TheBanyanTree: High school reunions

[Roger Pye]

As usual I am way behind with TBT, my only excuse being that the first two 
weeks of April we were in Singapore and then Paris on holiday, the last two 
weeks I was evilly crook at home and this weeks I have been inspecting a 
farm 4 hours drive away which has a huge blackberry problem - 500 acres of 
them!

Anyhoo, way back in the fifties when I was working up to taking the General 
Certificate of Education which in those days in England one sat at 16 years 
of age and probably still do, I have to say I was not very conscientious 
about it, knowing full well that should I do badly I could always repeat 
the study the following year. As might be predicted, of the five subjects I 
sat the exams for at Eccles Grammar School, I passed in two - English 
Language and French. (Of these, the first has been enhanced through being 
in Oz for almost 40 years, and what remains of the latter came in very 
handy last month!)

Well, there was always next year, wastn't there? Ah, the innocence of 
youth!! A month after I received the results my father died and I had to 
leave school and get a job to support my mother. Such is life that 19 years 
would pass and I would be on the other side of the world before the 'second 
chance' actually came to pass. In 1974 I studied, sat and passed HSC at 
Dickson College, Canberra, as a mature age student, in three subjects - 
English Literature, Modern History and General Studies. The major 
difference between this year of study and my English grammar school years 
is that I enjoyed every minute of it.

Incidentally, I was invited to an EGS reunion two years ago. Interestingly 
the school ceased to exist in the sixties or seventies but the reunions 
happen every year or so just the same. Needless to say, I suppose, I didn't 
attend.

roger



PJMoney wrote:
> If I had stayed at high school, in the normal way, till the end, I would
> have done the *HSC in 1968.  But I didn't stay.  I dropped out the year
> before.  When one is miserable at home staying on at school seems to offer
> nothing but compounded misery.  At least being in employment offers the
> probability of the possibility of an escape to something better.
>