Gabrielle Gassin

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

Thinking back to who the young Gabrielle is an interesting exercise for any person, myself included.

I remember a lot of stuff about that stage of my life. Going places like school where I wished I could buy a choc top muffin baked fresh at the canteen and that my marks were higher, jumping out of a giant box put out near the skip bin, scaring whoever walked past – our group of friends in hysterics watching, thinking it was scandalous that my homeroom teacher had a name change and was now a ‘single mum,’ the quote book we created for our senior school music teacher, rehearsing for the production and the performance – still one of the best times of my life- recalled fondly by all, soccer trials at lunchtime, sitting in the Sister Gabrielle Nichols hall for whole school assemblies and being so impressed with anyone who performed on stage, rehearsing my year 12 piano pieces for entire periods in my class of five girls; each of us with a different instrument, bronze medallion lessons at the ocean pool a short way from the grounds and having to go in despite overcast skies, unpleasant temperatures and murky water, getting to late year 11/year 12 and everything at school being amusing, swapping entire friend-journal books, (and working on these at home – more so than I remember ever doing any sort of homework) never fully understanding the concept of English, never fully understanding the concepts taught in maths, never fully understanding how science worked, never fully understanding why my religion teacher hated me, never fully understanding why I was not very good at French although I had a perfect accent, never fully understanding why I was friends with everybody but nobody’s very best friend. I remember writing in my diary, but I don’t really remember studying English at home. I remember practicing verb endings for French, but never really getting solid marks and feeling confident after a test. I remember my teachers being there, but being somewhat inaccessible – a beacon signalling better grades and parental approval but with no pathway to achievement. I hope I’m not that sort of teacher now.

I will never forget Mr Myers – my year 10 maths teacher who was also my soccer coach – a passionate football enthusiast from England who was terrible at teaching mathematics to fifteen year old girls but who got us properly riled up to get out on the field. He had the sort of calf muscles and field talk that tell you he was a great player, once upon a time. I remember our history teacher, Ms Leach, after a lockdown alarm went off, awkwardly climbing down onto all fours and reversing herself underneath a student desk, all the while narrating the course of action for lockdown procedures as we sat at our desks watching her, bemused and baffled by her clumsiness and seeing a full grown teacher under a tiny wooden desk. I remember the popular girls always being exactly that, and wanting to be a part of their group for the inclusivity it seemed to provide. Most of them were very confident, achieved good grades, and school for them seemed to be a whole lotta fun. I wanted that for me, too.

Towards the end of year 8 and into year 9, I remember feeling quite out of place, wanting to be a part of something but not finding it. An all girls school can invoke this feeling very well, where most girls gravitate to a group whereby they are accepted into a sort of homebase, and some never quite find it. There were times in my middle school experience that I just lapped around the various areas of the basketball courts and quad area – a homeless little puppy, it seems. Being back at school as a teacher now, I do the very same thing as I stroll around during a lunch duty. Ironic that my career choice has brought me back to that, though I waltz around now with an entirely different feeling.

Because of this moderate, continuous feeling of displacement, I ended up spending weekends at the beach. It was a place I loved to be, and it was there I fell in with surfing. I hung out with a group of same-age boys from our brother school, Edmund Rice College. I never dated any of them, although I’m sure that was the intention of a select few. I even became good enough friends with one of them to go to our first concert together in Sydney, just him and I, driven by his mum. That was Green Day, supported by My Chemical Romance. Macdonald’s chicken burger on the way home and we’d had a roaring, innocent time out there in the stands. Many years later I found out that my now husband had been at that same event, probably raging riot in a death circle in the standing admission only section.

I don’t know that I would have advice to give my teenage self because I think for the most part, the mistakes I made were formative. If I didn’t date that absolute idiot for too long a time, I would not have needed to escape to Europe. Going to Europe gave me an experience that not many kids get at 17 – a twice broken leg, double surgeries, rehab and blood thinners, language school alone in a foreign city, acquisition of German with no prior knowledge, being an extra sibling in a host family, establishing a friendship that is still one of my strongest, seventeen years later. Finding an undying passion in snowboarding, and having that take me travelling further around the world later in life. With my knowledge of German, I have been favourably employed, having even taught a year of it with no formal teaching qualifications. Coming back to Australia I was offered a place a university because of my year abroad, which brought me to where I am today.

No doubt that as a teenager, I made ridiculous choices that today, I wouldn’t dream of affirming. Those decisions and actions though, created the human I am, and though I still have a long way to go on the road to improvement, I am content with the fibres that make up my being and the values I have come to hold.

Post Script Thoughts

In hindsight, however. I wonder if advising me to properly pursue a career in writing straight out of my communications/journalism degree might have put me closer, sooner, to becoming a published author. It might have turned me off words for good, or it might have changed the course of my career. I suppose I will never know!