The atmosphere at my school was very competitive. Young girls were competing with each other every day for status, for leadership, for the affection of the teachers. I hated it.
I had really good English teachers in elementary through high school. Not only were we required to read a lot - which is the best training for writing - we were drilled on grammar every day, every night. I hated the drill part, but I don't dangle my participles too often.
My high school wasn't a big public school; it was tiny. There were 36 girls in my graduating class. We were a big group of girls that by the time senior year came along couldn't wait to get away from school fast enough but we loved each other. It's really fun to see the girls at reunions now.
I'll miss the competitive side and the camaraderie of being around the players and competing each and every day.
What you realize is when you have an environment and an atmosphere like we had at Marist, where guys cared about each other, the coaches were great teachers and communicators, whether it's high school, college or pro, I think coaching is coaching.
I had the honor of meeting a young Pakistani woman named Malala Yousafzai, who was shot and nearly killed just for trying to go to school. I also heard about how nearly 300 girls in Nigeria were kidnapped from their school dorms in the middle of the night. There are girls like this in every corner of the globe. In fact, there are more than 62 million girls worldwide not attending school, and that's an outrage.
I grew up not having very many girl friends. Girls tend to be competitive. I actually went to the school 'Mean Girls' was written about, so you can only imagine what my high school experience was like!
Practically every profession has a really political environment. I think the world has become more competitive. There are so many people in every place competing for small slices of success and power. It's a heated atmosphere and whenever you have competition, you're going to have more politics and manipulation.
America is competitive. We compete with each other every day.
I went to a very academically competitive high school. So I was always quite studious and quiet, just to keep up with the other geniuses who were in my school.
I get it, it's a competitive sport and you're competing for jobs every single day.
Girls get competitive, as though there's only one spot in the world for everything _ but that's not true. We need to stick together and see there's more to life than pleasing men. It's important not to cut yourself off from female friendships. I think sometimes girls get scared of other girls, but you need each other.
Like, from my middle school dance... the boys were on one side, and the girls were on the other side, and we never interacted with each other.
You know when I was a kid, I hated every day I was in school, from the kindergarten right through to my last day of high school.
If you're afraid to talk to the other adults in your school it is definitely throughout history the hallmark of a failing school. When I was writing about the teachers' strike in New York City in 1968, the middle school where events triggered that strike was a place where teachers were known to hide in their classrooms.
Girls aren't mean to guys in high school. They are mean to each other. Girls were never mean to me.
I went to a school where the girls that were found attractive were the complete opposite to me. I judged my worth on how many boyfriends everyone had, and I wanted to jump out of my skin every second of every day.