Written by the excellent Jessica Ryan from our blogger team.
No 12-year-old expects that they will be facing their first day of high school waking up in a strange room with curtains for doors and having ten other people getting ready in the same room. Or when you attend the high school in your small town and out of the blue your parents decide you will be better off being a boarder. So, to begin your fourth year, you’re having to make yourself feel at home in a strange room and fit in with the girls who have been living together for three years and have their routines and their little groups.
At the end of my third year of high school, Mum and Dad sent myself and my sister to Albury, for boarding school. Even though Albury is only a three hour drive away, to a 15-year-old, three hours quickly began to feel like half a world. The first thing we had to do when leaving home was pack pretty much everything in our room, as we were away for the next two and a half months. When I got to Albury, I was guided to my dorm room and into my little ‘cubicle’; it had a curtain for a door and a bed, desk and hanging cupboard.
The first couple weeks were tough. I got extremely homesick. All I wanted to do was go home, yet that wasn’t happening for another two and a half months. For a little while I just tagged along with my ‘buddy’ sitting with her friends, and the only times I spoke were when I was asked a question. The small talk and minimal communication with people made me miss my friends back home even more. I felt so nervous and scared that people wouldn’t like me, because of this I hid in my ‘shell’ and behind a façade which made making friends harder. After a while I built up enough courage to talk to people in my year. I began to make friends quicker than I anticipated and life got a little easier.
School has never been easy for me, being away from home all the time. Some friends just drifted away, especially the ones who I used to go school with, but that’s just life. Being at boarding school gives a lot of opportunities. I have become extremely independent and I am more resilient to curveballs that can be thrown at me. However, for my mum, she hates that – sometimes she wants to do a lot of things for me, so she reassures herself that I am still her little girl.
I have also learnt that confidence doesn’t have to be completely real. That ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ is one of the biggest mantras that I have come to relate to. Although, always be careful that the faking it part isn’t making it. I also still get homesick: I love home, my cat, dogs, Mum and Dad. Especially my own bed. I have gone overseas on school camps and have been able to play sports and continue my music and progress so much more than what I was at home.
Now I’m still here finishing Year 12. I learnt a lot over the past few years, Year 12 has taught me the most. I realised that whenever I go somewhere, I get so scared that the people I’m with won’t like who I am, and therefore, I act like someone I’m not. I played soccer for twelve years of my life, and yet every time I walk on to the field to play a game, no matter where we are playing, I stand tall and I don’t ever back down. My dad said to me at the beginning of the year,
“Be who you are on the soccer field.”
That girl would never hide away and always stands up to hold her ground. Boarding school is just another small challenge that I will face in my life, like so many other people.