Holly Bourne 

Top 10 horrible social rites of passage at school

Does our time at secondary school really mark us for life? Holly Bourne sought to answer the question as she researched her book The Manifesto On How To Be Interesting. The answer is you'll probably survive – but there will be hurdles and here are 10 of the very worst
  
  

MEAN GIRLS
Queen Bee (played by Rachel McAdams, second from the right), the villain of the 2004 hit movie Mean Girls, expertly portrayed the art of freezing out. And it wasn't very nice at all. Photograph: Allstar Collection/PARAMOUNT Photograph: Allstar/PARAMOUNT/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Secondary school as a very concept is unnatural. You're going through puberty, that's enough to be getting on with, thank you very much. Why then forcibly stuff you into a building with hundreds of others suffering the same agony, and then expect you to understand algebra?
When I was researching my book, The Manifesto On How To Be Interesting , I wanted to answer one question: Does our time at secondary school mark us for life? I waded through numerous psychology studies but, more effective than anything else, I just asked everyone I knew "What was school like for you?" I found that the cruelty/humiliation/awkwardness/general-sense-you're-doing-it-all-wrong was pretty universal, no matter how popular you were. There's just this obligatory awfulness you have to slog through – along with everyone else – before you turn out roughly OK.

1. The unrequited love

There is no love as pure and as exquisitely painful as that of the unrequited variety. And inevitably during adolescence, with your hormones all a-raging, your heart is bound to fall for someone unattainable. Whether that's because they're the only good-looking one in school and therefore you'd have to fight off an entire year group for the chance to snog them, or they're a pop star who doesn't even know you exist. Either way, there is no force as crushing as a secondary school crush.

2. Where did "that" rumour come from?

You have to give teenagers credit for the creative cornucopia of savage rumours they make up about each other. When I asked friends what rumours they'd heard about themselves in school, they ranged from, "Apparently I worshipped the devil", to "Everyone said I had crabs even though I hadn't ever kissed a boy".

And me? I still remember the utter confusion I felt in Year Eight, when I heard I'd contracted rabies off my hamster.

3. Absolutely everything about PE lessons

There should be a special place in Hell reserved for PE teachers who make their students pick teams. There is no sinking feeling like the ball hitting the post in netball, no humiliation greater than coming last in the school cross-country run, or knocking the stick off the high-jump with your totally incapable body.

And even if you were one of *those* who could catch a ball and run the 100m hurdles without it looking like an oversized game of emotionally-scarring dominoes, there was still the PE changing rooms to fear. Who's grown boobs? Whose grown bum fluff where? All could see, as we cowered in the communal showers, hiding our bodies as best we could. Leading me to...

4. …Puberty's general bad timing

Your body is doing weird stuff. Daily. And yet you have to sit in a building full of your peers. Daily. Unfortunate trouser bulges just as the bell rings are a shameful by-product. Or getting your period halfway through a SATs exam. Or your boobs growing three years before everyone else's, three times bigger than everyone else's. Or not at all. And we've not even covered the sweating, and the spots, and the voice-breaking, and the greasy hair, and all the other stuff that should be an excuse for never leaving the house – and yet you're forced to share it at school, with people who point and laugh.

5. Accidentally calling your teacher "mum"

It's a tad more socially forgivable in primary school, and even though it's just as easy a mistake to make in secondary school, it becomes The Funniest Thing That's Ever Happened – unless, of course, it's you who just said it.

6. Your friends freezing you out for no reason

Yesterday you were mates. Today, you have come into school as normal and none of them will talk to you. You spend the following hours/days/weeks in utter confusion, trying to work out what the heck you did. This isn't helped by them helpfully giggling and pointing at you as sit alone in the canteen, or whispering 'You KNOW what you did' . This torture only stops when one of them approaches you, blames it on another group member, and so you start freezing that person out instead.

7. Being rejected at the school disco

You build it up in your head. Maybe this much anticipated night will be the night you're noticed. Maybe, this year, you'll finally be asked to dance by THAT person (see point number one). But, as the evening falls, the slow dances start and yet again you find yourself in the corner, watching everyone else kiss, doing the step-tap-step-tap loner dance of loneliness. Usually to Westlife's "Flying Without Wings", which doesn't really help the situation.

8, The DOOM that is mufti day

Oh what a laugh, the staffroom thinks. How LOVELY we are for letting the students wear their own clothes for a day. We may even raise some cash for Comic Relief. Not realising that the moment they announce an upcoming mufti day, they're unleashing a fashion anxiety clusterbomb amongst the students. What do I wear? Will it be wrong? Will I get judged? What do I wear to make a statement about myself as a person? AND WILL I BE THAT ONE STUDENT WHO FORGETS AND TURNS UP IN UNIFORM?!

9. That insult about your appearance that will haunt you for life

The creative abilities of teenagers to concoct horrific nicknames reflecting their classmate's looks would be impressive, if it wasn't also so very damaging. They're usually a combination of two nouns, used to describe an aspect of someone's appearance over which they have no control. Once bestowed, the victim is haunted whenever they look in a mirror for the rest of their lives. "Cucumber boobs", "Chicken legs", "Sweetcorn head" - and in my case at school? "Dead Lady Hair". Ouch ouch ouch.

10. Crying in a toilet cubicle

When it all gets too much, there is always the toilet cubicle to retreat to and cry it out. I personally believe that every nice person in the universe has once blubbed in a school toilet – wiping half the skin off under their nose with the scratchy cheap bog roll in the process. It's something to be proud of really. School does sometimes make you sob, or want to punch walls, or hide away in shame forever, or write really dramatic diary entries – but the leaving assembly does come round eventually, and you may go through some pretty awesome rites of passage too. Like making friends who last a lifetime, having the most fun ever at the back of the school bus, and knowing that if you can get through being picked last in PE, you can get through ANYTHING.

The Manifesto on How To Be Interesting is available in the Guardian bookshop.

 

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