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During first grade, I spent nearly every afternoon for months in the school nurse's office, sick with psychosomatic headaches, begging to go home; by third grade, stomachaches had replaced the headaches, but my daily trudge to the infirmary remained the same.

Still today, I cannot cross the threshold of a teaching institution without physical symptoms, in my chest and my stomach, of discomfort or anxiety. And yet I have never left school.

I wasn't into anything at school. I used to get really embarrassed. I used to get asked to do performing things, and I'd go to all the rehearsals, and then I'd pretend to be ill on the day I had to actually perform. I was very unhappy at school.

I was a pretty delicate kid. Anything that was going around I'd get it and I'd generally get it much worse than other people, so I spent a lot of time out of school.

When I was ten, I caught glandular fever and had to have a year off school. My parents arranged for a tutor to keep me on track with my studies.

I had these experiences as a kid; I remember certain things happening in school that were horrifying that I would see, certain things of violence or certain things of cruelty, but around that, something might happen afterwards to cause everyone to laugh, and that always blew me away.

I used to get really sick. I would go to the doctor with all these ailments, and they would tell me I needed to be at home. I didn't even really understand what that meant because since I was a baby, I've always been moving, moving, and then touring.

I have a theory because I was being beaten up a lot by people outside of school, it was almost like if I could make myself sick enough they'd take sympathy on me.

What makes me sad about school is that the people who are unhappy are unhappy because they don't believe it will change. And I just want to say: 'It does! High school ends and it's over.' I will tell anyone that it's OK to be unhappy at school, make lots of mistakes and then it will be over.

I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it's just depressing to me. The poor little kids.