St. Conleth's College 75 Year Quinquennial 2014

48
St. Conleth's College
1939 - 2014
Cinéma Vérité :
A Girl at St. Conleth’s
by Robyn Hamilton 2010
To regrettably forgo an original introduction, and to
follow in the well-worn tradition of too many screenplays,
I must say that I can clearly remember my first day
at Conleth’s as if it were yesterday. It began with a short
meeting with the scant collection of other girls who joined
me in 2008 (our number reached a whopping total of
eight!) where we were peculiarly warned not to let our
new male counterparts ‘throw shapes’ at us, after which
we were split up into our respective classes. Entering a
stuffy classroom fit to burst with teenage boys just at that
moment of pubescence which is most offensive to the
olfactory senses was jarring enough, but combined with a
cramped, clambering collection of tall, lanky figures who
had not yet quite learned to command themselves, had a
positively dwarfing effect. At once we felt simultaneously
tiny and enormous, as each pair of eyes burned holes in
our backs as we took the only remaining seats at the front
of the classroom. However, having noted this, it was
probably the first and last time I ever felt intimidated
during my two years in St. Conleth’s.
It is a well documented and poorly kept secret that the
function of the admission of girls into St. Conleth’s in
Fifth Year is a thinly veiled excuse to ‘civilise’ and ‘finish’
its precious boys, rendering them fit for the polite society
of the real world. As a supreme example of feminine
worth and an ultimate lady, I feel I functioned well in my
capacity to help educate fifty or so socially awkward boys
that women were more than objects of boorish guffaws.
Notice I said ‘more than’. We girls certainly endured
plenty of ‘guffaws’, but we also managed to slowly coax
most of the lads into some sort of respectable inter-gender
interaction. I also like to entertain the idea that I left
more of a mark than merely an introduction to the female
of the species and I, of course, took a lot from my own
experience, making some lifelong friends along the way.
In fact, one of my fondest memories of St. Conleth’s is of
the class where my gender was singled out the most, Classics,
wherein I was the only girl in a class of eight. It was
odd that I ended up in Classics as it hadn’t been an option
in my old school and upon entering St. Conleth’s, I was
fiercely prodded in its direction, informed that I would
assuredly enjoy it. Predictably I was the butt of every
woman joke, ably encouraged by the pre-feminist literature,
and was once referred to simply as ‘Girl’ (though
that may have been more my teacher’s premature senility
than his sexism) and was asked repeatedly why I didn’t
identify more with the female characters from the likes of
The Odyssey, especially the noted nymph Calypso.
I didn’t mind, however : we spent many days not even
studying Classics but rather sitting around discussing the
merits of The Wire or quoting The Simpsons or arguing
over the intricacies of Middle Earth, with the last class
culminating in a trip to Herbert Park where we drank
fizzy drinks, curiously with peppers added, generously
provided by the teacher.
Graduating in 2010, after putting a lot of elbow grease
into the fabled aul’ LC, I managed to secure a place at
Trinity College to study French and Film Studies. Having
been one of my best subjects at school, French was a
natural progression but film studies was a whole new ball
game, an area into which I threw myself wholeheartedly.
Outside of course work, it wasn’t long before I started
writing for the college’s film journal Trinity Film Review,
joining the staff in my third year and finally taking the
position of editor-in-chief in my final year. I had a lot of
help from many of my former St. Conleth’s classmates
whom I often badgered to write. PJ O’Riley, Liam
Brophy, Oisín Blennerhassett and Robert Noonan all
contributed. I also co-hosted a radio show on film every
week with Trinity FM in my fourth year and my love for
film combined with my interest in Japanese culture as
I held weekly screenings of various Japanese films with
the Japanese society. I was even fortunate enough to take
a month long trip to Japan with Suzanne Sheehan, another
former Conleth’s girl, in 2012.
For my final year in Trinity, fortune again was in my favour
as I was able to live on campus, which was one of the
greatest experiences I’ve ever had. As to what I’m doing
now, I have just graduated, having written a dissertation
on the treatment of relationships in teen cinema of the last
decade (a task which I left on the long finger and nearly
killed me to complete). Languishing in the lush grounds of
Trinity for eight months was easy, dreamlike, glorious …
which made the cut off into the harsh and very real world
of poor career prospects and
shoehorning back into the
family nest all the more difficult.
Hence, I packed up my stuff and
decided to move to the south of
France for the summer. I have
been working at quite a lively
bar in Nice and let us just say
the French I learned at St. Conleth’s,
as well as the experience
of handling clumsy male overtures,
has come in handy!
Robyn at the Cannes
Film Festival 2013