Ah, school days: best days of your life. Really though, does anyone actually believe that shtick or is it just another beautiful myth we use to patronise young people? I know that if I’d been trusting enough to believe it during my turbulent high school years, even this bright-sider would have struggled to pick her way towards a silver lining.

You mean it doesn’t get any better than this? Noooooooo!

Constant abuse and regular beatings from around ninety percent of a well-populated school, punctuated the morning name-callings and afternoon attacks of my every week. Bad memories of being pinned against any available wall by a scary classmate who looked like she knew her way around an assault and battery charge plagued my sleep cycle for years to come. Returning with pasta in my hair and sour milk in my backpack was a standard day’s end, and once in a while I’d have the excitement of being knocked out by a well-aimed half brick on the run home.

A new academic year only meant a new influx of First Years to take out their teenage frustrations on my increasingly twitchy face. To this day, I still wouldn’t raise my hand to anyone other than a coach asking for questions so fighting back was never really an option. And confiding in teachers served only to open myself to further acknowledgement that I was just a bit different from the other pupils, and the helpful advice that I should maybe try to fit in more, which always seemed a bit like blaming the fox for the hunt to me.

Every lunchtime, my friend and I hid in classrooms and corners, or escaped the educational prison early to seek refuge in the nearest shopping centre, biding our time until the blessed 16th birthday arrived, ushering in adulthood and leaving behind the school daze at last. Perhaps it was naïve to think that the end of high school would herald a new-found popularity though.

At university, I was the youngest, the gauchest, the pinkest of hair, and, in an accounting course, believe me, that’s enough to set a girl apart. So I toned it down, tried hard to be a bit more business, a bit less Paula. I avoided social situations, picked up some new nervous ticks, and stopped eating in public, making me miserable, jumpy and hungry for the best part of four years. A real delight to behold.

If only I’d been introduced to wrestling earlier in life, maybe things would have been a mite different. Or a mite more interesting anyway.

Now, don’t misunderstand me; I’m not imagining myself donning a unitard and tussling my way around the dinner hall – and neither should you, if you want to sleep tonight. But there was just something about the lessons learned during my recent wrestling session that struck home for this reluctant student, and not only because I hit the ground so many times that everything seemed to strike somewhat.

Returning to the centre of the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome to try wrestling for the first time was a bit bizarre but somehow comforting: I knew the surroundings – and the surroundings knew me – and there was always a Paula-shaped groove in the concourse from my track cycling calamities to guide my tumbles in the right direction. Meeting my coaches for the first time: not so comforting. The cream of Scottish wrestling – Ross McFarlane, Sarah Jones and Gareth Jones –– had kindly showed up to teach this utter coward not only that there is a big Jones contingent in the wrestling world, but also that the sport requires strength, agility and a good quality maths degree at its highest level.

Wait, I get nine points for a throw but six if I do it with my left hand wrapped around this foot here?

And all the while trying to counteract someone’s attempts to kill you. It’s like watching Vorderman in The Hunger Games.

Not only is the scoring system so confusing that most competitors probably just collapse of mental fatigue before the first takedown, but the moves themselves are so quick and precise that my brain tired of the effort before my body of the beating.

As cyclists negotiated the beautifully banked track around us, I negotiated The Fear as my energetic trio of coaches taught me to throw, drive and pin my opponent to the mats. On my knees, with my shoulder between the elastane-clad thighs of a gent with whom I’d only just made acquaintance, it came suddenly to mind that I’d probably ruined my chances of admittance to Swiss finishing school. Never will I be accepted into polite society again. Luckily I’d learned the benefits of abandoning personal space when trying Judo and managed to quickly reconcile myself with the necessary inelegance of my newest sporting enterprise.

Before meeting the wrestlers, I tried and failed not to expect the burly, chair-throwing brutes that a WWE-informed imagination so easily conjures, but the champs that greeted me, while clearly strong and incredibly fit, were svelte, fresh-faced, and almost diminutive in stature. And it was this contradiction that resonated with me most. But, as Ross explained, wrestling is all about using your own strengths against your rival; turning what could be your downfall to theirs. Therefore, it shouldn’t matter if you are the smallest, the broadest, or, theoretically, the weediest, in wrestling you’re your own personal shopper – you just choose the moves to suit your style. It’s obvious really, but no less inspirational.

I didn’t quite find my own wrestling forte – just staying in charge of my faculties throughout the session was a constant battle – but the principle of using what is essential to you, whether asset or liability, against your adversaries, instead of denying its existence, really turned my mindset on its timid little head. Perhaps being a clumsy lightweight isn’t such a drawback after all.

It’s no secret that bullying exists, whether sufferers strive to keep it quiet or not. There’s a pandemic, turning survivors into quivering wrecks and perpetrators into black holes of cruelty or, my forgiving nature assures me, guilt. Only a few months ago, I met a friend who I hadn’t spoken to since we were both reticent teenagers, and who I remembered as one of the sharpest, prettiest, and, therefore, most popular girls I’d ever known. Turns out, while I was cowering in a toilet cubicle of a morning break time, taking sanctuary from the perpetual torment, she was just a stall away, biding her own time until the school bell rang its precious release. Bullies drove her from school at just 14 years of age and only by bravery, resourcefulness and set-jawed determination did she make such a beautiful success of her life. We shuddered as we realised how much we had hidden the harassment, how isolated we had allowed ourselves to become as we both ironically battled the shame of being singled out, to only the bullies’ advantage.

Maybe though, if we learned the tenets of wrestling in our infancy, school days could really be the happiest days of life. Schools all over the country would be the venue for glorious victories of bullied over bully, as our weaknesses become our strengths and our strengths their weaknesses. We all have quirks, things that set us apart from our antagonists, and so often we allow ourselves to believe they’re our faults. The secret of wrestling, it seems, is that these are the traits that become your signature, your advantage, your triumph. As long as you focus on doing your thing, not theirs, you won’t go much wrong. And I can’t imagine how that could be a bad thing to learn.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so ridiculous then if we all lived a little more like wrestlers. Although I don’t think I’d ever get used to the Lycra friction burns.

Paula.