10 Oct 2019

To start this off, here is a tragic anecdote from my Year 12 formal. I promise that there's a point to it.

Monday to Friday, I’d rock up to high school with hair that a bird could nest in and tattered trackies. Once I even arrived to first period half asleep with pimple cream still on my face… 

I was keen as a bean to capitalise on my last formal and prove that I could actually look good, for once. My daydreams consisted of me making a dramatic, princess-like entrance, elegantly gliding down a flight of stairs wearing a breathtaking frock as everyone in my year looked at me, mystified and bedazzled. 

Spoiler alert. This did not happen. Instead, my hairstyle cost the price of Jesus’ tears and my makeup was caked on. With the mixture of wild hair, fake eyelashes, pearl lipstick and my pink dress, I looked uncannily like Honey Boo Boo child. Great.

So I ended up rocking up late to my formal, face blotchy and red from my attempts at scrubbing it off, hair looking more like a bird's nest than ever and feeling overall grumpy. I made sure to avoid every camera and sat in the corner, eating the less than average food provided.

But then, Freddie Mercury talked to me… Well, not really. Bohemian Rhapsody just started playing and it would be quite frankly rude not to scream every lyric. My frown turned upside down as I just let loose and made the most of the rest of the night. I held onto every moment. The moments of laughter, of dancing, of singing, of talking, of kissing, of having cheeky beers at the after-party... These moments were the perfect knot to tie my high school experience together. 

Your formal is a celebration of 13 years of slogging it in a classroom. It's time to forget about how much of a drag high school was and focus on the things you'll miss as well as the exciting future, dancing with your year group for what could be the last time. 

Sure, my dreams of looking bangin' fell through, but I'm so thankful that I made the most of my formal as I see it as one of those monumental nights that I won't forget anytime soon. Trust me when I say, I was so so keen to say au revoir to high school but my formal reminds me of the good times I shared with my mates.

Dress up nice and fancy but don't care too much about that. Just focus on the good mems and have a ball dancing with your mates and all the people you have known since they were in Year 7, with backpacks bigger than their bodies and keen to be a high schooler (we didn't know that a storm was well and truly coming).

All I'm saying is... just send it. You deserve it because finishing 13 years of schooling is a bloody big achievement.