A memorable week

Since the beginning of Grade 12, we had planned our schoolies week.  According to all of my friends it was going to be great.  All 8 of us in the one apartment, being away from our parents, teachers, anyone with an imposing everyday authority - we were going to be free!  This was the real world!

Ha! If the real world involves drinking so much that you almost fall out a window, 3 storeys up, have one of your friends tripping out on acid, sitting on a ledge 17 storeys high, being dragged into a lift by 4 guys you don't even know that well, getting threatened by a group of 50 guys in the one space, being harassed by older creepy men, seeing a guy holding his face with blood pouring out and down his front, is the real world - shit I was in for a rough time.

The emotions of not ever being in a school routine and seeing the same friends and teachers each day, and the prospect of not doing as well as my parents had hoped on top of the ridiculous behaviour that was occurring at schoolies, I had a emotionally and physically draining week.

Ok, so it sounds bad, but this all happened on my schoolies, to me.  But there were plenty of good, exciting, wonderful things that happened too.

The organisers really want everyone to be safe, and a lot of effort is put into to all people being able to easily enjoy their time at the Gold Coast.  Just about everyone looks out for you and your safety.  For the majority of people who went to schoolies in my year it was an excellent time.

I spent most of the mornings sitting on the beach, watching the sunrise; it was beautiful and awe-inspiring, especially when I got to share the experience with several other strangers.

Schoolies also allowed me some time to reflect on myself, my friends, the direction I wanted to take all the while working off hangovers. So far schoolies is the only place where I could walk from one place to another in my pj's and nobody seemed to care. It was a week where I discovered sleeping on a fold out bed isn't the most comfortable, either is a bathtub (there is not much room to spread out and the porcelain is cold).

The whole week, as cliched as it sounds was a memorable week, one that I won't be forgetting fast.  As I move on to another part of my life, stepping out of university and into the world of jobs, careers and relationships.  I can reflect and say that schoolies allowed a type of release for me that cannot be matched - 12 years of institutional step by step learning and growing was gone, and in that one little week, I attempted to release most of it.