Sydney Life

Remember that feeling of exclusion and rejection you felt when you weren't picked immediately for the netball team at school? (For those vertically-blessed and athletically capable people reading, spare a thought for the rest of the world.) Remember the sinking feeling you experienced when you knew that everyone else had been invited to a birthday party, and it seemed like you were the only one who hadn't been?

That's just how I felt when I sat down for my first Media lecture at uni, and began chatting to a girl named Claire...

This, of course, was my second day at uni, technically. But it was the first day I had attended classes (if you remember, I couldn't find my way out of the station on the first day.)

So I was a little nervous.

I walked in and expected everyone to be as apprehensive as I was. I half-expected that I would be the person to break the ice - that I'd come forth into the parted crowd and tell everyone to mingle and be merry. I then envisaged myself as something of a Social Director for the Media and Communications department, staging formals and cocktail parties and fun-filled lunchtime soccer matches.

But a funny thing happened when I walked into the History Lecture Theatre (which, confusingly, I have only been in for English and Media classes, never History.)

Everybody knew each other!

Startled, I took my place next to a red-haired young lady who told me her name was Claire. She seemed very confident, and immediately after asking me my name, she asked me where I had gone to school.

When I replied, she asked me which suburb my school was in.

Poor Claire - she almost choked. But she smiled politely and pressed on.

Was it a private school, she wanted to know.

Nope, it was a Catholic school.

At this, she nodded sagely and went on to tell me about her own school, which happened to be private, in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs and very, very well-known to everybody except me. I think I may have tried to correct her pronunciation of the school's name at one point, but my memory doesn't serve me that well.

This kind of discussion repeated itself in basically all of my first-year lectures. I had this uncanny knack of sitting next to people who thought that going to private school was a bit like going to the beach if you lived in Australia. They were there, why not use them?

After a while, I started to get wildly jealous of these people, who all seemed to have nicknames or acronyms for their schools. There were the PLC girls and the Grammar boys (who I thought were from Knox...), Alo's (what the? It sounded like a man's name, or a greeting in a Cockney accent, not a school!), Riverview (wasn't it called St. Ignatius? How confusing to have two names...), Monte girls (who insisted on never finishing the name of the school when they told you...) and those who chose to cut the "St" from the beginning of their school's name: Clare's, Catherine's, Patrick's and Scholastica's.

I just couldn't understand why it was so important that they knew where everybody had been to school - we were all at uni now, what did it matter? And more pertinent in my mind was the fact that we had all managed to get into the same course: so our schools, no matter where we went, must have been doing something right.

Now, don't misunderstand me, I have nothing against private schools. Most of my friends went to private schools and they are nothing if not the loveliest people you'll ever meet. But when I started uni, I felt like I was wearing a mini-skirted wedding dress and sporting bright purple hair: very, very conspicuous. It seemed like everybody else seemed to know each other through six degrees, and I was the only one who wasn't an 'Old Girl.'

Luckily, after first year, people (myself included!) start to realise that high schools are a distant memory, and that uni is about more than continuing your days of glory in Year 12. Isn't that the greatest thing about uni? That you get to meet so many new people, from all corners of Sydney (and for that matter, the world) and from all types of schools? It's the world's cheapest Rent-a-Crowd!

While I've only ever met one person at uni who knew where my high school was and recognised the name immediately (it was Brendon, and he only knew because we used to debate against each other!) no one really cared. After they got over their compulsion to ask, they couldn't do a lot with the information they had (particularly in my case, as they wouldn't have known anyone in my grad class!)

Nowadays, I have friends who went to all kinds of schools: I even know a girl from my Philosophy class who was home-schooled. There are others who have never told me where they went to school because I've never asked. It's just not important.

I think I know why first years ask about this: my guess is that it's the one thing we're sure we have in common. So this year, might I suggest you guys try a different approach? Try pointing out how hot their shoes are, or asking them where they got their highlighters. Tell them all about your family trip to Aunt Grace's at Christmas, and wait for corresponding stories. If panic strikes and you can't think of anything, go armed with Chupa-Chups and woo them with sugar. Works a treat, believe me.