Feel Good 101_The Outsiders' Guide to a Happier Life

by Emma Blackery

  One slight catch, though – she was a smoker.

  Now, I’m not about to shame you if you’re a smoker – the beauty of living on this planet is our freedom of choice – however, at fifteen, the idea of smoking totally grossed me out. I’d seen my dad smoke throughout my childhood, having a cigarette as soon as he woke up, before and after every meal, and I’d also watched him give up cold turkey after a stint in hospital, coughing his guts up as his lungs began to recover. I swore to myself and to my father that I would never smoke. I swore I would never get addicted and go through the health problems that my dad had experienced – and I also took comfort in knowing that if I was ever caught smoking, I would be in more than serious trouble with both of my parents.

  But Kat was cool. And gorgeous.

  When she first offered me a puff of her cigarette on the school field, us both sitting in a circle with about five or six of her other friends, I stuttered a quiet ‘N-no, thanks’ before looking down, ashamed of myself! Ashamed for standing by my morals! I felt my cheeks blush bright red as she shrugged, passing her cigarette to another one of her friends. I’d just shown her and all her pals how uncool I was – how I was still just a dorky fifteen-year-old who couldn’t hang with the cool kids. I vowed from that moment on that any time Kat offered me an opportunity to be on her level, I would take it. I wanted her to like me. I wanted all her friends to like me.

  The next time Kat offered me her cigarette, I took it.

  I can vividly remember doing it wrong and spluttering and coughing, my lungs feeling as though they were on fire. I probably looked less cool trying to smoke than I did when I’d refused to smoke in the first place. However, I persevered. In a vain attempt to match Kat in effortless cool, I gave up my morals, going against everything I’d stood for, and began smoking with my new gang at lunchtimes. I have bittersweet memories of walking to the back of the school field, where no teacher could be bothered to walk, to light up with Kat and her friends, popping a breath mint in my mouth and spraying myself with cheap perfume before our next class started. Within a few days, word had got around in my own year that I was smoking, and most of the kids (including all of the ‘weird emos’) thought I was an idiot. I no longer cared. I had the approval of Kat and her friends, and they didn’t judge me. Soon enough, the one cigarette shared between friends at lunchtime turned into one cigarette of my own that I myself would pass around the circle, which then turned into me smoking by myself before and after school.

  Without even realising it, I’d become addicted to cigarettes, and I was no longer doing it to be cool. I’d go into the corner shop by our school before classes began, heart racing as I tried to fool the staff there that I was old enough to buy cigarettes. I would stuff the pack of cigarettes (the cheapest you could buy) deep into the bottom of my bag, sometimes taking them out of their box and keeping them stashed away in the zip-up inside pocket, in case my dad went down my school bag at home. I was losing what few friends I had in my year, lying to my teachers and parents, and had gone against everything I’d believed about cigarettes in order to look ‘cool’.

  Eventually, I realised that most of my pocket money – which my dad trusted me to spend on sweets and nice things – was being drained by my smoking habit, and it was only then that I truly realised what I was doing. If my dad knew what I’d been doing with his money, spending it on something that had plagued him for over forty years of his life, he wouldn’t be so much angry as disappointed. From then on, I stopped buying cigarettes (I don’t remember it being too difficult to kick the habit – I was only on about five a day at my worst, but that was more than enough to waste most of my money and make me think about my next cigarette opportunity all day during class) and I distanced myself from Kat and her friends, choosing to spend the rest of the year with a couple of acquaintances in the school library. It was extremely difficult to stop hanging around with my ‘friends’, avoiding any scenario where I’d have to explain why. I missed them, awfully. I was no longer ‘in’ with them, by choice, and wasn’t ‘in’ with anyone in my own year. Eventually, the end of the school year rolled around, and Kat and her friends left. I never saw them again. Sometimes I check up on Kat on Facebook, just to see how she’s doing. She seems happy.

  I never told my parents about any of this, so if they’re still reading, I’m sorry. Just know that I learned a lot about myself during that short time, and imagining the disappointment I would have faced from you both was enough to make me realise that I didn’t need to do something stupid to become ‘more’ of a person – and neither does anyone reading this. If someone that you care about tries to make you do something you don’t want to do, don’t fear looking ‘uncool’ or ‘stupid’. Kat shouldn’t have continued to offer me cigarettes after I originally said no, but I also shouldn’t have gone against everything I stood for in order to impress someone. If someone is really your friend, they won’t try to pressure you into anything, and they won’t judge you for not doing something like smoking cigarettes. Looking back, I realise that Kat and her friends weren’t even too bothered by me not taking up Kat’s offer of a cigarette the first time – most of that shame I felt that made me want to try again was from myself. I had convinced myself, in part due to my lack of self-esteem, that I’d made Kat and her friends think as low of me as I thought of myself. Peer pressure is also what led me to want to start being sexually active at such a young age, in an attempt to ‘keep up’ with others. If you are thinking of doing something that you do not want to do purely to change how someone thinks of you – remember this: at some point in your life, you are going to be the only person you’ve got. You’ll only be answering to yourself – and when that time comes, will your decisions have been worth it? Will you be proud of the choices you made?

  8

  Education

  (and making the most of it)

  Embracing The Inner Nerd

  I feel as though we’ve spoken a lot about school already, but seeing as it was quite frankly one of the worst periods of my life, and knowing that a lot of you reading this right now are currently still going through it, I definitely think it deserves its own chapter. I don’t know what school is like for you – whether you enjoy it, if you’re home-schooled, or if your school wherever you are in the world just isn’t that bad – but I had an awful experience. I dealt with bullies, bitching and gossiping, bad friends, as well as some teachers who didn’t seem to care about what they were teaching. All of that on top of having the pressure of, ‘IF YOU FAIL THIS EXAM YOU WON’T GET A JOB AND YOU’LL END UP HOMELESS.’ It’s safe to say my time in secondary school wasn’t great.

  At school, all I really cared about was getting cool kids to like me. I was obsessed with getting a hold of the latest bag or backpack, finding out who was going out with who, or working out how to break the rules to look cool without actually getting into trouble. Like I’ve already made clear – I wasn’t a popular kid. I had thick, jet-black hair, two dark rings of eyeliner big enough to make me look like a drugged-up panda, and was dressed in the cheapest shirts and trousers my family could get. When I outgrew my school blazer, my mum cut off the patch and sewed it on to a cheap non-official blazer that was miles too big for me, and I was teased for it for the next four years (yes, I stopped growing at twelve. I was actually one of the tallest kids in my school when I was ten).

  My point is that hardly any of my time went towards my education – I would skip most of my homework, doing the bare minimum necessary to avoid detention, leaving any coursework until the night before and trying to cram nine months of revision into the one hour before my final exam. I will state here that as a teenager, I was a mixture of smart and lucky (is ‘smucky’ a word? It is now). I did pretty well in my exams, all things considered. You know that one kid in your class that would act like a smartarse and do hardly any schoolwork, but was still somehow top of the class? That was me. I’m sorry. I suppose that in my arrogant mind, I thought I didn’t need to revise, as I knew I’d at least pa
ss all of my classes – but that meant that, instead of studying, my mind was on other things which, looking back, were a complete waste of my time.

  Here’s some advice you might not like, and you might not heed it: do your homework the night you get it. Make time to revise for at least three hours a night in the weeks leading up to your exams. Take as many notes as you need to and always ask your teachers for help with anything you don’t understand. I know that most of you won’t listen to this advice, because I didn’t listen to it when I was given it, either. Only, I’m not going to shame you for not listening. How can I tell you what to do if I didn’t do it myself? It’s definitely advice that I wish I’d listened to, but when you’re at school, education is usually the last thing on your mind.

  There was one time when my cockiness didn’t pay off, however. During our final two school years of ICT (computing for those without stupid abbreviations) we ended up with a new teacher that no one had ever had before. She was intimidating, adorned with bizarre jewellery and nails longer than diving boards. Over the next two years, we all began to suspect her heart wasn’t in it. Our coursework was a mishmash of databases and reports, and without the right guidance, none of us really had much of a clue what to actually do. We’d walk into her classroom and see her flicking through paperwork, frowning uncertainly before getting us to take our seats at the computers. Because she didn’t seem to care, we didn’t care either – surely so long as we did as we were told, we’d pass, right? Our coursework would take us about ten minutes per lesson, and then the rest of the hour was ours. Quickly, ICT became everyone’s favourite lesson – do a bit of database work, and then sit and play games or check our MySpaces. (I realise I mention MySpace a lot, but this was 2007, and my MySpace profile was my entire life, thank you very much.)

  One day towards the end of our final school year, our teacher sat us down, stony-faced. She told us that she had misunderstood our course, and that none of our coursework was what it was supposed to be. Some of us managed to scrape an E, the minimum grade, but most of us had completely failed. Suddenly, we weren’t the lazy, cocky students we’d been for two years – now, we were all bolt-upright, horrified at the thought of our coursework dragging down our final grade. Even though I managed to get an A* in my ICT exam, only three marks off a perfect score, my E grade for my coursework dragged my final grade down to a C. Overall, not the worst outcome, and you could say that this situation wasn’t entirely my fault, but looking back, there’s a lot I could’ve done, had I cared a little more about my grade instead of checking social media every day and being able to get away with it. I could have contacted the head of the ICT department about my teacher. I could have worked harder on my database (not that it would’ve been correct, but I definitely could have still got a higher mark if I’d spent more than ten minutes a day on it). I could have looked up the grading criteria online and seen that we were all doing the wrong work – but I didn’t. I was lazy, complacent, arrogant and assumed that I’d do well regardless.

  However, whilst it would be easy for me to write off all of my experiences with teachers, I still believe at my core that the majority of people who work in the education sector do so because they love what they do. When I first began studying physics, I was given a pop quiz to assess my current skill level. To my shock and horror, I received an E. I remember sitting in my seat after the bell at the end of the school day had rung, tearful. My new teacher, Mr Harper, spotted me crying and came over.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. When I explained how upset I was about getting one of the lowest scores out of my entire class he laughed, to my surprise.

  ‘Don’t be upset about it! It’s the first physics lesson you’ve ever had! I promise you that your GCSE grade will be much higher by the time I’m through with you, okay? We’ll make sure of it. Don’t panic.’

  Over the next two years, Mr Harper proved just how much he loved a challenge. Physics quickly became everyone’s favourite lesson due to the way that he would teach us. He would treat us like adults, and not talk down to us like children. He would make lessons fun and interesting at the same time. Absolutely everyone in our class adored him, and by extension, wanted to learn as much as we could from him. By the time I took my final exam, I was able to give an answer to each and every question that came up in the paper. Physics ended up being the only subject for which I received an A* grade at GCSE, the highest grade possible. Mr Harper had taken me (as well as many others) from a low E grade and worked hard to make sure we all learned about physics because we wanted to, and not just because we had to. We all left that class with high grades. Bless you, Mr Harper.

  I’m sure that if you’ve watched any of my videos on YouTube, you’ll already be assuming what I was usually like at school. I’m someone who loathes being told what to do, to the point where reverse psychology is the easiest way to get me to do something. I would protest every order, roll my eyes and sigh, talk back like a smart-arse – and of course, that never went down well. I was often given detention for my attitude. There was one time when one of my teachers actually called for me to be stripped of my prefect tie because, despite him ordering me to sit away from my friend, I made it my mission to sit next to her at any opportunity I had out of sheer defiance. I was, to put it lightly, an arsehole. I was so swept up in trying to be funny and get a laugh from other kids in my classes that my education always came second – and whilst I didn’t do badly at school, getting mostly As and Bs – those hours I spent being an arsehole mean nothing to me now, ten years on.

  How cool you are to other people won’t be relevant when you’re an adult – nor will how unpopular you are, or how ‘gross’ you look. Your grades will stay with you for ever, and lead you on to bigger things: college, university, jobs. Sacrificing opportunities for temporary appearances just isn’t worth it – I say that to you as the kid that didn’t listen, and as the adult that would change an awful lot if she had the opportunity to go back and do it all again. This time around, the friends I had or didn’t have wouldn’t matter – homework wouldn’t be put off until the last minute (I’m totally kidding, of course it would), and I would spend more of my free time in the school library, getting homework and coursework out of the way so I could enjoy my free time at home. Listen – the education system might be horrible, and it may (will) feel like a waste of your youth, but put the time in, buckle down, and reap the rewards – you’ll thank yourself when you’re older.

  Teachers Are Human, Too

  Oh man, teachers, amirite?! Such joyless, soulless human beings who seem intent on sucking out any fun you may be having talking to your friends, setting you homework when you’ve already got tons from your other classes, giving you detention when you don’t do as you’re told. That’s how I used to think, anyway – teachers were the enemy, and I was the hero my school deserved, standing up to them at every opportunity and relishing the praise I’d get from my peers when I got sent out of class or given detention. The truth is (and this is something I only began to see as I started reaching the age that my teachers were when they were teaching me), regardless of how unfair you think your teachers are, they’re still regular human beings with their own money problems, relationship woes and family issues – only with a pretty crappy job to boot. Imagine going to university, getting into thousands of pounds’ worth of debt for a degree, only to be disrespected by kids all day instead of thanked for your hard work!

  I’m not saying teachers are all wonderful, perfect people – they’re human, therefore they can be arseholes – but even teachers are not immune to letting their personal problems get in the way of their work. No one is. There was a biology teacher in my school that everyone complained about. She gave out detentions like Oprah gave out cars, snapping and shouting at anyone who so much as dared to whisper something to a friend. We later found out that she was going through a rather messy divorce. Does that excuse how horrible she could be to some of her students? Of course not – but as someone who often got in tro
uble as a waitress for being grumpy over something that had happened outside of work, I can now completely understand why she was so ready to get angry at being disrespected.

  Whilst this is a short section in this chapter, I felt as though it was needed – we are often slow to empathise when we feel as though we’ve been wronged, and we’re happy to take our frustrations about more homework out on the person who gives it to us – but your teachers are just trying to do their job and help you succeed. If you and your entire class failed, they’d probably lose their jobs. Most teachers do what they do because they love it, and trust me, it’s shitty pay too – and even though your day ends at 3.30 p.m., theirs goes on long into the night grading your papers. Do your part: ask yourself why teachers are asking you to be quiet and pay attention, try to understand that you having tons of homework in other subjects isn’t their fault or problem, and, ultimately, remember that they’re human. They’re going to be tired, they’re going to go through human emotions such as sadness and anger, and they’d probably really appreciate someone asking them, ‘How are you?’ for once.

  The Social Circle