Soft sliders to black brogues

A few weeks ago, an unlikely celebrity graced our lives – ‘Winnie the Wallaby’, who evaded her cage in Glenpark, and escaped into the open forests of Gortin.

Her experience is almost representative of the beginning of the pending school year.

Some teenagers across the country see school as ‘their Gortin’ – a chance to break free from their own personal cage.

During the holidays, maybe they haven’t seen their friends often, or maybe they just got bored over the summer months, and missed the 9am to 3.30pm routine. They can escape to school to socialise, learn about their favourite subjects, and avail themselves of the opportunity to progress academically.

This, however, can be flipped the other way – perhaps school is the cage, and some students, like Winnie, can’t wait to escape.

It’s not difficult to feel trapped in school – we’re forced to go there for six hours a day until we’re 16, and it’s, sort-of, up to us to make it fun.

Some students can’t see that fun side, instead, viewing it as being forced to endure Maths and English and whatever other, apparently, pointless subject they are being put through – counting down the clock until they can escape to freedom.

Throughout last week, secondary pupils across the country donned their uniforms once again, perhaps for the first, or, indeed, the last time.

The start of September is an incredibly ambivalent time for students – some of us love the idea of returning to the 9am-to-3.30pm routine, spending days being productive, and learning about new things.

Others, however, aren’t as fond of this rigid regime, and feel they may learn far more outside of school.

The back-to-school preparations begin almost as early as July, when things like bags, pencil cases, stationery, and other essential items must be purchased.

Later in the summer, uniforms and shoes are bought, and possibly later exchanged for a different size if an unexpected growth spurt has occurred.

These activities are a sign to students that, in a rather ‘Game of Thrones’-esque way – ‘September Is Coming’ – and we must batten down the hatches, sweep the decks, prepare the canons, and get ready for the academic cyclone that is coming in just a few weeks.

Up until mid-August, most students paid little thought to going back to school – all that mattered was results – and for those who aren’t waiting for results this year, they know their day is coming. Now that the results are long gone, we had more time to contemplate what might be happening at the start of this month.

Whilst we choose our own side of the narrative, both sides are equally as valid.

School, in the academic sense, isn’t for everyone. Sure, everyone needs the essential skills we learn during the core subjects, but some would rather be anywhere else than learning about the periodic table or Pythagoras Theorem.

The idea that students can just ‘work harder’ no longer applies – some people just get it, and some don’t.

Students are told to ‘just take an interest’ – the irony is that they have many interests – just not in school.

Academia is not the panacea to lifelong happiness. As I elaborated on last month, there are many routes to this happiness, and the measurement of success is rightfully different for everyone.

Regardless of how you feel about going back to school this month, it’s important to remember that your years in these institutions are over very quickly.

And, as our elders constantly tell us – apparently these days are the best of our lives. I’m not entirely sure if we would all agree with this, but if I’m still writing columns in a decade, I’ll let you know.

So now that ‘Winnie’ is safely back in her ‘cage’, she might realise that she has plenty of freedom, and the need to escape isn’t forefront in her mind; and, indeed, the outside world may be scarier than the safe haven that she now resides in.

Moving from the soft sliders of July and August to the black brogues of September mightn’t be as bad as we once feared.

The ‘cage’ of school might be a bit like Winnie’s… But we could end up with much more freedom and enjoyment than we anticipated.