and engraved blade, imagining the swift moves you could make to return to your orphan life. That was how it felt to be 17.
Moving up into sixth form meant you became a new species on school grounds. When I was in the lower years, I always looked at the sixth form students with reverence and awe. They were grownups in their own life. They were embarking on a career rather than attending a compulsory education. They were few, and gathered in small sized classes. They were in their own clothes, and yet immaculately dressed. They were elite.
Then, when our turn came, we felt elite. We went out in the summer holidays and bought smart shirts and trendy ties in bulk. The first day, our teachers spoke to us like people rather than students. We were given the freedom of free periods in which we could do some extra research in our very own fancy library, or grab some food from our very own fancy cafeteria. We had our own fancy building and, my oh my, did we feel fancy.
Unfortunately, by about the second week I realised the fanciness was just a masquerade. For all of the teachers big talk about giving us responsibility and treating us like adults, it became quickly apparent that it was very much a teacher/student relationship. Our fancy clothes came under scrutiny and regulations saw the daylight, making us realise that our “own clothes” weren’t actually our own at all, except in the sense that we owned them. After a couple weeks, it was obvious that this was still school.
The one thing that had changed was the dynamic. Since a large amount of the year dropped out or moved to different colleges, the focus was all wrong. There were no ‘celebrities’ anymore; we were not fixated to one set of people that occupied our attention. Instead, due to the fact that there were enough of us to do so, we all paid attention to each other. There wasn’t under growth to hide in anymore. Camouflage washed away. We were all more aware.
The lack of enthusiasm for my courses, particularly due to the fact that I was forced into doing subjects I didn’t enjoy since it was how the timetables worked, mixed with my growing disdain for others in my year who seemed more curious in my life and determined to be influencing factors, meant that I spent a lot of my time not at school. Thankfully I had a good friend who was in each of my lessons; being an outsider to the ‘group’ I belonged to meant that this friend was separated from their interference, and also acted as a reason to turn up to class and learn. However, in my free lessons, I would walk back home, which only ever took 5 minutes.
As this progressed, I began missing morning registrations before my lessons, since I had found they were pointless. We already did registration in our first lesson, I didn’t see why another registration was needed before that. This philosophy bled over and I soon deduced that I could also just not go to one particular lesson called “Critical Thinking” which was a ‘compulsory’ course that was unrecognised by universities, and so therefore pointless. This ‘insubordination’ meant that my form tutor became increasingly cross with me and began sending me many letters telling me I had to see her. Since I didn’t, she employed other tactics.
In the sixth form common room, TV’s had been installed around the room in the various corners. These were used to display slideshows to notify the students of goings on. Sometimes they would feature a daily riddle or fact. After a while, they began flashing the names of those that needed to be seen. They implored students to tell those who were named to see the head of sixth form. They began to detail why these names must be apprehended and spoken to. They resembled a fascist regime that must be avoided and rebelled against. Suddenly, when my name appeared on there, when I became aware via a friend telling me so as I was not in the common room enough to see them, it became a game. It became an adventure like in the movies. Like Blade Runner or The Fugitive. I was Harrison Ford. Teachers and the head would skulk around the common rooms, the hall ways, the various passages of our totalitarian civilisation, and I would feel like I was being hunted. This was the maximum amount of enjoyment I could squeeze from sixth form collage, and so dammit, I was going to milk it.
For me, being 17, aside from the occasional parties at the weekends and general girl drama, was about being spied upon, and being watched. And, like the teenager I was, I turned it into a game. One that eventually got a lot of teachers pissed off with me. I felt like I had found my true rebellious calling. It wasn’t in violence as I had attempted when I was 13. It was in being an elusive and non-compliant nuisance. And it felt good.
PnL.x
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