Inspired by the thread about going to camp–I’d like to hear about boarding school experiences. How were the accomodations? How were the classes? What was your day’s schedule like? What was the food like? Tell all! I, like so many others, sort of thought that boarding school was a thing of the distant past.
I attended a fancy prep school up in Massachusetts. I’ve never determined if it was a good or a bad time in my life. The campus and accommodations were top notch, but the social nurturing was non-existent. It was like Lord of the Flies in my opinion. I’m came out of the experience as an extremely independent 17 year old, but I must confess that I have to fight the urge to shoot preppies and conservatives on sight. A bunch of rich spoiled brats.
The day usually started off around 8:30 and classes would end at about 4 pm. We also had to do 4 hours of work every week to “keep us humble”. Each semester we were assigned a new “workjob”, anything ranging from cleaning the gym every morning (45 min) , or working in the kitchen on a Sunday for the entire 4 hours. There’s no joy like slicing tomatoes for 4 hours. :rolleyes:
We had to be in our dorms at 10:00 pm, but we didn’t have a curfew. Considering we had a cable TV in a lounge on every floor, a weight room, a smoking room, and a study room (popular because it was coed), we never went to sleep before 3 am.
I went to a private boarding school in New Hampshire for all of high school (From 2000-2004). Frankly, for me it was fantastic. Possibly one of the best experiences of my life. I lived in a dorm with 40 other girls and 3 faculty families (the faculty had apartments at the end of every floor). Class sizes were always less than 15, and I loved the faculty. Not all of them were great, but in the majority they were still among the smartest people I know, as well as being truly devoted to the art of teaching. My school had around boarders and 200 day-students, so the “lord of the flies” atmosphere wasn’t really existent, though it clearly was at some of the other schools I toured. Food was…edible. Classes (which included gym/sports practice, free periods, an hour for lunch, and a 30 minute assembly) ran from 8AM to 6PM M, T, Th, F, and 8-12:30 Wed. and Sat. This may sound hellish, but really wasn’t. It helped that I was a very mature 14 year old. I was ready to live away from home, despite having a great relationship with both my parents. In all, I would be thrilled if my own (future) children wanted to go to boarding school, but I would never push them to go. The kids I knew who were there because their parents “sent them” were invariable unhappy, and I don’t think it was a great experience for them.
I’ll keep checking back on this thread if you have anymore specific questions.
sorry, around 800 boarders, 200 day students, so 1000 kids total for four grades.
missed the edit window
All-male boarding school (since gone coed- bastards!), southeastern PA.
Amazing experience; I’d have gone all four years had I known/been able to articulate my own desires.
I learned more about proper socializing, what was and was not acceptable in a group dynamic, how to subsume my selfish wants for the overall good of a group, how to value myself both as an individual and as a member of a group.
Dorms were about as spacious as college dorms. Fewer showers, bigger closets. We had hallmasters on every floor- so you got the benefit of the testosterone-filled schoolboy experience with the benefit of guiding hands.
Food was spectacular. Meals were required. The simplest lessons you can learn, you can learn at the dinner table- manners, how to not be a picky eater (you don’t eat dinner, you don’t eat), how to deal with adults and your peers at the same time (we had tablemeasters).
We ere treated like men and expected to act like men, and it was ingrained in us because it was never told to us that way. Here are a couple of examples:
Winter- I didn’t know how to skate and my friends did. So, rather than stay indoors, we floated the idea to one of our hallmasters (who could also skate) that maybe it would be better for my education if they were to teach me to skate after hours. Hallmaster grabbed a jacket and a scarf and came across campus with us to the rink.
Teaching me to skate involved throwing me a football and hitting me until I dropped it. I learned to skate pretty quickly. We did this pretty much two or three nights a week all winter. Hallmaster came sometimes, didn’t other times. He knew where we’d be, we weren’t stupid enough to use the rope we were given to hang ourselves by sneaking off campus. Were we breaking the rules? Sure. In any meaningful way? Nope. Were we learning things? Yep. We were being treated like men and we were learning to act like men by respecting that.
It was well-known on campus that you had some “give” with the rules. Duck off campus to meet your girlfriend? Someone knew, no one said anything. Unless you fucked up. Then administration came down on you like a ton of bricks and so did your classmates, because you upset the apple cart for everyone else. So there was self-policing. Ducking down the street between football practice and dinner to hit the deli for a soda with your woman? Someone would tell hallmaster you were in the john, and hallmaster would pretend to believe it. Planning to go down there to tell her off in front of her friends? You’d be physically restrained from doing so, because not only was it a dumb idea to begin with, your idiocy was not going to ruin the fun for everyone else.
At my school, I had powerful, positive, meaningful female role models for the first time. My English teacher was a PhD and one of the most intelligent people I had ever met. She held my metaphorical hand when I was trying to figure out how to write- she provided me influences and resources outside the classroom that a lesser-funded or lesser-interested school would not have.
At school, we were indulged our minor boyhood self-destruction. One spring day, we dragged the high-jump pits off the track and in front of our dorm balcony, where we placed a boom-box and some music and amused ourselves by jumping off the balcony (story-and-a-half) into the pits. This amusment was tolerated and even watched by dorm faculty in amusement until one notable case of track-rash put a stop to the procedure. Which we all understood to be necessary by that point, as our attempts at innovaton were getting progressively more dangerous.
Everyone had to play sports. Not varsity interscholastic sports, but everybody had to do intramurals or “active period” or somesuch.
We had an arts center that was state-of-the-art when built (and probably still is). Theater, recording studios, shop, you name it.
We had faculty that was involved in our lives in and out of the classroom. Some young, some old, all highly educated, many published.
I give as much money as I can afford to my school each year and I will encourage my children as much as I can to go there. I’d mortgage my house to make tuition.
God bless my school for what it did for me and does for others.
Lawrenceville?
I should fucking Pit you for this.
[sub]and if that doesn’t tell you where I went to school, nothing will[/sub]
So… the circle jerks were better than at public schools?
Nah, dude, public schools ARE circle jerks.
[sub]well played, though[/sub]
I went to a smallish prep school in Connecticut for my junior and senior year. All in all, it was a fantastic experience, though they didn’t make it easy. Unlike a lot of prep schools mine was not particularly filled with rich WASPs (though there were a few) and the faculty (and often other students) generally didn’t let you get away with being lazy. The dorms were about the same as a college dorm; we had two people to a room unless you were lucky enough to get a single (which were generally reserved for seniors.) The seniors, along with the faculty, took a strong leadership role in the dorms and other areas of the school. We had some faculty living in apartments in the dorm buildings, but none actually on our hall. As seniors we were expected to keep things running and generally did a good job.
Everybody was responsible for cleaning the dorms in the morning: your own room plus whatever job you had been assigned for the public areas. The seniors made sure everyone did their job and were expected to lead by example (they usually did.) There were also campus jobs that involved general clean-up around the campus or working in the cafeteria. The faculty maintained a rotation so you had the privilege of changing jobs every month or so. (Unlike World Eater’s jobs ours were not usually easy, especially if you got stuck in the dishroom. We had a boombox back there and would blast Metallica over the noise of the gigantic dishwashing machine of death to make it bearable.)
Classes went from early in the morning to around 2:00 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and until around noon on Wednesday and Saturday. Afternoons were devoted to sports (everyone had to do a sport no matter what, unless you had incontrovertible proof that you couldn’t, in which case you usually ended up as an equipment manager or something.) Wednesday and Saturday afternoons we’d have extended practices or play games against rival schools.
Study hall was for two hours after dinner. You were allowed to study in your room unless you started doing badly in your classes, in which case you were sent to study in a classroom under the watchful eye of a senior proctor.
Classes were a mixed bag. They were always quite small by public school standards, and individual attention was good. But many of the teachers were quite young and inexperienced, and many of the students had ended up at that school because they had been screwing up elsewhere. Consequently the academic standards were not as high as the prestigious prep schools like Exeter, which don’t accept stupid or troublemaking students to begin with.
Some of the teachers were absolutely brilliant. One taught me both AP physics and AP calculus, and was a better teacher than any college professor I had. Another, who is probably the best teacher I ever had, taught a broad ethics/philosophy/civics survey course which was mandatory for all seniors. He is a truly brilliant man, both as a teacher and a human, and I still consider his shining praise on my final exam to be one of the proudest moments of my life.
I went to one of the oldest boarding schools in Denmark - founded in the 1500’s, though the original building had been a monastery, established in the 1100’s. It’s located about an hour outside of Copenhagen, by a large stream, and with the most beautiful countryside all around, and a middle-sized town (big enough to support two nightclubs, anyway) about twenty minutes walk away.
It was hands down the most fantastic time of my life. The school was quite small, with only about 500 students, half of those boarders. Up until the 60’s (when my father and uncle were there) it had been all-boys, all boarder, but thank goodness they changed that by the time I came along 
Breakfast was at 7.15, school started at 8. After the first lesson we’d troop into the Church for Morning-song (the school had originally been religious-Protestant Reformation, and all that, but that Morning-song was the only remnant of this) and general announcements. We had a sit-down warm lunch served out of big terrines that sat at the head of the table. The prefects sat at the top and ladled out the food, which was passed down the table. School went to between 2 and 5 p.m., depending on your grade, schedule and whether you were in the Danish or International line.
The Uniform varied depending on whether it was class-time or free-time, and only items in the school colours were permitted.
There were seven different dorms, each for a specific age group and sex (though I spent three glorious years in the single co-ed dorm, the most laid-back one - it had communal showers (separated by sex though!), so the only girls/guys who picked it were the one that didn’t care too much about stuff like that).
We had day-rooms (you shared until 10th/11th grade, and then got your own room) which had a desk, couch, bookshelf etc etc, but we slept in large dormitories of about 15 to 30 students. At least two windows had to be open year-round, so waking up to snow on your blanket during the winter was common enough.
The rules were enforced with varying levels of strictness - you had to know which ones you could break, which ones you could bend, and which ones were sacrosanct.
The history of the school was such that we had an enormous amount of “traditions” - and the students were by far the most orthodox in upholding these.
I can’t think of any more general stuff without going into boring detail, but I’m open to any and all questions!
Quaker boarding school here, and it was the best experience of my life. I never got homesick for the house and family I lived in, but have often got homesick for the school.
Weekdays started around 7:00, breakfast and chores and a morning “collection” meeting. Then classes till around 3 or 4, then athletics till about 5 or 5:30. Lunch at 12:00 and dinner at 6:00, served family style at tables of 8. Study hall for part of the evening, for underclassmen at least. Lights out.
Thursday mornings, there was a Meeting for Worship, the religious gathering of the Society of Friends.
Saturdays were fairly open, but there were meals and an evening program that were required, and a morning study hall for underclassmen.
Sundays had a lengthy Meeting for Worship, and Dinner at 1:00, and a Supper at 7:00.
I wish this part of life could have gone on much longer than it did. Worse, I finally feel ready for it, ready to appreciate and make the most of the opportunities. I graduated the year the helicopter lifted off of the embassy roof in Viet Nam. I wonder if I will ever feel ready for college, which I finished more than a quarter century ago. Mmmm.
Have you noticed, those of us who went to boarding school seem much more interested in talking about it than anyone else - Sattua excluded, of course!
My husband went to a prestigious boarding school in Massachusetts, and it was “Lord of the Flies.” It really traumatized him. The other students were merciless to him, etc. Strangely, we went back to reunion last year (the first time he had been there since school), and he actually had a good time.
This was 35 years ago. And for a place with such strict rules, I am amazed at how much time they spent getting high.
Sure do.
I’m happy to answer any questions.
I notice, however, that a good many people are/can be turned off by stereotypes that we unwittingly reinforce, for good or for bad.
I’ve run into equal parts positive and negative reactions based solely on assumptions about boarding schools.