outgrowing the cage.

Now Playing: Begin Again by Taylor Swift (I've been spending the last eight months thinking all love does is break and burn and end, but on a Wednesday in a cafe I watched it begin again)

I'll never forget the first term of high school.

Actually, I don't think anyone else will, either.

The English HOLA still remembers fondly when I marched up to the English department as a short tubby thirteen year old and spoke of my passion for literature and demanded to skip a grade. I think I'm the first person to do that in his career.

My parents never pretended that the work I was doing in primary school was remotely useful or relevant. My parents never pretended that every crappy art project I brought home could rival Monet and every page of math homework was bringing me closer to a Einstein revelation. I didn't live in that cocoon that the other kids seemed to thrive in, a cocoon in which the grown-ups gave a damn what mark you got on a spelling test or the aesthetic qualities of a hat made out of newspaper and poster paint. I never tried as hard as I could have in primary school, and thank God for that. I kept my sanity.

High school changed my life. I spent the last two years of primary school utterly suffocated. I spent most of year six ill - not life-threateningly sick, just unwell enough to ditch school. The prospect of wasting time there made me hurl. High school was scary and at times very sad - but it was also exciting. For the first time I was criticized, I had to work hard, I had teachers that believed in me and wanted to see me shine as much as I do. I met new people and made new friends - admittedly, I lost most of them, but at least there were people who had interesting things to say and were intelligent and challenged me on an intellectual level. I've grown so much since stumbling into high school in a too-big school skirt and a bag bigger than I was.

But four years later I've got that same restlessness I remember from year seven. I miss getting lost in high school, I miss meeting new people. Everyone looks the same and everything is familiar to the point of irritation. Academically I think I've done the best that I can at a high school level. I want to move onwards and upwards.

But more importantly there is people. I want to meet new people. I'm tired of the dramas of petty playground politics. I'm tired of having all my friendships and relationships stunted and distorted by the pressures and confines of high school. I want more friends and I want new friends and I want more people to look me in the eye and forgive me for being human; those people are kind of thin on the ground in high school. I want to fall in love again, I want to move on and let bygones be bygones. I want to let go of all the little hurts that are amplified and exaggerated by having to spend all day every day in old haunts with old loves. I want my Wednesday in a cafe to give me faith.

Every day when I'm supposed to be giving a damn about WACE which is just going to take all my hard work, fuck it up with standardization and moderation and spew out some number that has no correlation whatsoever to my true abilities and talents, I think about next year. All I want to do is to travel. I want to go to uni. I want to get out of uniform. I want to go out. I want to grow up and fall in love and do something with my life. And I feel like I'm on hold again. All this changing and growing and progress that has been on warp speed since year eight has suddenly come to a grinding halt, and even though the ram has touched the wall I'm trapped.

I knew this moment would happen at some point. Eight years at primary school was about seven years too long. The reason why I skipped a grade was because I wanted to make this pressure point as short as possible, or even avoid it altogether. High school doesn't change; people do. I'm not picking on the system or saying that I'm too good for it, I'm just stating the inevitable.

I've outgrown this cage.