School Daze: The power of education

Dr. Altona Myers is a dental surgeon and member of the International Academy of Facial Aesthetics. Her clinic, FacialRejuve is a modern, friendly, doctor owned and operated aesthetic clinic specialising in Facial Rejuvenation, located in Stillorgan, Co Dublin. https://facialrejuve.ie/

I’m a Kerry-born woman, from Killarney. I went to primary school at Loreto in Killarney and it was a truly wonderful experience. It was a beautiful school in the countryside with lots of fields and playing fields around it. It was a school run by nuns and it had a gorgeous atmosphere. It was small, I think my first class only had about eleven children in it, so the approach was very personable. I loved my primary school teachers, the fact that the school was so small meant that everyone knew each other and that made me feel really comfortable. Of course, as the youngest of five, it was likely that I would have known most people already! All of my siblings had gone ahead of me, so in a way I had the easiest job.

My parents chose that school based on the education and the sport that it provided and we all reaped the benefits. I was very sporty. I played basketball, I played Gaelic football for Kerry for about eight years and my Mum had an equestrian centre, so we all worked in the stables and competed in shows at the weekend. Life was very busy, but we were extremely happy.

Education and its importance was something that I would have been aware of both in school and at home. My Mum used to sit with us while we did the homework we got from our teacher and then she’d set her own homework, which was normally from the year ahead. After we did our homework in the evening, we were encouraged to go out and play or go up to the horses. Our parents really instilled the importance of balance into our lives.

My parents taught us that if you want something in life you have to work for it and that it was very important to reach for your dreams. This was a sentiment echoed to us by the nuns in our primary school. We were always helping out with the stables at home and I think we all learned that there is no such thing as a free lunch fairly early on!

I went to St Brigid’s in Killarney for the first three years of secondary school. I think my parents thought I was concentrating a little too much there, so they moved me to a school in Killorglin then, to focus a little bit more on the educational side. At that point I was on every team, I was on the badminton, running and cross country teams as well as everything else, so it was getting a little excessive.

I continued to play as much sport as I could - I found it really hard to shake that bug. For Leaving Cert, I moved to Limerick Tutorial in Limerick city. I had to knuckle down there, because there was no sport. I remember my parents saying to me ‘this is 32 weeks of your life, just go for it’.

I lived on O’Connell Avenue in Limerick while I went there, sharing with two other girls. We gelled really well, thank God, because I was only seventeen and it was pretty early to be living away from home.

I was really well behaved; I was so focused on work and sport. I was going up and down every weekend, playing for Kerry, and at the same time determined to get the results I needed from the Leaving Certificate that there was no time for straying.

I had no interest in boys or discos or anything like that during this time, so I think I was probably the dream child for my parents! All I cared about was competing with the horses, GAA and school. My Dad is a vet and at the weekends I loved to help him - we are an extremely close-knit family and I think that has stood to me as we have gotten older.

Sport was a fantastic training for me, and I would recommend any young person to get involved with whatever sport they enjoy. My friends were all part of the teams that I was a member of and it was brilliant to meet people who were likeminded and focused on what we thought was having a great time but looking back was the most innocent of fun. We all learned that when we went to compete, it was time to knuckle down, but it was important to relax and have fun when we weren’t.

I am still great friends with the people I hung around with back then. We still have the pony club reunion every year which my husband finds hilarious. Social media is wonderful for helping us to all stay in touch.

I think that life is very hard for young people today. I would advise people who are finding school tough going to join a team, find like-minded people. It’s very important that kids find their own identity and are given the space to develop their own personality. It’s like the game of clones now, where kids are all looking at YouTube and trying to be like the person that they are seeing on the screen.

The best advice I have is to find what you are good at, and stick to it. Whatever I was ever good at, I excelled at, so if you’re good at something, you’ll do well at it. Find what it is and keep going. Always work hard to achieve your dreams. My parents taught us that you will get what you want if you keep that pedal to the metal, and they were right.