All I Know Now

I wait and will wait every Sunday eagerly for Carrie Hope Fletcher's new blog post on alliknownow.com and I thought that in response to her posts - that I've related to an unbelievable amount - that I'd write my own little sum up of things that I know now that I wish I did six years ago for the stretch of teenage squabbles and mishaps ahead of me.

I wish that I had known that teachers do sometimes get it wrong because that would have made me less angry. I used to get so wound up when a teacher would be overly rude to a kid that genuinely didn't deserve it. If a teacher flipped out because a kid was cocky or rude or naughty, then fair play, but sometimes teachers did get it wrong. Your option may be to complain and this may work, but in my school, despite how much I loved my school and I know I was lucky be in such a lovely place, complaints didn't normally result in a genuine, good outcome. I wish I could have accepted that teachers can be out of order and sometimes, there's no point in getting red-in-the-face about it (unless, of course, it was incredibly bad). Also, teachers don't always listen and automatically assume that they're right. I've been in arguments (not in a sassy-school-kid kind of way, just to get some... "constructive criticism" across!) with teachers because I felt like they said something out of line but every time, I would have been the aggressive school kid just wanting to cause a scene - that really wasn't what it was! I wish I'd have known sometimes to just give up. Sometimes, there was no getting past what they thought was correct and what I knew to be wrong.

I feel like I shouldn't have worried so much about non-school uniform day. Every Thursday night before that Friday once a term I would stare at my wardrobe: "I have nothing to wear....I have nothing to wear!". Ultimately, my friends, no one cared. Everyone else was so caught up in what they were wearing that no one took notice of my new skinny jeans or how I'd worn that top to the cinema with people from school before. We were all in the same shoes, so to speak.

I think that you should let people know when you're upset, allow yourself to realise that your best friend isn't your best friend anymore, that he/she's not who you thought but don't get caught up in arguments that you don't need to. The tiffs that spark over the years of secondary school can be avoided: so avoid them! I think I did well in this and it made me all the more happier! When it comes to not seeing a certain friend or group as much as you used to and you're thinking "well, I wait for her to do something about it", this may not be the right solution. You're preaching one thing and not following it too! You can make an effort too - if you want to see them, that is. Maybe more importantly, I learnt that people change and you don't have to.

I'm in college now and have learnt that you're never going to stop learning sad truths about life. The biggest thing I've learnt is that you're always going to come across mean people; people who don't see past the person staring back at them in their own reflection and people who knock you down for no reason. I've learnt not to get bogged down on little things because of this and know that some people and their actions just aren't worth the time of day. There are always going to be mean people but this does not mean that you need to dread them coming into your life. They suck, you're awesome. End of story.

What I didn't realise and appreciate in my school years was that the memories I was making are some of my treasured memories that make me smile. From this I have learnt to not make days negative by a single event when they were otherwise fantastic.

Pens & Pencils,

The Girl in the Moonlight.