I attend a rural Catholic high school, one of five high schools within the immediate area. The school would be considered as an ‘average’ Australian secondary institution, with around seven-hundred students and a core group of well-trained, if sometimes completely incompetent, teachers.
The majority of students come from a conservative background and there isn’t much in the way of diversity or multiculturalism. It’s the perfect breeding ground for the quintessential ‘Aussie’ teenager, and in turn the textbook place for a future ‘Teenagers gone wild’ news headline. Their close-mindedness and unbelievable sense of self-importance is at times shocking.
The recent ABC program ‘Ja’mie: Private School Girl’ is meant to be seen as a satirical look at the life of a self-absorbed teen girl, attending a private college, and living on Sydney’s affluent North Shore. But in all honesty it’s a beautifully accurate glimpse into what many of the attendees, both male and female, personalities are like at my country, unisex, average Australian school. It is unbelievably difficult to have conversations with many of my fellow teens as they are just so obsessed with their own world.
You ask them how their weekend was, for example, and they’ll give you a half hour rendition of their utterly tedious end-of-week activities, but you listen, as that’s what a normal person does, right? They never ask you how your life is in return, in fact I don’t think it’s ever happened really, but why should they care? You aren’t them. Sadly though, this ignorance isn’t even the worst facet of the modern teen…