The truth about boarding school

Co-educational boarding school. We don’t have any movies glamorizing the experience (apart from the ones where the students wave wands) and to be honest it’s probably not interesting enough to merit any.

But there are a growing number of students at King’s who attended these schools and I think it’s about time that some light was shed on what we all got up to whilst everyone else went home, and what kind of people we became because of it.

Prep school play time

So, I’m not going to lie – being dropped off in a strange place by your parents at the age of 9 is not all that fun. You stand next to your trunk and watch them drive off into the distance and if you’re anything like me, you cry. A lot. An alarming amount, in fact. But that doesn’t last long. You toughen up and learn to live without your Mum and Dad – before you know it you and your friends are taking it in turns climbing inside that same trunk and throwing it down the stairs. Boarding school when you’re little is awesome and if you went to a prep boarding school, your childhood was probably as idyllic as mine (please excuse the cheesy nostalgia).

DofE Bronze

People always ask if it was just like a big sleepover with your friends – and you know what? It really was. We had one corridor for girls, one for boys and crossing the line between them was monumental and VERY against the rules. At the time we complained about matron, the itchiness of our uniform and how unfair bedtime was, but looking back I can’t conjure one bad memory.

Social time? All the time

Moving through the years things obviously become different, hormonal teenagers all living together? It was never going to be easy. Tears and tantrums about who had been messaging so-and-so were not exactly ground breaking. Fights happened, but boys and girls, we had to learn to compromise and share. We had to learn to live with people whom we didn’t always get along with- something many Kings students struggle with, I might add.

Check those uniforms…

In a co-ed boarding school the novelty of the opposite sex really doesn’t last long: the boys all just start to look like brothers…the smelly kind of brothers whom you lie on the sofa with to watch TV and eat junk food, the best kind. Obviously there are exceptions: there were many a sneak-out and rugby field rendez-vous to see boyfriends and girlfriends (it provided great gossip around the breakfast table the next morning). But these things aside, I think it was really important that the opposite sex were not made mysterious or exciting by being kept at a distance, we were comfortable with each other. The same might not be true of those single-sex education escapees who arrived at University and got slightly overexcited in Fresher’s Week…

Best Buds

When you go to boarding school, your teachers and your friends have as much input, if not more, into your upbringing as your parents do, especially if you live abroad and only go home 3 times a year (as is fairly common). When your school is that important in helping you to grow up, I think you need to be in the most well rounded environment that you can find.  I’m not going to deny that a lot of people to come out of private schools are pricks, but you find those people everywhere you go. My school aimed to produce well-rounded individuals who would be ready for whatever life threw at them; be that a coursework overload or just some Wednesday Walkies drama: I’d like to think it worked.