To feel sad/ guilty about my private school experience-wasted opportunity?

[malificent7]

I was sent to a top private sport school as my dad taught there and we got half off. I wasn't rich, pretty and I was the least sporty person so I obviously had a very hard time there and was completely ostracised. I was subject to somr very cruel bullying and my nan said my parents knew and grieved for me but wanted me to get good grades so I stayed.
I did ok ( 4 Bs at a level but not amazing) and got into uni but promptly suffered a nervous breakdown and spent most of my 20s a complete mess....eating disorders, bad men...you name it. Single motherhood etc. I am 45 now and finally have a career ( poor pay ..healthcare, a great dd and a lovely fiance.)

However, I feel guilty that I was given all these opportunities but messed up so badly. My dad gave me contacts...i even got work experience in a bank...but i rejected the monied, luxury lifestyle. I do love my job but i struggle financially and havn't made the best of my life despite being given the best opportunities that my parents sacrificed for.
My dd won't be going to private school. and she says I was privileged...I am but why didn't it work for me?

I guess education cannot improve average!

To be fair to your parents, they were also in a difficult position.

The discount meant they couldn't move you to a different private school but it's also quite likely you'd have been eaten alive in the local comp as the private school girl.

Perhaps you haven't done as well straight out of school but life isn't a race. You have a career, a child and a loving partner, you just didn't go about it in a linear way.

Similarly your peers with perfect looking lives from the outside might be struggling to pay their massive mortgage or with fertility. There's no right way to live, you just have to do the best you can at the time.

My experience was that, with few exceptions, my peers' outcomes were almost entirely predictable from their parents' status

Very true. Most people don't stray far from their background

There is no really "magic bullet"sadly. Many people( esp women sadly) seem to feel that they "should " have achieved well ,because they went to a certain School or whatever.The reality is severe bullying would have eroded your confidence and women historically have had to try very hard to get on .I try to see life as a series of plus and minus .Yes you had a difficult time ,but now you have a DD,a career and a lovely Fiancee . Private Education is more like a business really

You’re story is my story! Ages aside.

im intrigued to know what school you went to, was it a habs school per chance?

I agree with @dottiedodah that it's helpful to see life across various different elements to work out whether you are 'successful' or not.

if you have a good relationship with your children and partner, a job you enjoy, enough money to enjoy life a bit (even on a tight budget), if you have reasonably good health, a secure home, some friends, then you are thriving!

So sorry to hear you feel like this, but your feelings are completely understandable. I and others like me had similar experiences at private secondary schools because we weren't in the same socioeconomic bracket; there can be a lot of competition between peers because a) a lot of those schools are mostly concerned with their position on the league tables, and encouraging competition between pupils can be a route to encouraging higher grades (sounds mad doesn't it).

In my case there was a private primary school attached on the same campus. For some of those students who have been there from the beginning, having all these Year 7s from 'the outside world' come in was quite threatening, especially if they were clever. Some of the girls I attended secondary school with were only there because their parents could afford to send them there, and they struggled academically. Others came from 'the wrong side of the tracks', soared academically but struggled financially. (And I personally relate to the messaging from your parents about 'all the sacrifices' they made for my education).

Your comment about your psychiatrist treating many alumni of your school is very telling. I know other mental health professionals who say the same thing about my own.

School snobbery can really affect parent’s ability to see what is best for their child. We have super selective grammars in our town and children are mercilessly tutored for YEARS to get in, even those children who are working below age related expectations are made to do it by pushy parents who think grammars are the answer to all their problems but all it means is that their child will struggle every day if their school life. Bullying, stress related alopecia, asked to leave if grades aren’t good enough. On top of that, no one I know who went to grammar have a better job than those who didn’t. DS is very bright but autistic and I’m fighting the urge to put him in for 11 plus even though he has fallen in love with a different school because I feel I’m letting him down if I don’t make him do it. He really doesn’t want to do the test so it’s difficult!

It sounds as if your daughter calling you privileged has caused you to react as if you are being bullied again. It's taken you back to that bad place.

Please, if you've had therapy in the past or help from your GP, it might be a good time to restart it. And a calm conversation with your daughter about the hard times and the stories that everyone has to tell. Does she think that a girl who comes here as a war refugee from an extremely poor developing , country, with perhaps only one parent and speaking minimal English, but who is given a scholarship to a top private school (this is someone I know) - would it be ok to call her privileged if she turned up at university and sat next to your daughter first day? What does privilege mean and how does it operate? Is it ok to judge people on a single aspect of their lives? Get her to think a bit more and share your experience with her.

I feel the same OP. I went to an excellent school (not fee paying but tough entrance exam, the best in the city). Pissed it up the wall because my parents decided to have a very acrimonious divorce (screaming at each other in the streets, police being called, family court, awful step parents) so i got myself a boyfriend and basically lived at his house. Bunked off a lot, stopped giving a shit. Okay exam results but could’ve done so much better.

Yes sometimes it’s quite gutting thinking about how much was within my grasp but I failed to take it and that’s on me. 😢

Some great support here thank u. I am being assessed for asd actually!

But sweetashuni....it was on your parents to be so bratty about their divorce!

I'm 45. Only a handful in my year got straight A's. 4 B's was vvv good then and whilst it wouldn't have got you on a stellar law course or into med school you would have been firmly russell group for anything else.

Someone else here who went to a private secondary school and had no career. I’ve done a mixture of shitty admin jobs and temp work, casual work etc. There must be so many more of us out there than you’d think!

I went to a state primary school where I was bullied for being posh, then a private secondary school where the posher girls all thought I was too common. It’s actually been quite a theme across my life, where I never fit in without anyone because I’m either too posh or too common, and I’m never just allowed to be me. I go to counselling and I bring this subject up frequently.

I actually went to uni in my 30s, to a uni which is known for having a lot of mature students, people who dropped out earlier in life, as well as people from disadvantaged backgrounds etc, certainly not Russell Group. Someone actually asked me if I went to a boarding school?! Which I didn’t, but I think even the university thought I was too posh for them because they have a reputation for helping people improve their lives etc. I didn’t really fit in with their intended message.

I graduated with a first class degree and was top of the class. I loved that they did anonymous marking, so I could be judged on my work alone. I’m sure anonymous marking was really introduced to cut down on racism and sexism etc but actually it worked for me too as they couldn’t judge me for being the private school one. Anonymous marking was one of my favourite things about my degree.

I tried really, really hard to have a career change once I’d graduated, only to find that nobody is interested in mature graduates unless they studied teaching or nursing. I tried to get into an industry that was office-based and was told by several people to give up, so I did. I still do shitty jobs as I’ve understood what it’s like to be anyone else, if that makes sense. As far as I know, a lot of people from my uni are still doing the same jobs as before as we just don’t know how to be anyone else.

I think part of the problem is that it’s become very politically correct to talk about how the top jobs are full of private school people and Oxbridge graduates etc, but those are only the ones we hear about. We don’t hear about the unsuccessful ones among us because most of us go on to have quiet, unremarkable lives.

It sounds like a traumatic experience rather than a privileged experience.

You've over come the difficult years and got things back on track, you should be proud of that

@RuPaulsLastPlace Thank you for writing this! There was certainly a culture clash when I started secondary school, and there was absolutely an “us and them” issue with those of us who’d been to a state primary school and those who’d been to a private one. I’d always known about private secondary schools but I’d never met anyone before who’d been to a private primary school before, as they are much rarer.

The school was in an expensive area of London and those of us who’d been to state primary schools mainly lived out of the area, so we’d get the tube to school. The local girls, who’d been to private primary schools, found this shocking, that we were allowed to go on tube on our own.

Your comment about your psychiatrist treating many alumni of your school is very telling. I know other mental health professionals who say the same thing about my own.

Are psychiatrists allowed to make those sorts of comments? I go to counselling and I’m sure my therapist wouldn’t mention that level of information about her other patients to anyone else. At what point does it become a breach of confidentiality?

My DM had a similar experience, in the 50s. Her parents wanted her to be able to go to grammar school eventually, so moved her. But she says she was really happy and carefree at that state primary school, and wasn’t after that.

I work with a GP who talks about getting many referrals from a local private girls’ school for MH issues. Not sure if it’s a breach of confidentiality if it’s about an institution?

Assuming the school is a reasonable size and the psychiatrist isn't talking about any particular year group then I can't see that it's a breach, particularly if it helps a patient make peace with their past

Yeah okay then.

Have some counselling OP. You really don’t need to get to carry with with you.

I got bbc went to a RG university

What does ‘success’ mean anyway? I went to private school and some of my peers have done very very well, I’m in a kind of middling career, some of my peers have done less well. There is a big mix. However I have two beautiful children and am quite happy being ‘middling’ iyswim. 7% of people go to private schools which is quite a large number really, but 7% of the population don’t have stellar banking careers - and honestly I wouldn’t want that anyway, I like the fact I haven’t ended up as snobby as some people I know! My kids won’t be going to private school either. I’m rambling and don’t really know what I want to say - but it’s not all about having to feel you need to achieve certain things just because you went to a certain school…

@Sunnysunshine123 i feel I’ve had the same issue! Too ‘common’ to fit in with the snobby ones at my private secondary school - I had comments about living in a semi detached house! And at primary school which was state I was bullied for being clever and wanting to work hard. However, I feel this has been an advantage, or I’ve turned it into one. The friends I still have from secondary school are the genuinely nice ones, same with the one friend I still have from primary school. I’m finding I’m very much my own person and deliberately don’t care for cliques etc, just make friends with people in face value and it’s actually very freeing….

@Isthisreallyok 7% is an average across all age groups. It’s actually higher than that at secondary school age, and much lower at primary school. So by the time people get to 18, a lot more than 7% have been in private education at some point. Far more people go to private secondary schools compared to primary.