Drowning Lessons (Frerard AU)

Three - Never Paid Attention At School

My attempt at staying out of the way and keeping my head down was the only good thing that happened to me on my first day at Wavenly Academy, apparently the teachers weren't anywhere near as laid back as in American State schools and apparently the kids weren't as dumb. In fact all the kids in my classes seemed to be a child prodigy, like they were going to be the next Einstein. Needless to say I didn't fit in very well and I worked that out from my first lesson; English. The teacher seemed fairly nice, as a person she was incredibly polite and kind to me, perfectly understanding of my timidity and want to stay unnoticed, however her lesson was far from that and her students, well fuck. She may have refrained from picking on me and happily let me sit alone at the back but a lot of what she said about her class went in one ear and out the other. In school in Jersey I had been pretty good, above average even, but what the fuck was pathetic fallacy. To be fair I did learn what pathetic fallacy was in that lesson but that was really beside the point, because I could ring everyone I knew in Jersey and I was sure none of them would know...unless I just hadn't paid enough attention in school. But how was I ever going to graduate this school if all of the other students were writing about how an author uses pathetic fallacy and idealism in their writing and I was still scraping a B with analysing and piece for personification and alliteration?!

The first thing she did was read out a load of grades, she read out the grades students had achieved in the previous school year, then their predicted GCSE grades. She even had grades for me, which surprised me a little, but not only did they surprise me they really embarrassed me, because not surprisingly mine were worse than everyone else's. The lowest year 10 grade for the class ignoring mine was an A- and I got a C+ as for predicted grades well most of them were predicted A*, me a B. Maybe it was the stupidest thing a kid could do; start a new school and a new fucking school system in the final year and the most important, but I had done and honestly I felt so dumb. It was one thing to stupidly start a new fucking school system in your final year of school, but I think I had walked into the world's smartest fucking school ever. There is all that stereo type about private schools being as smart as grammar schools, well I think that was not only true but that school was both a private school and a grammar school. Of all things I think this was one of the stupidest things I had done, because I was regretting it the moment I had landed in London.

I would have got on absolutely swimmingly with just above average school grades in my shitty New Jersey state school; I was on track for a great average American life. Then I was shipped off to a British private grammar school. Mistake? Oh yes, huge fucking mistake! That I think made me world's stupidest guy, because maybe I could pull off B's and probably a few C's, which sure my parents would be fine with, but what about my teachers? B's and C's were great for me, just a really shit anomaly for this school. Coming to England for Boarding school was always a bad idea from a twelve year-old kid maybe not too bad, but as a fifteen year-old it was a shit load more stupid. My luck would probably be that I met a girl here, I met someone I really was interested in and then I would have to go home and I wouldn't be able to afford to come back. Either that or I'd end up doing reckless things, like sex and alcohol and drugs, that wouldn't be a good plan, hopefully I wouldn't get into that shit, drugs particularly.

This of course was ignoring the other major part of why this was the worst fucking idea I had ever had; English school systems are much different to American school systems. In advance to coming over here, I maybe hadn't read the manual or thought to learn about the school rules, but I had at least researched what I was getting myself into education wise and fuck a duck, did I realise I was screwed. Because in school in New Jersey, I had exams at the end of every year and they were all just as important, if I got C's and B's that was fine, because it meant I got into a decent set the next year and I could work up to getting straight B's so I could get into college, but this school was nothing like that, nothing at all. Here, I had the most important exams to date at the end of this year; GCSE's and if I didn't get 5 grades C or higher, I basically had to take them again, because nobody recognises a fucking GCSE, no you have to do two years of A levels too, and most decent universities don't accept you unless you get A's in those. I had a lot of fucking work to do, I had to get 5-7 A-C grades in my subjects (two of which had to be English and Math) so I could get into college so I could get grades at A level to get me into a University.