What school did you go to?

To be fair, I totally understand why people in Christchurch ask this question. Christchurch is very small sometimes and once you know the school a new acquaintance attended you can discover mutual contacts. However, far too often with this question, the interviewer assumes far too much about the interviewee from their response.

The connotations of Christchurch schools are frustratingly robust. If you say you attended Villa Maria, many will assume you're a pregnant slut, despite the fact that Villa's most famous export is the upstanding netballer, Bernice Mene. If you say you attended Shirley Boys High School, many will assume you're a brain-dead sportshead, despite the fact that the school has excelled in cultural pursuits as evidenced by a list of alumni including Mark Walton, the current head of the Christchurch School of Music and James Instone and Keith Spragg, both of whom were formerly clarinettists in the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. Clearly it is wrong to assume much from a person's school of origin.

The other reason this is such an awful question is that I left school many years ago and yet it still seems to matter where I attended. In fact, when I was 23, my boss (who was from Tauranga and worked with me in Fox Glacier) still thought it was important to know at which school in Christchurch I was educated. At 25, a German girl I met in Vietnam asked what school I went to. At the age of almost 26, an Aucklander I met in Nepal thought it was essential to ask anyone from Canterbury what school they attended. Since leaving school I have travelled internationally, changed my career aspiration, developed new interests and met a whole range of people who have greatly influenced my views on the world. In other words, if my school environment was ever entirely responsible for my outlook - and it wasn't - then it definitely isn't now because I have taken on board more information in the last five minutes then I ever did in five years of high school. That's not to say that my school didn't offer a range of perspectives - it most definitely did - it's just to say that I've met more people since I've left school and any moulding my school had on my perspective has been severely diluted since leaving. I am nearly 26. Think of a new bloody question!!!!!!!