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).

As a now 28-year-old – living in a world filled with taxes, inflation and Hinge matches – it’s cute to think that there was once a time when my biggest stressor in life was writing in pen, but, at that time, it was no joke.

Step aside L plates, Atars and first beers: in my kid brain, it was the pen licence that would lawfully ensure my transition from child to adult, living a life of inky permanence that a pencil could not afford. It would also give myself bragging rights on the playground.

I’d spent my few schooling years leading up to this moment, tracing the........

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