I’m attending my 50-year school reunion. This is what I’m expecting it to teach me

In 1974, when I graduated from high school and looked nervously at the future, I didn’t get much further than anxiety about university. I wasn’t one of those who burst out of the gates of the schoolyard. I found myself beset by fears. I’d loved my bog-standard public high school. I’d felt safe there. Like I belonged. And when it came time to leave, I felt cast out.

I no longer care how “successful” my school fellows may be. I’m more interested in who they are now, how they have lived, and what they have learnt.Credit: ISTOCK

A year later, I returned to the buildings and playgrounds of Forest High – I can no longer remember why – expecting to feel that I’d come home. But while the buildings were familiar, it was as if everyone I remembered had been replaced by a complete set of strangers. They couldn’t have been, but that’s how it felt to 18-year-old me.

I no longer belonged. It was not my school any more. It was my first lesson about how the hole you leave when you depart from any stage in life closes almost immediately. Schools, university, jobs, neighbourhoods and projects are always more important to you than you are to them.

Learning this was a good thing. There is nothing sadder than those who cling tenaciously to the old schoolyard. I was 17 when I left high school. I am 67 now – that’s 50 years of different places, people, jobs, friends, highlights and lowlights. My school prepared me well for them, but by 1974 its usefulness was over. Time to move on.

So why am I now involved in organising my 50-year school reunion? If leaving school behind is a necessary part of growing and maturing, why look back?

I think it’s precisely because those days are now securely in the past. As a teenager, when I looked at the kids who shared my classes, I was busy making judgments about who was cool, who was a dag, who I liked, who I didn’t, who liked me, who didn’t. No doubt they were busy making similar judgments. Such are the anxieties of adolescence.

Now, as I scan the list of RSVPs, I feel nothing but curiosity. Where have we all ended up? Some are unable to come because they live in Germany, Hong Kong and other places, but one student who came to us on exchange from the US is making the trip from Washington. Another is coming from New Zealand. Many are travelling from interstate and rural and regional areas, but there are still some who live close to our old school, and good for them.

When I looked at the kids who shared my classes, I was busy making judgments about who was cool, who was a dag, who I liked, who I didn’t.

JANE CARO

I’m curious about the jobs people have done and may still be doing. I know our ranks include doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, teachers, nurses, small-business operators, tradies, public servants, leaders of industry and artists. One even presented a major national TV show for decades. But I no longer care how “successful” my school fellows may be. I’m more interested in who they are now, how they have lived, and what they have learnt.

I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed working with the small committee of ex-students organising the event. Public school alumni must do all the work themselves; no well-funded alumni associations for us. Working over Zoom with Becky, Duncan, Jenny, Mark and Sue has reminded me what I liked about them as teenagers and what I still like about them now.

We all work differently. Mark and Jenny are diligent and organised. Duncan and I fly by the seat of our pants. Sue and Becky are thoughtful and come up with things we’d missed. Just like at school. But despite our best efforts, we still haven’t found everyone. So, if you were in the Forest High fourth form of 1972 or sixth form of ’74, get in touch via [e-mail]

But I suspect that what the gathering will teach me, is that even after 50 years, people don’t fundamentally change. Yes, we get fatter, thinner, greyer, wrinklier and many of the boys either get balder or hairier or both, but once their faces swim into focus, I bet my old classmates remain essentially the individuals I remember.

We will start the event with a tour of our old school, led by the current principal, who is decades younger than us. He told us that we will be the last cohort through the old place before it is knocked down and rebuilt at a different location. No doubt the new Forest High will be much more appropriate for modern teaching and learning than the very-much-of-its-time school we spent six years studying in, but it won’t be our school. No matter how run down and neglected the old Forest High may be, it’s where we all learned how to become the people we are now.

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