“Excuse me, where do you think you’re going?” I’m not sticking around here, that’s for sure! These were the words from my year 10 math teacher asked as I collected my stuff and walked out the door. I wasn’t coming back to this hellhole and that exit from the classroom was absolutely liberating! It was the first semester and I new I was done. Leading up to this was a test that was placed on my desk. I glanced over it and I realised I didn’t know a single answer to even one question. It was gibberish. It wasn’t just math’s I was failing at in fashion, it was every subject. I had zero interest in learning the bullshit curriculum and I didn’t partake in any attention in class and out. I didn’t do a single hours worth of homework during my six months at this high school other than art class.
My time here was awful. I moved schools from Bendigo to enroll in this school in Frankston. It felt like a million miles away. I left behind a collection of good mates and my status as a reasonably ‘popular’ student amongs the peer group I hung out with. I was now in this foreign school where I didn’t know a single soul. I was by myself. There was a small group of people that I would spend some of my time around as this looked better than me being completely alone but these people weren’t my peoples. I don’t place blame on anyone other than myself. I wasn’t the type to make new friends easily. They were people I used just to be apart of some ‘social’ group. On my first day of school I was allocated two students to show me the ropes. I could immediately see that these guys were the school outcasts and not in a cool way. They were the unpopular kids of the school who had only a few more friends then I and I had zero. They were nice enough guys but they weren’t the type to smoke dope and listen to the music I was into, two of the necessary factors in people I wanted to associate with at the time.
It was at this later stage of my time at this school that I started to not show up at all. I would dress in my uniform and make the walk there but never quite made it all the way. Both of my parents worked during the day so I would turn around and return home to an empty house, listen to my antiestablishment music, smoke and drink. These were some dark times for me. I was 16 and I was suicidal. I don’t say that lightly.
Walking out of that math’s class was the best move I ever made. I cannot describe what a relief it was to remove myself from that situation. Sure, I was a high school dropout but this didn’t phase me in the slightest. After a brief period of not attending school and doing nothing else with my time except work on art projects, I increased my hours at Maccas and Coles and then enrolled in a two year diploma course at the Melbourne School of Art in the city which in contrast to high school was the best period of my life. I wrote a previous blog on my employment post high school here. I will do a blog on my experience at art school as my next post.
Do I have any regrets about being a high school dropout and not doing VCE? Nope. Getting my diploma was much more beneficial and opened more doors than VCE ever would. At my age it is not even necessary to put these details on a resume. The employer doesn’t care what you did 25 years ago. VCE is irrelevant. I guess because most employers just expect this to be everything one does.