Mother Superior had such mysterious ways

MY SHCOOL DAYS: Sister Elizabeth Maxwell of the Conference of Religious of Ireland had a relatively seamless glide through school - though not without one little surprise.

I went to primary school in Presentation Convent in Carlow and starting off I was the biggest in the class and I was put sitting in the back row. They had lovely toys, including a magnificent doll in a showcase. The question in my mind was, "Why is the doll in the showcase? Why isn't it down being passed around for us all to have a go at?" That was the philosophical question in my mind on the first day.

I was delighted to go to school. I was the eldest of four and my parents had built this up as a very exciting thing to do. I loved learning and I loved writing. I can remember the excitement in first class of learning to do joined-up writing. It was great - you were very grown-up when you could join your writing. I had some difficulty with subtraction, but ever since I've learned that money flows out of your pocket very fast; but that would have been about the only difficulty I ever encountered.

I liked reading and writing particularly. In third class, for the first time ever, we were asked to write a little essay and the title was "the snowdrop". We were told we could write three or five sentences and before I knew where I was I had two pages done. The teacher didn't say anything - they didn't praise you too much then - but I knew she was very impressed. She knocked on the partition that separated us from the classroom next door and she was showing it to the nun on the other side. I was delighted, away in a hack writing my essay.

I never balked at homework - if anything, I probably enjoyed it. I think I was a very co-operative student and I loved history and geography and I was good at Irish. I was a dream in many ways. I was entered in the Feis, storytelling in Irish, and there was a competition for Irish history as well. I remember getting medals, so I must have won something. Side by side with that, our mother had sent us to Irish dancing classes. I got four medals for Irish dancing. I went to learn music in another convent, the Mercy. I learned the piano there from the age of eight or nine.

For secondary, I went to an all-Irish boarding school for girls, Our Lady of Victories in Mountmellick, Co Laois. I can still recall the loneliness of the first week and thinking that my brother and my two sisters were angels and I missed them deeply. (Whereas when I was at home with them I didn't quite see them in the same hallowed light.) The school drew girls from all over the country, including Gaeltacht areas. So suddenly I was exposed to people from Kerry and Cork, even Achill Island and Donegal. It was a broadening influence that way. It had a great reputation as a school, not necessarily just for the Irish thing.

It really was a very exciting place to be. There were two nuns who had responsibility for the college, Mother Ita and Sister Brendan. They had a team of lay teachers working with them, but I would says those two nuns were out-and-out feminists before their time. Right through from the very first year they talked to us about the importance of women developing a career and being financially independent, preferably finding permanent and pensionable jobs. Particularly we had to develop careers like teaching or nursing or the civil service, which would allow women to return to work if they were widowed at a later stage in life. It was bedrock practicality. They didn't believe in the concept of the glass ceiling. They never thought there was anything preventing women from advancement in their careers and so they encouraged us to excellence and the female lay teachers were really outstanding in their respective disciplines and very good role models for teenage girls.

The music was huge: we had choirs and orchestras. I went in fairly proficient on the piano and didn't know I was going to learn another instrument. I resisted that a bit and I was told I was to learn everything I could possibly learn while I was there. I was lead violinist in the senior orchestra. They pushed me beyond what I perceived were my limits.

I was considered a good pupil: I was even the head girl my senior year, but I don't think I was a goody-goody at the same time because I did get into little spots of bother along the way. What I think epitomises it was when I broached the subject of joining the Presentation Sisters I was dismissed by the superior, who said, "You're much more likely to go to college and get married in your first year." To this day, I still don't know why she didn't encourage me, but I did go to the noviciate after my Leaving Cert and 45 years later I'm here still. So she was either mistaken, or a very good strategist.

In conversation with Olivia Kelly