seems to be some sort of import from the United States. As I understand you celebrate the end of your school days by heading off with your friends and indulging in what is supposed to be an exciting week of.... well something. Unfortunately alcohol seems to loom large, sex is supposed to come a close second. There are "concerts" and "hanging out" and, for a few, drugs. It is now considered to be a rite of passage.
The residents of the seaside town where most of this occurs put up with an invasion each year. On the whole I believe the actual school leaver participants are well behaved. There are gate-crashers who spoil things for everyone. This year they are making an extra effort to remove the gate-crashers.
There have been reports in the media that many students find "schoolies" week a let down. It is not the experience that they expect. I am not sure what they do expect. I suspect that some of them do find it boring and others find it an unhappy experience.
One of the local year 12 students was talking to me yesterday. I have been reading essays for her during the past two years and my father has given her some help with study skills. She is a very quiet girl. When school finishes she has a holiday job in an aged-care program for dementia patients. Schoolies week does not interest her in the slightest. Her parents would allow her to go but she refused an invitation to join a group of her friends. Her mother had admitted to me earlier that they were worried about her obvious lack of interest in participating. Was, I asked, she going to do anything?
Oh yes, clean up her room, go to see a film with some friends, go to the zoo with some other friends and - read.
"Just being able to read one book I want to read," she told me, "Is going to be better than the whole of schoolies week would be."
Along with the outings she plans, I am not too worried about her if she wants to do this.
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4 comments:
Our daughter was planning to spend a week with a group of friends in a beach house belonging to the family ofoneof the friends, well away from any of the usual Victorian haunts of schoolies. We wereprepared for her to do that. Now she has decided she would rather potter around at home and with a couple of other friends, go to see one band, read a pile of books, sew and plan her gap year in greater detail. Suits us!
She sounds like a very sensible young lady who has worked out what suits her. To be able, at that age, to resist the temptation to run with the herd (and end up disappointed) shows she has herself worked out Ok she may be 18 , pushing 40, but the world could do with a lot more like that.
I wish my daughter would say that!
Well I know I would have hated the activities of Schoolies Week - I was never one of that sort of crowd!
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