Create with ME entry: First Day as a Mature Student

First Day as a Mature Student

I headed out the door into a waiting taxi. The whole journey I kept thinking, what if I'm the oldest there ? oh no! What if it's a bunch of annoyingly loud teenagers ? The taxi pulled up outside the college entrance. There I stood in front of a huge building with young people standing in groups or going in or out of the building. I thought right, just walk in and wait where we had previously been told, but the door , it's a funny circle thing, what if i get stuck?. Shut up! I told myself , before people noticed I was standing there like a lemon.

Standing at the meeting place my stomach was doing somersaults, i began to feel sick. It wasn't long before other students arrived along with the teacher. Everyone was talking to each other introducing themselves, laughing and chattering away. I stand there silently watching, thinking to myself, why can't i be like that ? Why can't I talk to strangers and introduce myself? The teacher leads us all to the room we will be learning in, they're all chatting away to each other while I'm slightly lagging behind as my little legs couldn't keep up with them . When we arrived at the classroom, I chose a seat nearest the door so I could make a quick exit if need be.. I'm glad but my stomach was still in knots. I take a few deep breaths but a late comer bursts through the door, looks around for a place to sit. My heart starts beating faster, i thinking don't sit next to me ! don't sit next to me ! The lady pulls up a chair and sits right next to me, i smile and turn to focus on the teacher, hoping the person sitting next to me couldn't see my hands shaking or my face going redder and redder.

I try to block out everyone in the room to listen to the teacher, she tells us all to write our names on a piece of paper, fold it so it stands up so she could see who we were. Great, I thought, we don't have to stand up and introduce ourselves. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The relief didn't last long. Our next task was to talk to the person next to you and find out two interesting facts about them, then ! tell the rest of the class. My worst nightmare, I couldn't talk about myself, certainly didn't have any interesting facts and definitely wasn't going to be able to talk in front of the class. I felt like a breeze block had hit my chest, I couldn't speak, I could feel myself welling up and I tried to fight back the tears. The lady next to me realised and tried to help me out, but the nicer she was to me the more I cried. i felt stupid , i just couldn't stop myself. needless to say i left rather quickly .

Sarah Tavener