This is me not long after I left high school. All that lovely long hair that now a days I don't have. Far too much hard work to look after.
I loved my 6 years of high school between 1966 and 1971. Now that may sound quite mad to some of you but it is true. School was fun for me and I even enjoyed doing exams. I viewed them as a challenge to see how well I could do with the minimum of study. I am proud to say that I did pretty well in most of my exams even though I hardly studied much. I have a pretty good memory so I think that helped plus if you enjoy doing something you can usually do well. I can recall several school reports that the teachers had written “can do better” or something along those lines. The way I looked at it then was “sure I can do better but I would rather just do enough to get through”.
My maths teacher, Mr Wilson, whom I had for the entire 6 years, said I had an attitude problem. Oh well, from his point of view I probably did but if you look at maths from my perspective, I was trying to cram into my brain all that obscure mathematical information that I was never going to use once I had left school like X equals Y squared, sine, cosine, tangents, algebra, etc. see, I have forgotten it already. As soon as he started talking about these things in the class room my eyes would glaze over and I would start to daydream.
It all came to a head when I did my trial HSC and scored 8.5 out of 120. Mr Wilson reprimanded me for achieving such a low mark but do you know; I didn’t even get the lowest score in the class that time. No siree, there were two more fellow maths delinquents that scored even less than I did. I told Mr Wilson that as far as I could tell, when I left school, all I was ever going to use was adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing and the rest of it would be of no use to me so why waste my time trying to learn it all. Well, in hindsight that was probably not the best thing to say to a person whose whole teaching life was devoted to mathematics but it was the truth and, my friends, I have been proved about 98% correct over the years.
I took up playing the guitar in 1970 and that seriously affected my studies. I can’t remember just how the guitar came into my life but I do remember being so keen to learn to play that I did very little else for 18 months. I bought myself a Fender acoustic with nylon strings at a music shop in Penrith for $60. In 1970 that was a lot of money and of course being a Fender (I had no idea that it was a good brand at the time) it sounded great. I still have it and it is in pretty good condition as I hardly play it these days so it would have to be worth a bit I would think. Anyway, I digress…..
When the time finally arrived for me to do the HSC, it was evident after the whole thing was over that I had spent too much time playing guitar and not enough studying. My two favourite subjects were Industrial Arts and Indonesian and I romped in with a 2nd level pass for each. With maths I was extremely lucky and scraped in at the lowest pass level, along with science and English (3rd level) but when it came to Geography, and I have no idea at all why, but I only just failed it. In fact, I applied for a remark in the new year but still did not manage to scrape a pass. Now this was not good news as at the time my Aunt Jane (Dad’s sister) was a geography teacher so I felt like an idiot.
I must mention Industrial Arts now which was a combination of tech drawing, woodwork and metalwork. I had done tech drawing for the 3 years prior to getting into 5th form and adored it. I even managed to top the class in 2nd form which was no mean feat. There were only 4 girls at my school doing the subject and about 100 boys and to come top of the class and beat all the boys was a real feather in my cap. Once we got into 5th and 6th form tech drawing became Industrial Arts and I was the only girl in school studying that. What I didn’t realise until the class did an excursion to Ultimo Tech during 1971, was that not only was I the only girl in Nepean High, I was the only girl in the State studying Industrial Arts. A gathering of Industrial Arts students from various high schools in NSW turned up for this event at Ultimo and I was the only girl. Far from feeling the odd one out, I felt so proud to be one of a kind. At the time I had ambitions of studying Architecture but that, as they say, is another story.
On the last day of high school it is traditional for the senior class to play pranks and misbehave a little. These days some pupils take it to extremes and the police have to be called in but back in 1971 the most outrageous thing our class took part in was to swap uniforms. The girls uniform was a light blue shift dress and the boys wore grey trousers or shorts and a light blue shirt. About a dozen of us met up before school in one of the parks and swapped clothes. My God it was so funny. I have some B&W photos of a few of the boys in our little shift dresses and witches breeches peeking out from underneath.
Witches breeches, did you have some of these? I had 2 pair that I can recall. One was red with black lace and the other blue with white lace. For those who don’t have any idea what I am talking about, witches breeches were underwear, a type of shorts made from a satin type of fabric and the legs trimmed with several rows of lace. Think bicycle shorts but not as tight. Anyway they were high fashion in the early 70s amongst school girls and were worn over your pantyhose. Cool!
Ah, those memories. I had fun at high school but after my HSC results I had to revise my career choice because, as luck would have it, I didn’t get a big enough pass in Maths to do Architecture and in fact, I didn’t get enough marks to get into Uni. The moral of the story is; Mr Wilson just may have been right after all. Oh well.
Just what I did do after I left school is a whole other story. Until next time, take it easy.
My maths teacher, Mr Wilson, whom I had for the entire 6 years, said I had an attitude problem. Oh well, from his point of view I probably did but if you look at maths from my perspective, I was trying to cram into my brain all that obscure mathematical information that I was never going to use once I had left school like X equals Y squared, sine, cosine, tangents, algebra, etc. see, I have forgotten it already. As soon as he started talking about these things in the class room my eyes would glaze over and I would start to daydream.
It all came to a head when I did my trial HSC and scored 8.5 out of 120. Mr Wilson reprimanded me for achieving such a low mark but do you know; I didn’t even get the lowest score in the class that time. No siree, there were two more fellow maths delinquents that scored even less than I did. I told Mr Wilson that as far as I could tell, when I left school, all I was ever going to use was adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing and the rest of it would be of no use to me so why waste my time trying to learn it all. Well, in hindsight that was probably not the best thing to say to a person whose whole teaching life was devoted to mathematics but it was the truth and, my friends, I have been proved about 98% correct over the years.
I took up playing the guitar in 1970 and that seriously affected my studies. I can’t remember just how the guitar came into my life but I do remember being so keen to learn to play that I did very little else for 18 months. I bought myself a Fender acoustic with nylon strings at a music shop in Penrith for $60. In 1970 that was a lot of money and of course being a Fender (I had no idea that it was a good brand at the time) it sounded great. I still have it and it is in pretty good condition as I hardly play it these days so it would have to be worth a bit I would think. Anyway, I digress…..
When the time finally arrived for me to do the HSC, it was evident after the whole thing was over that I had spent too much time playing guitar and not enough studying. My two favourite subjects were Industrial Arts and Indonesian and I romped in with a 2nd level pass for each. With maths I was extremely lucky and scraped in at the lowest pass level, along with science and English (3rd level) but when it came to Geography, and I have no idea at all why, but I only just failed it. In fact, I applied for a remark in the new year but still did not manage to scrape a pass. Now this was not good news as at the time my Aunt Jane (Dad’s sister) was a geography teacher so I felt like an idiot.
I must mention Industrial Arts now which was a combination of tech drawing, woodwork and metalwork. I had done tech drawing for the 3 years prior to getting into 5th form and adored it. I even managed to top the class in 2nd form which was no mean feat. There were only 4 girls at my school doing the subject and about 100 boys and to come top of the class and beat all the boys was a real feather in my cap. Once we got into 5th and 6th form tech drawing became Industrial Arts and I was the only girl in school studying that. What I didn’t realise until the class did an excursion to Ultimo Tech during 1971, was that not only was I the only girl in Nepean High, I was the only girl in the State studying Industrial Arts. A gathering of Industrial Arts students from various high schools in NSW turned up for this event at Ultimo and I was the only girl. Far from feeling the odd one out, I felt so proud to be one of a kind. At the time I had ambitions of studying Architecture but that, as they say, is another story.
On the last day of high school it is traditional for the senior class to play pranks and misbehave a little. These days some pupils take it to extremes and the police have to be called in but back in 1971 the most outrageous thing our class took part in was to swap uniforms. The girls uniform was a light blue shift dress and the boys wore grey trousers or shorts and a light blue shirt. About a dozen of us met up before school in one of the parks and swapped clothes. My God it was so funny. I have some B&W photos of a few of the boys in our little shift dresses and witches breeches peeking out from underneath.
Witches breeches, did you have some of these? I had 2 pair that I can recall. One was red with black lace and the other blue with white lace. For those who don’t have any idea what I am talking about, witches breeches were underwear, a type of shorts made from a satin type of fabric and the legs trimmed with several rows of lace. Think bicycle shorts but not as tight. Anyway they were high fashion in the early 70s amongst school girls and were worn over your pantyhose. Cool!
Ah, those memories. I had fun at high school but after my HSC results I had to revise my career choice because, as luck would have it, I didn’t get a big enough pass in Maths to do Architecture and in fact, I didn’t get enough marks to get into Uni. The moral of the story is; Mr Wilson just may have been right after all. Oh well.
Just what I did do after I left school is a whole other story. Until next time, take it easy.
No comments:
Post a Comment