Going to playschool, across the road from where I lived in Raheny, I had a little blue square school case. It was a very old-fashioned case and it was tiny. I remember it had my sister's name written on it in marker, because it had been hers. I think all it had in it was a Club Milk and an apple. I probably only went for a couple of hours, but I still had my little suitcase to go across the road. We used to play and if you did something wrong you had to stand in the bold corner. It happened to me a bit but I don't remember it bothering me very much when I was three.

When I went to real school I knew it was different and I didn't like it. I went to Belgrove national school in Clontarf and I did not like it at all. My mum used to have to pretend she sat outside the classroom the whole time I was there. So she always had to fight her way to the front of the mums when she arrived to collect me so I'd believe she'd been there all along.

I didn't like school at all. I used to pretend I was sick to try to get out of it. I hated the whole notion of having to do something I didn't really want to do. I just didn't like the discipline. Although it was only a few miles away from my house, it seemed like I was going to another country altogether. I didn't feel very secure, I suppose. I got steadily worse all the time and I hated school for all my school years.

I went to secondary school in Chanel College in Coolock, run by the Marist fathers. They were very nice and everything, I just never liked it. I don't think I was that interested in anything we were learning. I was always in trouble because I never did my homework. I was always dreading school and dreading the moment when you had to produce your homework. I can't tell you why I didn't do it, I don't know, I just didn't.

I would pretend to do my homework - I spent hours in my room. I'd sit there for ages looking at it but I wouldn't be doing it. It probably would only have taken an hour, but I would spend about four hours not doing it, but at the same time not being able to do anything else because I wouldn't be allowed. I never understood the whole concept behind homework. I didn't know why we had to do this when we were in school all day. It never occurred to me to ask. I was just in trouble and that was it.

I tend to remember all the negative things. I remember my mum coming home from a parent-teacher meeting having been told to forget about me ever going on to any type of third level - that I wasn't cut out for it at all.

I was one of those kids who was good at being deceitful. I would forge her signature on notes, so she never really knew anything was going on until she went to the parent-teacher meeting and come home in an absolute rage. I knew it was coming, I was going around under a cloud all the time.

I studied for the last six weeks of school before the Leaving Cert and I got two Bs and two Cs and I remember thinking at the very end that this wasn't actually as bad as I thought. Not until the last six weeks of my entire school career did I realise it wasn't very hard. So I got enough points to get into UCD to do arts and once I was there I just suddenly took a huge interest in everything and became a very very good student.

I did philosophy and English in UCD. I had been vaguely interested in English in school but I never liked having to read something nobody really liked. Back then there was still a matriculation exam and I got an A in English and I hadn't read the books.

I realised I was kind of a good writer and I was pretty good at writing essays. They'd give you a subject, something terrible like "nighttime", and I found I was quite good at that, but I found out very late in school really. I remember if I did try to write something instead of an actual essay, if I tried to write a story, I'd be failed. I read a lot but I was mostly interested in horror novels, Stephen King books. It was really only when I went to UCD that I started getting interested in the theatre and writing and I got involved in putting plays on - that began to take up more of my time.

I really came into my own in college. I think I'm one of those people who flourishes with not a lot of discipline. If I hadn't been told what to do I probably would have got on much better; I was very resentful of having all my time take off me and my teachers found it frustrating because they could tell I was doing nothing and if I applied myself I could have done very well in school. I was much better suited to third-level education. I think I liked playschool and I liked university but I didn't like all the normal school in between.

In conversation with Olivia Kelly