Friday Five: Lady Bird

This week's Friday Five:

1. What was moving out of your parents' home like? Hard. I was 20 and lived a very sheltered life, so I didn't know anything about responsibility, finances, or independence. The freedom was great, but it was probably the most trying time of my life. But also when I learned the most and grew up the fastest.
   
   
2. What makes popular kids in high school popular, and how were you like or unlike them? I went to an all-girls' private school, so it was more about how involved you were in school functions, extracurricular activities, academic achievements, and how networked you were to students from other schools (namely, all-boys' private schools). But it was also how well-rounded you were; if you wanted to be voted prefect (my school was based on the British school system), you had to be intelligent, socially active, and personable. I don't think I was popular or unpopular; I kinda just did my own thing and had friends from various groups, but I liked keeping under the radar. I was a fairly average student in terms of grades, but I wasn't a joiner (in fact, I kinda went out of my way to be uninvolved) and didn't care for school functions or extracurricular activities like sports or clubs.
   
   
3. When you were in high school, where in the neighbourhood did schoolmates hang out? My high school is situated at a main intersection in midtown Toronto and students are from all over the city, so we really only hung out in that area if we had a spare period or were on lunch break. That having been said, in Grade 9 and 10, we spent a lot of our lunch breaks at the convenience store across the street getting slushies and candy. And then in Grade 11 and 12, my friends and I would spend spare periods and lunch breaks down the street at Second Cup. It was connected to a Great Canadian Bagel, so my diet consisted of a lot of lattes, white hot chocolates, and bagel sandwiches. And when my friend got her car in senior year, she'd occasionally drive us down to the McDonald's (which was too far to walk and get back to class on time).
   
   
4. What was learning to drive like? Pretty breezy. In Ontario, there are three levels of driver's licences to drive a car. The test for the G1 is "written" or theoretical, so you just have to study the handbook, learn the basic laws of driving and how to read traffic signs, and take the test (when I took it 15 years ago, it was a multiple-choice format on a screen). The test for the G2 is practical, and for regular roads only. I did about 15 hours of in-vehicle training from a driving school (my parents did not have the time to teach me themselves, nor would they ever let me drive their cars). I was actually never scared of learning to drive. I kinda just dove right into it, and because I did a lot of my driving lessons during rush hours, I learned how to adapt really fast to driving in traffic. Even my instructor called me a natural, because I already had that instinct of when to accelerate, when to brake, when to switch lanes, when to let someone pass me, etc. I passed my G2 test on my first attempt. I had taught myself to drive on highways very shortly after that. The test for the G is practical but for regular roads and highways. Because I was so used to driving on highways by that point, I passed the G test on my first try as well. Honestly, driving has always been kinda second nature to me.
   
   
5. What were your most difficult and least difficult subjects in high school? My most difficult were math and physics. My least difficult were art and English.