Sunday morning and like the dutiful school swot that I have become, I pulled open the blinds at the painful time of ten o’ clock in the morning (it’s a weekend, cut me some slack here!) in preparation for my first and probably last experience of the annual not-so-long-awaited senior year history conference. I feel obligated at this point to mention that it was a particular Sunday the day before a nightmare week of five school assessed coursework tasks in as many days, in order to, firstly, emphasise my sacrifice of this inauspicious Sunday afternoon, and secondly, to give myself a chance to whinge about the pressure and the homework load of my last year of school.

Anyway, whingeing aside, the actual process of arriving at the convention centre was a surprisingly painless experience, given my less than perfect track record with maps and directions, the most memorable incident of which culminated in a 3-kilometre detour to a Max Brenner’s that was, in actual fact, a mere half a block away from where we started. Not so funny if you were there. I had by chance stumbled upon the same train as the majority of my fellow school-swotty convention-attending classmates, which prevented me from getting hopelessly lost yet again, and also gave me another chance to bemoan my workload while mercilessly ridiculing the “tests” and “homework” those of them in the year below me were complaining about. (Tests. PAH. I LOOK FORWARD to tests. I ENJOY tests. Wait until those tender hatchings have a five SAC week about to wallop them on the arse. THEN we’ll see who’s complaining about TESTS.) Another coincidence forthcoming, the very next stop after I embarked, a rather fey guy’s school acquaintance got on my carriage (another embarrassing moment when I asked him how uni was going, and he looked at me weirdly and told me he’s in my year, which I should have known but inexplicably did not), and thus ensued a somewhat awkward conversation about his upcoming starring role in a sex education video. Some people get themselves into the weirdest things.

[A digression if I may: that horrid dragon woman has made my syntax sound more like badly translated Latin by every sentence...]

What throws me about seeing school people I don’t know so well out of uniform is how they often turn out to be quite removed from the impressions you have formed about the kind of person they are from your experience of them at school. On the other hand, certain people conform to stereotype like nobody’s business. One particular classmate with a penchant for 15-centimetre platform Mary Janes emitted a rather queer and unfamiliarly odour of a mixture of probably illegal substances when I went to hug her. N says she steals bunny rabbits from pet stores. I’m not surprised.

The conference itself was not half as bad as I had expected from the accounts of others, although I do rather regret bringing in a box of Nerds purchased beforehand at the train station, which went off like maracas at a tribal dance every time I moved my bag even by a fraction, much to the ire of teachers present. L accuses me of flirting with one very nice young lad introduced to us by my history teacher (of all people) as a family friend, on whom I took pity after it appeared that not a single one of his friends had decided to rock up on the afternoon. He was sweet though, and rather tall, and says he plays bass guitar in a band. Isn’t that cute? But talk about robbing the cradle! As if I would put the moves on a guy more than a whole year younger than me! And someone so closely associated with a teacher, no less. Too weird to handle. I can’t help being friendly and the fact that he asked for my e-mail address… or am I just unconsciously flirty? No, seriously – do I unknowingly give out flirty/friendly/look-at-me vibes around guys I don’t know that well? Omigosh, this is really bothering me now – please leave a comment (really, I COMMAND you) and tell me I don’t come across as some poor, lonely Glenn Close bunny-boiling incarnate…

On the other hand, general awkwardness turned into some kind of horrible recurring pattern, with an extremely brief conversation with one former history teacher who has since abandoned us for more money and power at some other good-teacher-stealing private school, and then being cornered by the guest speaker at the break. I’m sure he’s a really nice guy and all, although his other role as a high-up in a certain university, which shall remain unnamed, which has decided to screw us all over with their completely revamped educational model did prompt me to fight the strong internal urge to throttle him. But man, can you say awkward? There is only so much you can say as a lowly student hack about a subject the dude’s spent half of his life writing theses about without sounding either like a simpering idiot or a completely ignorant nong. I think I managed to achieve both. How lovely.

Walking back to the station in the bracing wind after it ended, I suddenly realised how abruptly winter has come upon us. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but the dead leaves on the ground are beginning to rot and my thermal socks and winter doona are looking more appealing by the minute. Temperature highs of 20 degrees have turned into a distant memory again, and that dreary chill that eats at your bones has become a permanent fixture. Another three months of miserable winter blubber gathering to go – thank god for opaque stockings and knee-high boots…

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//2:15 am

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