Moving to a new school, or up a year at an existing school - with new friends, teachers, subjects, rules and expectation - is a big deal for young people. All of us who are adults remember how daunting it was, but we sometimes take it for granted that children will be able to cope with the change.
My education started with Latin taught at home by a governess, I can't imagine why, and for some reason I attended the Infants Department of the Oxford High School for Girls before moving to the Dragon School at the dangerous age of 8 or so.
At the age of 14, I moved across town to Magdalen College School, Oxford, where science played a much larger role in the curriculum.
When I was homeschooled, I fell so behind - months behind at school - because I'm not good at keeping up. And so I had to sit down for literally three weeks to a month and just do all of it. And it was not fun, and I didn't want to do it, but I had to.
When they set off for their first day at their new school, I will never forget that winter morning as I watched our girls, just 7 and 10 years old, pile into those black SUVs with all those big men with guns.
I really had a rough time in middle school. Middle school to me was the way most people explain high school. Then in high school I had a blast. I basically did everything that you would do in high school or in college, so it really wasn't a difficult thing to pull out.
I wish we could have one big A&M rally - a meeting. I had no hard feelings toward the situation just because, you know, leaving the school and everything, it just wasn't the best fit.
The Friday before winter break, my mom packed me an overnight bag and a few deadly weapons and took me to a new boarding school.
Middle school was my most awkward stage. I switched schools after the sixth grade after having gone to the same school for six years with the same group of 40 kids. It was a shock. I reinvented myself. I experimented with different styles, different groups of friends, and different types of music and not knowing how to be cool.
I was at Wortley Juniors until I was about 12 and then left for a season at Farsley.
When I was 11, I had just started my comprehensive school.
Just before my final year of high school, my brother, sister and I moved with my mother to San Francisco.
I moved in fourth grade in the middle of the school year, and I was the new kid in school.
My middle school experience was pretty hellish. There was a lot of negativity, a lot of bullying and a lot of insecurity. It was the reason I ended up going to my arts high school because I was pretty bullied.
When I first got out of school, I went on a children's theater tour, and I went around the country a little bit that fall, and it was the first time I went to Chicago. We spend a couple of days in Chicago, and I was really struck viscerally by the city.
In elementary school, I did well in science, but I was a poor writer. When I got to high school, I failed all my courses.
I didn't like my first primary school in Leicester very much. As I was going home on my tricycle one day, I said, 'There's no reading, no writing and no arithmetic - it's really boring!' So I was sent to St John the Baptist Church of England Primary.
My best friends are still the ones I first attached myself to when I went to school because, all of a sudden, I was leaving the rather pampered and occasionally very annoying world of having three older sisters to go to a male-dominated world.
After my parents got divorced, I had to go right into public school in the fourth grade. The Steiner school had never really taught me how to read, so it was a rude awakening. I was playing catch-up the whole time.
It's a little crazy. Last year, I was in seventh grade, and we were the babies at the school - 'cause my middle school's eighth grade and seventh grade - and now I'm eighth grade, and all these new students have come in, and they're all like, 'Oh my gosh! Darci Lynne!'
I enjoyed school until the age of 13 - I loved my teachers, my friends. Then, suddenly, you get thrown into a boys' school, and the ecosystem changed, and I wasn't sure where I fitted in. I was still always the clown, but I wasn't inspired, I guess.
Except for a short period at the end of World War II, I attended an elementary school affiliated to Kobe University from ages six to twelve and then moved on to Nada Middle and High School from ages twelve to eighteen. I enjoyed many out-door activities in my youth.
I arrived in London and I was terrified. I never wanted to be a celebrity - one minute I was in school and the next I was in London talking to people at a record company. If anything, I didn't feel in any way worthy.
My father went to boarding school in Sydney when he was 14.
I think girls have a harder time than guys do if you're switching schools. Guys don't get picked on as long as you're OK in sports.
