#nursey is the first that came to mind because some people hc that one of his moms speaks spanish

[chirpingisflirting]

With Nursey week coming up (courtesy of the wonderful @baba-nurse, check out @nurseyweek for specifics!), I thought it might be interesting to share some of my own personal experiences with growing up in Manhattan and being part of the New York private school world, and speculate how Nursey might have been shaped by such experiences. Hopefully some of you wonderful authors might be able to use some of this for your fics/headcanons.

For starters, I just want to say: I am not at all like Nursey. I am a middle class, white, Jewish girl, and I will never be able to speak for anyone other than what demographics I fall into. If anything I say in here is offensive, or assumes too much, let me know and I will change it as soon as possible. And also keep in mind that I do not mean to say that these experiences are at all universal among the private school world. My mom says that the grade below mine had some of the nicest kids in it; for some reason, the kids I was surrounded by just weren’t (and also, I had some really good friends too, some of the girls were friendly, and for the most part all of the guys were perfectly happy to leave me alone). Yes, some private schools are great. My experience was mine alone.

(read 1.5k of personal angst and Nursey headcannons under the cut. cw for minor bullying, I guess??? maybe not)

So. I was a part of the NYC private school world from pre-K through elementary school, a total of 7 years. My family was solidly middle class, and a relative paid for much of my schooling. I was surrounded by the children of millionaires. I think my grade had around 40 kids in it, and we all moved up together each year. In the entire grade, there were maybe 5 students of color, and probably around 5 students who were there on scholarships. My 7 years in the private school system were miserable. My mom said I would come home almost every day ready to go in my room and cry. I was a terrible child at home, rude to my mother and downright horrible to my brother. It’s taken years for my brother and I to get our relationship back on track.

The private school world, or at least the version I experienced, is not something I would ever want to put my child through. My parents did it because they thought: “Oh, more funding, smaller classes, more individual attention. Great!” And looking at the numbers, it is better than most NYC public schools, which are severely underfunded and overcrowded. But here’s what you don’t see: student interactions. God, were some of those kids awful. It’s all about who has money: if your parents have a boat and a brownstone, you’re in. If not, you’ve got a target on your forehead and your back. And it’s never, ever physical. It’s all psychological. This is why I can’t ever fully get behind fics where Nursey gets beat up at Andover, because I can’t see it ever happening in the private school world I know (but I’m not saying I know everything about this world either. I didn’t go to a boarding school, and I’m just one person). The mental attacks though...wow, do they get to you. I became the best at being a passive aggressive bitch, nipping attacks in the bud, defending my friends, doing anything I could to turn a fight around. And I was good at it, too, but kids shouldn’t be coming to school preparing to defend themselves against any sort of attack at 8 years old.

One thing I wouldn’t do was initiate. Sure, I’d continue a fight if I was really feeling it, but I wouldn’t begin anything. I turned to academics to make myself known, or feared, or whatever you want to call it. Science, math, literature, history, language. All the teachers knew me, I spent hours on homework, was furious if I got a less-than-amazing grade on a test. I loved woodshop, was the best student in the advanced math group, and once spent almost an entire science period proving that you could use the metal end of a no. 2 pencil as an electricity conductor in a circuit, to piss off the girls who said I was lying when I had done it the first time. My passion was creative writing, where I could make any world I wanted, have all the friends and the money I wished.

There are two memories from elementary school that I always refer back to when anyone asks what the bad parts were. The first was during a free period in the gym after lunch, probably during 2nd grade. A girl I had been friends with in kindergarten and first grade had joined a friend group, and I stuck with my own friends. This girl came up to me, with her friend group looking on, and told me that since she knew me, I could join her friend group, but my other friends couldn’t join. Now, this could be read innocently, but let me assure you, it wasn’t. And it wasn’t her fault, because one of the girls in her group was the one who gave me the most shit for everything that I was. I walked away from her and never once regretted it.

The second memory is the only time anything ever became physical. During the end-of-year ceremony, during 5th grade (my last year in the private school system), my class got to sit on the balcony where all the cool older kids got to sit (the school was K-8). I was on the floor in the first row, and a second row of kids were on chairs. The girl behind me was someone I had been friendly with, but she too was Captured by the Dark Side, and had taken it upon herself to make my last days at school absolutely miserable. During this ceremony, she sat behind me, and spent the entire time kicking me in the back, over and over in the same spot. I refused to move; I wouldn’t give her that satisfaction.

My family pulled me out of the private school system and I went to a public middle school, where I had an absolutely amazing time. Everyone was friendly, everyone knew me and I knew everyone. I could be smart and still have friends, I could be snarky and have people laugh with me, I could be artsy and be applauded. I was really, really happy. My mother said one of her biggest regrets was not pulling me out of my elementary school after the first year.

I 100% agree with the fandom that Nursey’s chill is 10000% fake. That boy has too many feelings for him to have any chill about anything (especially Dex but ya know…). I also agree with the post (WHICH I CAN’T FIND SOMEONE HELP ME) that Nursey never gets into physical fights, because he is fully aware of how the entitled rich white people he is surrounded by would see it if he were to raise his fists, and also because he’s learned that psychological attacks hurt so much more. He’s taken to proving that he’s better through academics, through avoiding confrontation, through finding spaces where he can authentically be himself without worrying about someone cruelly picking him apart...such as with a pen and paper, such as on the ice, such as in the haze of a good high. His “chill” is a defense against incoming attacks, but also a capsule that keeps his own emotions in.

I want to add to this that often the fandom only thinks of Nursey’s time at Andover as being instrumental in who he has become, which is probably because that’s all we know of him. But most kids who wind up in boarding schools have been in the private school system since kindergarten, and I guess the point of this post is to stress that whatever goes down in high school is a more carefully constructed version of what has been happening in the years before. Young children can be incredibly and unbelievably mean and cruel to each other. As I said, it’s taken years for me to repair my relationship with my brother, and I am so thankful that I left the private school system because I would be a very different person than I am today, and not in a good way. But Nursey didn’t have that opportunity. He was alone, both because of his race and because he didn’t live at home during high school.

I also want to address the side of the fandom that believes that Nursey feels abandoned by his parents (I also hc him as having two moms btw). One the one hand, yes. I know a few kids from boarding schools who feel like their parents pushed them into schools as a way to get them off their hands, which is a terrible thing to feel. But if Nursey’s experience was anything like mine, then his parents were probably aware of what was going on, and how their son was feeling, regardless of how much they distanced themselves from him or not (I personally believe not; they just have. so. much. to do as queer women of color living and kicking ass in a white male dominated business world. They want the best for their son, and they thought this was the way to do it). Nursey probably felt like his parents were ignoring him, that they didn’t care, that they refused to acknowledge him and make things better. And trust me, this hurts more than any verbal attacks from other students.

What I would absolutely love to see is Nursey repairing his relationship with his parents, see him forgiving them, figuring out why they kept him in that world for so long even though they knew it was hurting him. I want to see him finally grow closer to his sibling as he experiences the college world, as he finds out what true friendship means, what it is like for someone to always have your back. Give me Nursey who is finally able to be happy in an educational institution, and who can finally refer to his peers as his friends.

#derek nurse #nursey #omgcheckplease #omgcp #projecting on a character #oops