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.

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 But while the buildings were familiar, it was as if everyone I remembered had been replaced by a complete set of strangers.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.