"7 THINGS! I wish I’d known when I was at school”

Here are this weeks “7 THINGS!”

They say that your school days are the best days of your life and when I first heard that I remember thinking, “I’m in big trouble, because if these are the best and I’m having a really crappy time, how much worse is it going to get?” I think often about my younger self, wandering the field at lunchtime because I didn’t have anyone to talk to or hang out with. I just couldn’t figure out how to be like everyone else and it was… lonely. Yes, it was very lonely. The weeks felt long, and the lunch hour seemed to last for months. Sunday night was for me my own private hell. My nan and grandad would come over and mum would cook a roast. All while my insides churned with anxiety at the fact that in the morning, I would have to leave my refuge and go back into the lion’s den…

1.     NOTHING IS SET IN STONE: You might struggle at school, you might wonder how you are ever going to get out of the blocks, you may have not found your thing! But that’s okay! School is not forever and there is a whole life waiting for you when you finally hang up your school bag and go out into the real world. A wonderful adventure awaits!

2.     EVEN THOSE WHO SEEM TO HAVE IT TOGETHER, OFTEN DON’T… We all now know that even those who appear confident, loud, and loving life, are sometimes not. Chances are there were many pupils feeling exactly as I did, just the some were better at hiding it than others.

3.     EXAMS ARE NEVER AS IMPORTANT AS THEY FEEL ON THE DAY YOU TAKE THEM. Exams - you either love them or loathe them! They can feel like the end of the world when they go wrong, and yet when you’re older, I can almost guarantee that apart from the odd job application, it will be rare that anyone on a daily basis asks, ‘so what did you get in you Geography GCSE?’ – like NEVER! Exams don’t define you! And if that result does bother you – you can retake it whenever you feel like at ANY age!

4.     SCHOOL LIFE IS NOT A MOVIE – don’t think everyone else is living a ‘movie school life’ – there is usually not singing in the dining hall with dancing on the tables. There probably won’t be a queue of gorgeous humans desperate to date you. Your buildings might not look like a Harry Potter set and you might not be making besties for life who you party with at weekends – and that’s okay!

5.     IT ONLY TAKES ONE GOOD TEACHER – to change your life. If you have more than one you are very, very lucky. But all you need is that one person who has faith in you, is patient with you and gives you the feeling that you might just be capable of achieving your dreams – (thank you Mr Green) X

6.     YOU MIGHT NOT FIND YOUR THING UNTIL AFTER SCHOOL – I wrote my first book in my forties, and for years I felt I was rubbish at everything I tried. It’s never too late to find what motivates you, what makes you happy and to go for it!

7.     IT’S NOT FOREVER – even though it can feel like it, your school days will pass, and you have a whole lot more life to live after school than you lived while you were at school – so hold on, school is not the end, it’s just the beginning and when you reach your fifties and look back, you’ll realise that it passed in a blink! X

My memoir “Women Like Us” is out Sept 6th - Eeeeeeeeek! X