School diary: 'You can buy truckloads of sweets and crisps'

Hi, I'm the eldest of three children in a family of five. There's my brother, my sister, and my mum and dad, but enough about that. I've just started secondary school. It's kind of stressful; the amount of information you have to remember makes you feel like your brain is going to pop! It wasn't half as stressful as getting into the school, though; eight months of training from my 14-year-old cousin and a massive heart attack when the results finally came. In the end I got in on the test but then realised that I would have got in on distance anyway, which kind of annoyed me.

I can't believe I'm finally going to secondary school! It's going to be such a big change, with all the rules you have to remember and moving around to different classrooms with every subject and all that. I'm lucky I have friends going to the same school as me; imagine not knowing anyone at all. In fact, I was really lucky because I got to be in a class with one of my best friends.

Anyway, today was fun. First we had to do the register, which took forever because there are about 10 different Ellies, Ellas and Eleanors in the same class and there were these really annoying girls who wouldn't stop giggling at everything, even when it wasn't funny. Anyway, when that was done we had an assembly from the head teacher Mr W, which was pretty boring, and to tell you the truth I didn't hear much of it because I was sitting at the back. Mr W said what a privilege it was for us to be in his school and I think he's got a bit of a big head about it. I think I shall call him Big Head from now on.

One of the best lessons was French, we had a really nice teacher called Mr S who said that we are not allowed to worry about getting things wrong and no one is to laugh at people if they get something wrong which is good. Most of the homework was just covering our books with sticky back plastic - Mum, of course, asked why we couldn't have normal homework.

The lunch cafeteria looked like a scrum. I had to queue for ages. I had a chicken wrap and half a packet of crisps but I didn't have time to get anything else because the queues were too long. One of the best things about lunchtime is you can buy whatever you want with your dinner card which your parents pay for. So, basically, you could buy truckloads of sweets, chocolates and crisps, and your parents wouldn't know a thing! I nearly spilt chicken all down my blazer, which I hate anyway because it has such big padded shoulders, it makes me look like I have man shoulders!

Got to go for now. Bye!

The writer attends a popular comprehensive school in London. Her Diary will be appearing every week during term-time