Things you’ll only understand if you went to an all-girls grammar school

All girls grammar schools are weird places: hot beds of emotion, competitiveness and the most strict dress code rules you’ll ever have to adhere to in your life. But weird as they may seem, they teach you an awful lot about life.

You became an expert at styling unflattering and ill-fitting clothing

Your uniform was both hideous and expensive which led to your parents buying you one and insisting you “make it work” for your entire school career. Never again will you own a garment that goes from borderline-Victorian to Ann-Summers-chic the longer you own it.

Rolling up your skirt waistband is a skill

Doing this without making yourself look like you were smuggling something under your jumper was a legitimate art form. As was working out how to stand to make your arms seems as short as possible so you could pretend the length was still within the ever-ridiculous “skirt must be no shorter than your fingertips” rule.

Bitter feuding with the local girls state school will take over your life

Somehow this always resulted in abuse being shouted in the street when you passed someone from the other school. This was especially prevalent in the lower years, as the whole feud usually stemmed from those few bitter kids who ~just~ missed the cut to get into the grammar.

The 11+ was a killer of many a close primary school friendship. And the appeals process made it even worse.

Mediocre gossip kept you alive

There would be a huge school-wide scandal every few years about something truly, pitifully uneventful. It would range from someone being caught – gasp – smoking, or dropping a condom in the hallway, or something equally mundane. But the gossip and the rumours fuelled you for weeks.

You could get away with just about anything

Because the teachers, on the whole, did not give half a shit. Turn up, don’t turn up, they didn’t care because they knew your results would be above-average anyway.

Much like with students, there were always those teachers that coasted along, relying on the fact that the students were smart anyway to get good results, rather than bothering to try and teach. Everyone knew it was happening, but no-one talked about it, because who wants to study statistics when the teacher is happy to let you watch re-runs of the Inbetweeners in class time?

Booze is everywhere

You fully exploited the bizarre lack of discipline when it came time for upper school socials. In the two days before a social, if you’d opened literally any locker, or given the common rooms more than a half-assed glance, you’d find enough booze to keep even a hardened student happy.

The dress code was more important than literally anything else
For all the lack of care when it came to most rules, the dress-code was enforced rigidly. Rulers were used, makeup wipes were thrust upon you, clothes handed out freely. There wasn’t a teacher on site who didn’t have a drawer full of makeup wipes, nail polish remover, “approved” hair ties and other such “essentials”. You probably left that school with a collection of hair ties and thick leggings that had been forced on you so regularly that you forgot to return them all. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you learn, anywhere near so much as it matters what you look like.

Non uniform days were far more savage than at a mixed school, because you weren’t dressing for boys, you were dressing for girls and you had to pull ALL the stops out. The corridors became a catwalk and the teachers exhausted themselves trying to keep up with all the dress code infractions.

#nofilter

Because it was an all-girls school, you didn’t really have a filter when it came to discussing periods and boobs and other such weirdly-usually-taboo subjects.

And you developed very close friendships, that would often lead people to ask if you were really ~just friends~.

Boys were like foreign Gods

If you had a mixed sixth form partnered with a local boy’s grammar, then the days you’d have lessons with them, you spent an insane amount of time primping and trying to look good for a handful of greasy teenage boys.

Boys were actually such a foreign concept to you that you behaved very strangely whenever you encountered them out in the wild. It took you years to get back to seeing them as people and not some mysterious ~other~ type.

There was always one young-ish, reasonable-looking male teacher. Who was hailed as some godly beauty, and probably had a truly crass nickname. “Fit the technician” was my schools under-30 ICT tech. Classy.

Girls will be boys

Drag was second nature to you, because there weren’t any boys to play the male-parts.

You didn’t totally ~get~ feminism

Because the school only catered to girls, your concept of feminism took longer to develop. Having never experienced obvious sexism due to the lack of genders to be compared with, when it did finally happen it really threw you, and you finally saw why it was so important.

Sometimes you didn’t feel like the genius you are

Whilst if you’d gone to a state school, getting mostly A grades with a few A*s thrown in at GCSE would reward you with your name read out at assembly, and every teacher in the place doing everything they could to get you into Oxbridge; at a grammar school that was considered mediocre enough to prevent you being permitted to go to the Oxbridge applicants meetings where they’d teach you the extra tips and tricks to get there.

As a result, you probably spent a couple of years after GSCEs dejected, confusing people by telling how badly you’d done, with your 5 A*s. It took you years to realise that they were actually damn good grades.

@TheTab