Headmaster Ritual

This is a song from The Smiths, covered by Radiohead. Headmaster Ritual is a song that sums up most of my high school years. The kind of song you wish you had written yourself.

Lyrics :

"Belligerent ghouls 
Run Manchester schools

Spineless swines
Cemented minds

Sir leads the troops
Jealous of youth
Same old suit since 1962

He does the military two-step
Down the nape of my neck

I wanna go home
I don't wanna stay
Give up education
As a bad mistake

Mid-week on the playing fields
Sir thwacks you on the knees

Knees you in the groin
Elbow in the face
Bruises bigger than dinner plates

I wanna go home
I don't wanna stay

Belligerent ghouls
Run Manchester schools

Spineless bastards all ...

Sir leads the troops
Jealous of youth
Same old jokes since 1902

He does the military two-step
Down the nape of my neck

I wanna go home
I don't want to stay
Give up life
As a bad mistake

Please excuse me from gym
I've got this terrible cold coming on
He grabs and devours
He kicks me in the showers
Kicks me in the showers
And he grabs and devours "

I did not attend any Manchester school and i am way younger than The Smiths, even though some teachers probably did still have the same suit since 1962. I went to a technical high school, the ones where you learn a craft or become an electrician and what not.

I made that choice myself, being quite the handymen i thought it was a place for me.

Little did i know i would end up regretting that decision.

I guess in the end any other high school would have been the same but the people who surrounded me where just to much. I wanted to be an aircraft technician. 

Around my fourth year studying industrial sciences, where i enjoyed 8 hours of math a week, i wanted to downsize on the math and chemistry and go for something more specific.

I spent my fifth and sixth year studying electricity and mechanics.

Those two years were awful. As the courses started getting more technical and more advanced, i started drifting away from what i had imagined my future life and career to be.

I wanted to be creative and have courses like literature and philosophy. The more books i read the more i was cutting myself of from the environment where i spent most of my time.

I had some buddies in class but none with whom i could share my newfound passion for the creative world.

As for the teachers, few of them appreciated my drifting away from their courses.

There were rare cases of teachers actually stimulating me and making me want to drift away even further.

There was my electronics teacher who owns a recording studio, my english teacher in first and second grade who saw my interest in languages and literature and my history teachers who inspired my to look further then what is offered at first.

In the end i'm glad to have had a practical formation that allowed me to see certain things clearly. It also helped me see what i DIDN'T want to do.

Spineless swines are those who reigned the school system and forced all of us into the same mold. I am the residu that fell out of the mold and made it through anyhow.

This life is no bad mistake. I am now doing studies that motivate me. 

Thanks to the Smiths for this great song.