I was on the computer yesterday preparing for a job interview tomorrow and also reporting my details with Centrelink for unemployment benefits.
I couldn't resist a tongue-in-cheek observation in my "Dole Diary" that records positions applied for. I emailed off for a job as a stable hand, and noted to myself that "I'd be doing what my teachers always said I'd end up doing!" (i.e., shovelling, err, horse exhaust)
It struck me that my current situation is kind of the opposite of the sort of thing my high school would be proud of. I went to one of Victoria's flagship government schools, Melbourne High School (it would be my 20 year class reunion this year, now that I think about it).
It's the sort of place that attaches a huge amount of importance to how well its former students do as captains of industry or as eminent doctors or lawyers or as leaders in government and so on and so on. The flipside to this is that it's rather exclusionary for anyone whose life has gone in a different direction*. This is one of the reasons why I let my membership in the Old Boys' Association lapse over a decade ago: the massively self-congratulatory attitude of everyone connected with it.
It's also the reason why I don't refer to going there as part of my past unless I have to (as far as Facebook is concerned, for example, my high school was Rosebud Secondary College, where I went until I was 13).
What about you good people? Do you retain links with your high school? Or have you taken your life in a different direction to what was expected of you?
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* That said, it's not hard to understand why it doesn't draw attention to its most notorious former student, Victoria's premier rampage killer and general nutcase Julian Knight.
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