School daze (Repost from wordpress)

I started school in 1972 and  spent many happy years at Carterton School followed by  3 interesting teenage years at Kuranui College before leaving home and school at 16.
I remember really loving my first day of school and most days after that. I was a good student and loved learning to read. My first teacher was Miss Stidolph and as in most small schools you had the same people in every class through to Form 2. (Who still has to work out mentally what the classes are now...Year 1 = Primer 1 etc)

My second year of primary 1973 I'm third from the right in the first row.

I don't remember all my teachers but one does stick in my memory...Mr Penny. He was an army sergeant who went into teaching and he was built like a brick Sh*t house. He had a voice that boomed when yelling at the naughty kids but really had a heart of gold. I had him for two years and its his little sayings that stick in my mind. We used to be called bad budgies or good budgies when we were good or bad, he would threaten to put our heads in the pencil sharpener on his desk (remember those windy handle sharpeners on the teachers desks?) to sharpen them and then threatened to stick our heads in the wall like a drawing pin. He used to make us run around the field if we were getting a bit restless. He passed away about 10 years ago very young leaving a wife and family.

Mr Penny and his lovely students. I'm right in the middle in the green tshirt.

I remember running away from school once because I didn't want to do a maths test, once the seniors found me wandering around the shops I was made to apologise to the whole assembly and the shop keepers who of course all knew me and knew I should be in school! I still had to do the test.

This was the year I ran away. I'm 2nd from the left in the front row.

My parents used to threaten to send me to Solway College if I was naughty. In this photo Joleen Buckeridge beside me with her eyes closed cried when she found out she was going to Solway College. I remember thinking she must be really bad!  I also remember telling a boy I liked him and he threw a chair at me! Luckily it missed.

32 kids in this class! I'm 3rd from the right in the second row.

I loved the curtains in the hall, it had people's names all over it and during my time there we had curtains made for the side windows the same way. I never got my name up but Neil's is on the stage curtains. He was 6 years ahead of me.  My best friends this year were Leanne Allen on the end of the second row with the white head band and Kim Rose in the pink dress in the front row. I still catch up with Leanne these days, we both have two boys though I started a lot later than her, her oldest is at college. We used to car pool to work which was very scary cause we were always late and she is a very scary driver! I remember her telling me she got pulled up going over the speed limit in her mini while taking her petticoat of from under her skirt and she had to quickly take if off before the cop came to the window.

I'm on the left end of row 3

My school report from my last year at primary

My first day of college I missed the bus and freaked out. Mum and Dad were at work and I had no idea how to get there, luckily another student also missed the bus and we got a ride together with her mother. I hated my first week at college, I kept getting lost but eventually got the hang of college and settled in. I quickly found a group of friends, Melanie Salisbury, Jamiee Burns, and Tania Harrison we hung out together at lunch times. I know my first day of college I went to school in a uniform that reached past my knees. It didn't take long to  raise the hem of my skirt!

My first day of college 1981

Kuranui College 1981 I'm 4th from the right in row 2. scary hair girl!

1981 was the year I met Neil and started stalking him (remember that Ree?) I lived across the paddock from him and could see his bedroom, I could see when he got home from work and would ring him straight away. His mum told me to leave him alone once but she loved me really....didn't she? LOL. So my school life was taken up with talking about Neil to my friends and my school work started to slip as it seems to when you are in lust...I mean love!

Kuranui College 1982, I'm 4th from right in 3rd row. Still a scary haircut!

1983 and finally a proper haircut! I took my glasses off for the photo.

1983 was an interesting year for me, my mum and her second husband separated . I stayed with my stepfather to look after my younger siblings who were 6 and 7 at the time. (They didn't like Mums new man so wouldn't go with her). My other sister went Mum so that left 3 of us at home with an alcoholic stepfather. God knows how the courts allowed that to happen. Anyway I also got pregnant that year and had to have a termination. My friends promptly disowned me and I spent the rest of the year by myself in the library or sitting in a corner reading. I was rapt to get a job at McGraths Bookshop in January 84 so I didn't have to return.
I left school with 3 school cert subjects (english, science, human reproductions was my best module!, and home ec) and a bad taste in my mouth.
As always as you get  older you recognise the value of education and I am damn sure that education is wasted on the youth. If I could have my time again I wouldn't have taken french for 3 years, but maori instead, I would have done typing for more than one term and would have done geography as well as history. (I thought Hamilton was near Christchurch for years!) And I would have studied for SC. Oh well all things you can't change.