Teen Times: The next time I have to walk to school in sub-zero temperatures, I am going to waltz straight to my principal's office and say to her: "Feel my thigh".

The pain of school doesn't hit me when I enter the classroom; oh no, it starts the minute I leave the house. Like lots of students in Ireland, I have to wear a uniform, but it isn't the fact that I have to wear one that annoys me. What really gets my goat is the fact that my uniform is completely unsuited to Irish weather.

It consists of a knee-length skirt, knee socks, a shirt (short sleeve), a thin jumper and hood-less coat. We don't live in a hot country, no matter how badly we want to, so why are our uniforms fit for the Mediterranean? It is just ridiculous that we are expected to wear bare legs in Irish weather.

The uniform rules in my school, as I am guessing in most schools, are very strictly followed. If it is really frosty we can't wear trousers under our skirts because we'll get them taken off us. If it's raining we can't wear a different coat with a hood because we'll get it taken off us. We just have to suffer the bitter winter while looking like we are filled with a sense of school pride.

I specifically remember last winter when there was about a metre of snow. It was below freezing and there I was in my kilt, walking to school. I couldn't feel my legs and by the time I reached my school, my lips had turned blue.

Now don't get me wrong, I like the fact that we have a uniform. I think it is good that people who like to show off that their parents have loads of money aren't allowed to flaunt their labels in school. I also like the way it gives us a kind of identity and makes us different from the next school, and other uniform-wearing schools different from us. It is the sheer foolishness of the design that irritates me.

So when I wake up and it is a cold day, I pack on as many layers as possible. I put a top under my shirt and stick on a hoodie under my jumper but all this does is heat up, slightly, my top half. My bare legs get left numb and goose-bumpy. This makes the rest of me cold, leaving me to conclude that there was no use for all my top layers in the first place!

So I say: why can't schools introduce winter uniforms? Trousers for four months of the year, that's all I ask! Now that summer is fast approaching it is getting warmer, but not that warm.

I can, however, stand the slight chill for the next few months but I promise when winter rolls in next year and if I'm still wearing a skirt in the frost, I will ask my principal to feel my thigh, and I call on other cold-skirt-wearing school-goers to do the same.

Maybe then those people who make all the decisions will be aware of how cold we all are and finally realise the pain (and frost bite) we all suffer through the long, cold winter!

Lucy Montague-Moffatt (16) is in fifth year at Our Lady's School, Templeogue

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