Member-only story
The Education of a Catholic School Girl
When something you never wanted becomes exactly what you always needed
I didn’t want to go. It was 15 and I had been in huge public schools for the last 6 years. This was all-girls Catholic school. The uniform, daily mass, strict rules, nuns. No, I didn’t want to go. I was leaving my friends to enter what amounted to prison in my mind.
But I was drowning in public school. Looking back, maybe I was too young. I started school a year early and maybe it had all caught up with me; maybe maturity wasn’t there. I remember that first day in my brand new uniform. A white collared shirt, pleated skirt, cardigan sweater and knee-high socks. I felt my freedom and my identity slipping away.
I was the new girl in a very small school. That made me a curiosity. In gym, a few girls approached me, hesitantly. My presence seemed to make them nervous. You went to public school? What was that like? They looked at me like an escaped zoo animal. It felt as if I had stepped into a very private world where outsiders never entered.
Classes were very small. I had to get used to being in math with 9 girls. It was a radical change after being shuffled around in the chaos of public high school. There was no hiding in the back with your head down. Everyone was engaged, everyone…
