I thought I’d start at the very beginning (a very good place to start…. any Sound of Music fans? No? Just me? Okeydokey then) and talk a bit about when I first started in Year Seven, which I still can’t quite believe was three years ago already! Time flies so fast!

I was always so excited to start secondary school. I’ve always been quite intelligent (I’m not being big-headed – other people say I’m intelligent), so primary school was always really easy and therefore really boring for me. Also, one of the things I have always hated the most is people treating me like a little kid, and, funny enough, when you’re a little kid, people tend to treat you that way, so I couldn’t wait to grow up and be a teenager so people would respect and basically just understand me more. Plus I wanted to be able to go out on my own!!

Anyway, I spent the entire seven years of primary school waiting for secondary school. Ergo, as you can imagine, I was super excited when the time finally came! I couldn’t believe that it was finally here: we were rehearsing for the end of school play (I played Mrs Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I loved it so much!), buying uniforms and going to meetings and induction days at Langley! I was loving it!

To be completely honest, I wasn’t nervous at all. All of the girls from my school were coming to Langley, and almost all of the boys annoyed me a lot, so I was quite happy to get rid of them! I knew I’d be able to handle the work and I was prepared to get more homework. Looking back, doing all of my homework the night I got it non-stop until I ate dinner was probably not the best idea, but that’s just the way my eleven year old brain worked.

When I got to the school in September, it completely lived up to my expectations. After about a week it just felt normal being there instead of at primary school and everybody in my form seemed really nice. I was very excited to find that one of the girls in my form was in Matilda the Musical! I decided at that moment that I was going to be friends with her and her friends. Yep, three years on, I’ve still never sat with her or any of her friends.

Back to the point, everything was working. The work was still pretty easy, but I figured that it was just because it was the beginning and it would get harder (and it definitely did) and, although we did get quite a bit of homework, it wasn’t as much as I had expected. Most of the teachers really nice. Actually, that’s a lie. They were all really nice – just some of them seemed a bit scary. I loved having a timetable and meeting lots of new people and there was definitely more freedom and more opportunities at Langley than there had ever been at Unicorn (my primary school)! I loved it, and, to be honest, I’m still pretty fond of it today!

By Ivy S.