What have you found most difficult in your life?

I think the most difficult times I have had in my life were when I was at boarding school and university.

My mum and dad first sent me to boarding school because the local primary was rubbish. The teacher I had was ignorant – had I stayed another couple of years I would have got a brilliant teacher, but my mum and dad decided they couldn’t wait that long, and sent me to the local prep school – thanks to a very clever headmaster who managed to get me an assisted place along with the scholarship that I had already won. I liked the teachers, and the work was ok, it was just that I didn’t like staying away from home. I would have loved it there if I could have been a day pupil, but boarding made me miserable.

From the prep school I won a scholarship to Fettes College in Edinburgh. This soon turned into the most miserable and difficult time I have ever had in my life. The work was hard – as I have said before I have only really been good at languages, and I got into trouble for not doing well in other subjects. I started to misbehave – just a little! I started smoking – not because it was cool I don’t think, just because I felt like it. A friend and I would meet another friend in the woods and smoke there. We got a little more adventurous after a while, and snuck out of our bedroom windows with a couple of older girls and sat on the ledge, three floors up at night! It wasn’t long until we were caught. One of the mothers had driven past at night, seen our glowing cigarettes, reported us, and our house mistress called the whole dormitory for a meeting. She explained how it had been reported, that cigarette ends had been found below the windows, and that the people responsible had to own up or everyone would be punished severely – typical adult threat – she couldn’t really have punished all of us, but the main threat was that if we didn’t own up and we were found out we would be expelled. So, the four of us owned up. We were then packed away to the Sanatorium (sick bay) for the night, while our parents were informed that we had been suspended. They were to come and collect us the next day. We had a wicked night locked away in the San that night! We laughed and joked and took pictures, but the next morning when we woke up we were all quite subdued. We had to go and see the headmaster, who gave us a stern talking to, talked a lot about responsibility etc, and that as well as suspension we had to pay a £30 fine which would be sent to Cancer Research – no idea if it ever was sent.

My mum and dad hit the roof. My cousin was staying with us at the time, he was at my old prep school, and had apparently also been playing up a bit at the same time. His parents were overseas at the time. The way I saw it, I got an extra week’s half term – my mum and dad didn’t quite see it the same way. After a couple of days it all calmed down, and by the time I went back to school we were quite light hearted about it. My mum said that if the housemistress gave me a hard time I should tell her that I’d been to confession, confessed my sins and been absolved by the priest, so if God had absolved me there was nothing she could do about it!

I really did try to buckle down after I went back to school. I tried to work hard. I arranged with the English teacher I’d had the previous year for some extra lessons – that was wrong as he wasn’t the teacher I had for that year. I didn’t get on with my current teacher, and got on great with the last teacher, who also happened to be the deputy head, and was lovely and more than willing to help me. The housemistress said I had to cancel the lessons – I did, and he wasn’t at all happy with what I had been told to do. She used to delight in upsetting me and making me cry, to then accuse me of putting it on, and only crying “crocodile tears”. I got more and more miserable, and spent hours on the phone to my mum crying my eyes out. Eventually my mum had enough of this, and phoned the housemistress to try to find out exactly why I was so unhappy. The housemistress said that she couldn’t possibly spare the time to talk to her as she was late for lunch, and put the phone down on her. My mum was hopping mad, turned up at the weekend to take me out for the weekend, and the only time I went back was to pack all my things up.

After that I went to school in Dumfries, and, once I had made the friends that became friends for life, I was extremely happy there.

University was another matter. I went because I thought it was expected of me. Certainly my teachers expected it, I thought my parents expected it, and I definitely expected it of myself. It was not at all what I imagined. I thought I was studying languages, which would have been fine, but there were all these modules I had to take like Business Studies, Economics and Accounting which I just couldn’t get my head around. In fact, despite the fact that my dad used to be an accountant and tried to help me, I failed Accounting about 5 times!

I got very depressed at uni, and ended up taking anti depressants for a while, which didn’t actually help the situation. Also, I was working at two part time jobs to make ends meet, and I just couldn’t do it any more. At the end of second year I decided to drop out and work full time, which was a good decision, even with hindsight.

I have had other difficult periods of my life, but none that made me as miserable as boarding school or university.