The Unusual High School Experience
Applied 500 and Poker?
George Orwellian socialism 101?
An English teacher who bore an uncanny resemblance to Graucho Marx?
What was this academic newbie getting himself into?
It was the mid-1980s, and after following my artistic dream and pursuing a rather challenging vocational art course, I was at a crossroads.
After completing the first five years of College, I had left at the end of Year 11, with the favourable words of my art teacher ringing in my ears: “Mark has refined and developed his drawing skills” and “Well done, Mark.” She had also chosen my drawing of a blooming rose to adorn the border of every page of that year’s school handbook.
But, as I shared in my article “The Revealing Art Course”, after an interesting year of discovering myself art-wise, my results were only just enough to gain entry into the next year of the course, and only after the college I studied at reviewed their initial rejection of my application.
I was left thinking: “Am I that talented after all?”
Of course, I now know (with the hindsight of experience), that I should have applied myself more, but, you cannot hop into the Tardis and say to The Doctor: “Melbourne, Victoria, the start of 1983 please…”
