42. Faber Quisque Fortunae - Unknown

I graduated from Dandenong High School in 2001, moving on from there to university, work, adulthood, life.

Yet it’s had quite the impact on my life, and is firmly entwined into my perspective – even now.

I met my now-wife there.

I met many of my friends there.

I was given any number of opportunities there.

Oh yeah, and I learnt some stuff too.

* * *

As I’ve written before, I was very fortunate in my experience of high school. I didn’t enjoy all of it – I grew bored quite quickly, I found the obligatory nature of much of it stifling and longed to be out of there.

But I realise now that I was enjoying myself there a lot of the time as well.  

And that this level of enjoyment – which I took for granted at the time – was not sustainable in the ‘real world’.

The real world doesn’t allow you hours each day to hang out with your friends.

You don’t have sports days in the real world, and you certainly don’t get curriculum days.

You have to worry about bills, bosses and bastards in the real world – high school keeps that list down to one only.

The worries you have at school don’t have quite the same impact as the ones you have afterwards.

The memories of that time are, luckily for me, rather positive.

* * *

I wasn’t meant to go to Dandenong High School.

We lived outside their catchment zone, so I was bound to go to the new, local high school. But my two best mates in primary school had older siblings at Dandenong, so they were headed there.

Which meant I’d be off to this new school with a bunch of new kids – with a head full of stories from my friends’ older sister about how difficult, intimidating and frightening high school could be.

This could not stand, I decided.

I was a wilful child, it seems.

So I told Mum I wanted to go to Dandenong, only to find out that there was a shortlist of people outside the catchment zone. A shortlist I’d be towards the bottom of.

It was also going to be more expensive than going to the local school.

Meaning that I was long odds of going to the same school as my friends – and that if I was able to go there, the overall cost would make it a bit more difficult for us.

But, somehow, I found out they had a scholarship programme and managed to get my name on to that list. The scholarship covered all fees and textbooks for the first two years, reducing that painful year-seven hit by a fair bit.

It also circumvented the shortlist, which I think was more valuable to me at the time.

In short order, I found myself sitting in one those draughty, symmetrical, timber-lined halls that sprung up across the country in the 1960s.

I had never sat a test like that before, full of odd logical constructions, weird comprehension tests and questions about language.  

I found out a little while later that I’d performed fairly well and was asked if I’d like to accept the scholarship.

You bet I did.

No more convenient local school with a relaxed uniform code for me – nope. Years of bus rides and neckties were what I wanted!

Apparently.

The school was also about to start trialling what was then called the Accelerated Learning Program (it’s more common now, I think – you basically skip year nine and finish school a year early), which I was invited to join.

I declined, for some reason I can’t remember now.

Though I suspect it was so I could still hang out with my friends.

  * * *

It was in that first year that I was taught the words to the school song – I thought it was called ‘We Are The School’, but I’ve since found it the correct title is Faber Quisque Fortunae.

Yep, Latin.

I studied Latin at school, through to year ten. Loved it. Genuinely. It makes no sense of course, the way we use an ancient language to prescribe inconsistent rules over our own language, but it provides such a good foundation for English that I can highly recommend it.

Oh, and Faber Quisque Fortunae was the school motto – it means ‘every man (of course) is the architect of his own destiny’.

The lyrics were included in our school diary and drummed into us, early on in our time as small fish in big uniforms, swimming in a big pond with 1,500 other fish.  

We are the school, we make the rule,                   

This is the song that we pass along,                    

The word and the rhyme, the tune and the time,   

That the School will sing forever.                      

Listening to it now, it’s a plodding song, with a pretty boring melody and droning rhythm.

It also immediately takes me back to that musty, timber-lined hall.

The rows of uncomfortable, folding vinyl seats.

The gold lettering on the plaques hanging up near the windows.

The dusty, aged blue curtains on the stage.

The three entrances on each side of the hall, where we’d muster before being shepherded in by grimly patient teachers.

The stern eye of the principal, seemingly nostalgic for the days you could beat children with a ruler.

The teachers patrolling the aisles, bored yet watchful over a crowd of hormones dressed in uniforms.

The navy blue, woolen jumper prudently bought a few sizes too big to make sure we all ‘got our money’s worth’.

The round-toe, sensible black shoes I used to polish every couple of weeks until I realised the excess Nugget was accumulating in the carpet of my bedroom.     

The cold, oh the cold air that would sweep in every time somebody opened the front doors.

Chorus:

Work to win, despair is sin,

The best may fall to rise again,

The team will win that tries again,

Work conquers all.

I’m surprised the lyrics don’t annoy me now, with their reference to ‘sin’ and focus on the redemptive qualities of sheer hard work.

But they don’t.

Even now, as I type this, I’m humming this song under my breath and bathing in the nostalgia.  

This is the gate to the way long and straight,

That leads to the road, where we carry our load,

With gladness or care, with courage to dare,

While we travel we'll sing forever.     

The school was quite proud of those gates. They’re in this song, the name of the annual yearbook (I think that’s what we call it in Australia?) was the Gate.

They’re lovely gates – large, wrought iron things – but they’re still gates. I appreciate the metaphor, but still.

Sometimes gates are just gates.

Chorus:

Work is our aim, till our fortune we frame,

Till we vanquish our foes, and forget all our woes,

Till we win every game, and we earn the fair name,

That the School will live forever.   

  * * *

Another memory has crawled into the front of my brain, of being somewhere when a spontaneous rendition of this song kicked off.

It was years after school – it might have been the Kilcunda night – but still with a large group of former students assembled somewhere or other.

For some reason, someone kicked off with the opening line:

We are the school, we make the rule,                   

And then, in a moment of enjoyable participation another voice joined in.

Then another, a few more and then, suddenly, the entire crowd was raucously – unabashedly - belting out the lyrics to this boring, dirge of a song.

It should have been naff, something none of us cool young adults would ever possibly indulge in.

But there was a lack of consciousness about it for some reason. People were smiling as they did it, cheering, swaying.

I mean, it sounds awfully naff, I know. But even now, in the haze of a half-remembered idea, it’s leaving a grin on my face.  

  * * *

I attended the centenary celebrations of my school a few months ago.

It’s changed, a lot. The campus is huge, there are new buildings aplenty.

But a few things are the same.

It’s clearly still a diverse student population. Dandenong has ridden the different refugee waves over the years, which is reflected in its student base.

I didn’t realise until university that it wasn’t common to have attended a school with dozens of different nationalities, cultures and languages present.

Or to have an International Day Concert with a series of different presentations, dances and events celebrating that diversity.

Or, naturally, to have the usual adolescent posturing and affiliations tinged with a powerful racial note.

  * * *

I’m glad I went to the centenary day to look around the school. But a few unfortunate parts did disappoint me.

I imagine it’s the same for anybody that returns, years later, to a place that left a positive impression. It’s never quite the same, is it?

One niggle was in the lack of representation of our cohort in the historical record.

The day had been organised by the Ex-Students Association which, it seems, has failed to register a new member since the class of 1985.

Leaving us with the impression that our entire generation of students had simply never existed according to the historical record.  

Of course, I can’t complain too much – I’ve never tried to join the Association, after all.

I also discovered that they’d managed to misspell my name on one of those plaques up the window.

A very effective ego puncturing exercise, if nothing else!

  * * *

Looking back, I’m terribly glad I was able to earn that scholarship..

Had I been unsuccessful, I’d have been going to the local school and fallen out of contact with those two mates (that I still speak to, nearly 30 years later).

I wouldn’t have met the people that are important to me and I’d not have met my now-wife either.

But so it goes.

Much of life is random like that, so rather than dwell on the sliding doors, I feel it’s better to focus on what did happen.

After all, I did go to that school.

I did have a go.

I did leave a mark, no matter how small.

I did meet those people.

And all of us, strangely enough, did work to win.