Last night I was reading Marie Claire (July issue, on sale now) in bed with a face mask on, eating chocolate and ogling over the fashion (that I won’t fit into ever if I keep eating chocolate in bed) and I came across an article about high school labels. There was the ‘fat girl’, the ‘slut’ and the ‘wild child’, and corresponding stories of where are they now? That girl who was bullied for her weight issues is now a successful, and gorgeous, marketing executive. The wild child who was smoking at 11 and on drugs at 15 is married with three children, living as a Mormon. The girl labelled a slut spent years being stereotyped that way and has only just discovered that her label no longer defines her.

When I think back to my high school days, my label was ‘square’. I was the ‘nerd’, the ‘geek’. Whatever you choose to call it, in essence, I was one of the smart kids. In the weeks before I started high school, my mother told me, ‘high school is the business end of your education Sarah, you have to make it count’, or something to that effect – I remember sitting in classes that first week, a scared eleven year old in a new school with hundreds of people bigger than me and the teacher asking a question that I had no idea about. (I think it was about trees but heaven help me I can’t even really remember. And seriously, trees? Like THAT really even matters that much!) I immediately thought I was destined to fail. I was never going to make it. Safeway was totally an okay place to work forever.

I don’t really remember what I wanted to do for the rest of my life at age 11. In year 10, aged 15, I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. At 16 I wanted to be a meteorologist. I was 17 when I decided marketing and business management was my calling and 19 when I decided my industry was fashion. It took me til I was 25 to get the writers bug. And I don’t think a question about trees fifteen years ago has had any impact on any of those decisions.

But I did decide, after the question about trees, I was going to have to pay attention, knuckle down and work for it if I wanted to succeed. I handed in things early, I answered questions in class, and I asked questions about topics we had yet to learn. I studied in the evenings, the weekends and on holidays. I became the label. Square. Nerd. Geek. I was good at school. And, most of the time, I actually enjoyed it.

One particular afternoon, after attending the advanced English class, one of the girls I was friends with asked me if I wouldn’t sit with them in class anymore. ‘You’re just a bit too much… different, from us’ she said. What she meant was; they didn’t want the smart girl bringing down their ‘cool’ reputation, interrupting their smoking out by the sheds or making them look stupid in front of the teachers. I was shattered. ‘Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt me’, is the biggest lie in the book. Bones will heal but memories last forever.

I spent the best part of my early high school years under the impression I was the nerd – I went to the library at lunchtimes, didn’t go out evenings or weekends. I lived my label. I made close friends in the later years of high school, whom I am still friends with today, and relaxed my lifestyle, got a part time job and met new people. I achieved better than I could have hoped on my final exams and went to University, where I met more amazing people, went out more and even failed my first subject ever (Tourism, who would have thought!). University was the most amazing four years I could have ever imagined – and contrary to what Mum had told me at 11, high school might mean business, but it is University that will make or break you. I finished my higher studies with a degree, an advanced diploma and more friends than I could ever have imagined I would ever have at 11.

I worked in a number of different places, where my brains meant something and people liked who I was anyway. I was successful in my work; I bought my first house at 22 – a massive achievement in itself – and I had a wonderful circle of friends. Yet still my label haunted me. I never felt what I had was enough. Even finding out that perhaps the people who had, in essence, bullied me at high school were not as successful as I was didn’t make it enough.

Then twelve months ago I started this blog. I started writing for Onya Magazine, and Sassi Sam and Fashion Journal. I was published in Grazia. I attended fashion and networking events and met  more of fantastic people and moved to the city. Perhaps it wasn’t that I didn’t feel it was enough – more that I felt I didn’t deserve to have such a wonderful life. Underneath it all, I was still that little girl in that first week of school that didn’t know about the trees and just wanted to do her best and finish high school.

A high school label is just that – a label – and its up to us individually to break it. I have spent far too much of my life thinking that I didn’t deserve to have as many friends as I did, I am still surprised when those people choose to spend their time with me and at the end of the day, those people like me because of who I am, not because of how smart (or otherwise) I might be. The Marie Claire article put this into perspective for me. I am 26 years old – I shouldn’t be letting the stupidity of twelve year olds define who I am today. I am smart, and I am proud of that. I am also friendly, funny, caring, kind and sometimes, (maybe) cool. It’s time to be a grown up and embrace that.

Were you labelled at high school? Do you think you have broken out of this label?

Image Note: Napoleon Dynamite, the quintessential nerd. Not a picture of me.