One thing I've noticed is how much flesh the young ladies are displaying. Backs, legs, arms, shoulders and yes a lot of boob. Posing, all perky and pouty. They've spray tanned, had makeup done, spent more on dresses than is sensible. Their confidence astounds me. I am somewhat torn. While the mother in me is just a little worried about how sexualised they all are, looking way older than they should. And then part of me is a little envious.

I went back through my own school photos - it's a hobby of mine, spending lonely nights flicking through old photo albums wondering what happened to my life - and came across my own Year 12 formal photograph.

It was 1984. There's nine of us lovely ladies. There's lots of taffeta and frills. I look at the figure hugging dresses on today's graduates and wonder if we, my friends and I, even had the same body shapes, hidden away under our flounces.

Remembering now we're all 50-year-old women, and with all due respect to my highschool friends, who, as life would have it, I've come back in contact with, let me describe some of our dresses. Veronica and Patsy were always the risk takers. They dared to bare a little shoulder. My neckline is what I think they call a sweetheart neckline, showing some decolletage, but there's enough material in the rest of my dress to make sails for the Titanic. Five of us are wearing pearls. Libby seems to have some kind of fascinator on, demurely peeking out from behind a veil in a Princess Diana kind of way. We all have big hair. Our dresses range from black, to scarlet, to pale pink and mauve (I was always a fan of purple). Angie is wearing blue and white stripes.

None of us are posing with a duck face. Was the duck face even invented then? And who is to blame for that ridiculous look? But we look happy and relieved that our school days are over, having no idea what was ahead of us.

We've seen a lot in the 33 years since that photo was taken. We've married, had babies, seen those babies pose for their own end-of-school photographs, forged careers, forged second careers, divorced, stayed with the same boy we were with when this photo was taken, seen our parents die, fallen in love again, developed better dress sense, and stayed friends.

The last time most of us were together was when my father died earlier in the year. We caught up at the pub, and spent a wonderful afternoon in the beer garden reminiscing about old times. I look at the photographs from that day and I still see the girls I gossiped with, skipped class with, shared secrets with. We were all still 18. We were all still beautiful.

And what makes us so is the fact that we have all gone through so much in 33 years and have come out the stronger for it.

I look at the pictures of my daughter and her young friends and I wonder what the future holds for them. I remember my final few years of school thinking what I was doing then would set the course of my life. What subjects to choose, what boys to date, whether to date at all, focussed as I was on my study.

None of these things matter. It doesn't matter if you do biology and not physics, or mandarin instead of french, indeed it doesn't matter if you don't do a language at all. And you're right, you'll never need algebra again.

What matters is that you surround yourself with girlfriends, and while 33 years later it might not be the ones you posed alongside for school photos, that whatever women you gather around you at any stage of your life, that's the important stuff.

And while my school friends and I might not be in constant contact, or even live in the same city, regardless of whether I've surrounded myself with a new set of fabulous women, I know this taffeta and pearl wearing set will always have my back. And that's the biggest lesson of all.