Something I'd Never Want to Repeat (Until I Did) - Holly Schindler

What did I think of high school?

Well...

I...

hated it.

Really. Every single minute. 

College was a delight. But that's a different story.

After I got my master's, I dove headfirst into full-time writing. I got out of college without any loans (not a common occurrence when I got my MA in '01, but not impossible), but to pay the few bills I did have, I taught piano and guitar lessons. It was a perfect setup: I wrote early in the day, and when the kids got out of school, I'd teach until dinner. 

I'd attended high school from 1991-1995--I wasn't too much older than the kids I taught (most of them were in middle school, but I did have several high schoolers). Still, I really expected them to be different. We'd had a technological revolution. Sure, when I taught piano lessons, social media didn't exist, not like it does now. But when I was a high schooler? We didn't even have an answering machine. I typed my freshman-year college papers on a Smith Corona. I expected the kids who came by for lessons to be more worldly, somehow. 

But...

they weren't. 

Not at all. Maybe it was my age, but most of my students would just talk to me--about friends and teachers. Asked what I thought about certain situations. Whether or not I'd had a certain teacher (sometimes, I had!) But they were so similar. So familiar. I knew those kids. I'd gone to school with them. 

I'd been them.

I enjoyed my students so much, I wanted to write for them. 

I started drafting my first YA.

It's funny--walking out the door of my own high school for the last time, I never would have anticipated that the experience would be something I'd ever want to repeat. 

And yet, I did--for my students.

~

Holly Schindler is an award-winning author of books for readers of all ages. Her first-published book, A Blue So Dark (YA) was drafted in-between the aforementioned piano lessons. It has recently been released, and is available where books are sold.