Jenny Bathurst: “And all of this in just four years”

“I often hear it said that your school days are the happiest days of your life. If anyone had told me that at the time I probably would have snorted and asked what was so happy about waking up in the early hours to catch a cramped bus smelling of B.O., endless homework and eventually GCSE exams. But then of course, as is predicted, I do look back at that time and my mind paints a picture perfect portrait of my time at secondary school. These are the times that I wish I had written a diary or account of some sorts of my time there - not to recount the timetable for the day or what exam I was revising for, but to remember the moments where tears of laughter were streaming down my face or I did something incredibly embarrassing that I thought I would never want to recall again.

“And all of these memories were only at least four years ago so not at all in the particularly distant past, but they seem like a life time ago. My last months at secondary school were in 2018, quite recent really. But it makes entire sense why even my final year at Ormiston Six Villages Academy would feel so distant.

“My generation, and every generation currently, have lived through so many events bound for history books in just the course of a few years. The death of Queen Elizabeth II, a variety of Prime Ministers, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Brexit (sorry to mention it) and of course, an entire global pandemic. Then of course there will be personal hardships that are bound to impact us as individuals. For me it has been chronic illness, losing much of my college and university experience to the pandemic and a number of other dilemmas that most of us will experience in our lifetime at one point or another.

“All of this in four years. Of course I am not going to be the same person who put her pen down after her final GCSE exam in Physics and waved goodbye to the school gates forever. This is not to say that I think I’ve had it harder than anyone else, simply that I find it extraordinary how at the age of 20 I can look back at a time just four years ago and feel such nostalgia. Perhaps I am, inside, already a woman of 80 who looks back at the past and remembers the ‘good old days’ - or perhaps I should have already known that due to the fact that my idea of a wild night is embroidering on the sofa in front of the Crown and climbing safely into bed by 10pm.”