What I wish I’d known before I went to an all girls school
Let’s set the scene. A small, spotty 11 year-old with glasses, and braces to complete the look, enters an all girls catholic school with no idea about the absolute horror in which she was about to be subjected to.
For six and a half years I attended a convent school in Croydon, known mostly for its garish blue uniform which closely resembled that of ‘The Smurfs’. Like most parents, they wanted me to go to the best school in the area. But, like most parents, they do not experience first hand what happens inside the walls. On one hand, imagine a class of 30 girls aged around 12, all syncing up and with moody teenage hormones in the mix. On the other hand, imagine a lion’s den, with 10 hungry lions and 20 deer with no legs. Now put your hands together and clap them ferociously until you feel like your hands are going to fall off.
Most girls on their own can be really lovely and fun. However, in groups or “squads”, they are a completely different story and I think the behaviour of mob mentality can be used here. Mixed with puberty and hormones all over the place, the locker room at my school was like a paintball arena. But instead of paintballs, people shot evil looks and snide comments that made you want to crawl into a locker and never come out.
Much like the film ‘Mean Girls’, the school was split into cliques who each contributed something to the year group. Our year group had already been given the label by teachers as the worst year group they had so far (big mistake) and therefore subconsciously there was something to live up to. I witnessed many fights over girls who had slept with other people’s boyfriends, girls who had lost their virginity in year 9 and blamed it on someone else and girls who simply just liked to stir the big fat pot and see people suffer.
One way of doing this was the deadly and inescapable plague: ‘The Rumour’. Rumours included girls sniffing glue, licking trees and every so often the one about someone doing indecent acts in public places. Of course, most of these were pure figments of the imagination. However, when a rumour went round, it was like reading the front page of ‘The Sun’; you didn’t want to believe it but something about the headline draws you in.
Everything was done underground and behind backs and I certainly spent most of secondary school completely paranoid about who I could trust which, to this day, still remains my biggest downfall. One day someone would be your best friend and the next day they were bitching about how you didn’t answer their BBM message for over an hour or god forbid you were texting a boy.
In teenage years, high school is everything and you feel like there is nothing after it and basically your whole life is decided there. But the fact is, the people you meet there are mostly transitional and that if someone calls you a “slut” or a “nerd” or a “freak”, chances are you’re not and that label isn’t going to follow you forever. But, of course, this is all realised in retrospect when the damage has already been done. Everyone’s experience is different of course and some people would argue that being at an all girls school made them the person they are today. Well yes, it builds character to a certain extent but not before it breaks you down into a crumbled human to then build you up into a duplicate of the strongest characters. In this case, Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest can be aptly used and I can say 100% that I was ruined by the all girls school experience.
