God complexes and playground bragging rights: the school pen licence was serious business | Louis Hanson

It’s a right-of-passage that shows how trivial things can linger into adulthood – or that we’re all a bit dramatic when it comes to nostalgia

Few schooling practices elicit a polarising reaction among Australian adults quite like the pen licence does. If you don’t know what is, it’s an acknowledgment awarded to students with handwriting deemed good enough to graduate from pencil to pen. Depending on the order in which you received it in class, the certificate is either stored safely at your parents’, in a childhood memory box filled with carnival participation awards and first teeth, or was immediately thrown into the bin.

I was the first student in my class to get their pen licence (yes, my certificate is safely stored away at my parents’ place).