'Quiz?', 'Ego!'

This is a post on what boarding school gave me, the good, the bad and the ugly, and how it changed me.

When I tell people I went to boarding school for my secondary education, they tend to make assumptions of some kind. Some people assume my parents are ridiculously well-off (not true), some that I’m posh and stuck up (not true, I hope) and some say that I must have really solid friendships with those I boarded with. There, they’re not wrong. I think, as well, a lot of people assume that it must have been tough. And it was. But despite that, it was one of the best things to have happened to me. It made me a better person and never for one minute do I ever regret going.

Though it was originally my idea to go to boarding school (too much Twins at St Clare’s and Malory Towers), when, at the age of eleven, all my uniform was bought and packed into my new trunk which, I’d found out with joy the month beforehand, could fit my youngest cousin and my tuck box was filled with chocolates and pictures of my parents for my bedside table and the car was ready to go, I didn’t want to. In fact, I hadn’t really for the entire summer leading up to that September, eleven years ago. I’d realised what I’d be leaving behind and, suddenly, it mattered more than going. But my parents, unconvinced when I first suggested it, now felt it a good idea and besides, the fees were paid for and I no longer had a place at the senior school of my first school. I was going whether I liked it or not. And I definitely did not. I remember walking down to the main part of the school, what I later learnt to call ‘Coll’, with two girls I now consider good friends of mine. We wanted to go home. There were tears before bedtime. For many weeks, if not years. It didn’t get much better, in fact it got worse. Spring Term and I started to get rather badly bullied. That lasted in some shape or another until the end of my second year. I was different, I didn’t fit in. Rather standard story really. There’s always one. Especially in Ones when, in my house, there were only seven of us. Two threes or three pairs. And me. Always alone on the coach, always a burden to take along with them. I remember when, at the end of my first term, I fell down the main stairs of my boarding house when I was about to go down to Coll for afternoon lessons. I roly-polied all the way down and landed head first on the stone-tiled floor. The first words out of my mouth were ‘I’m alive’ (ever the dramatic), the second were ‘I want my mummy’. When the rest of my dorm returned from afternoon school, I hoped they’d ask me how I was. Nobody did. Nobody really cared. 

And, the thing is, I know why. I wasn’t easy to live with. An only child, I’d never had to share anything outside of school hours and then suddenly my room, my world, my life was shared with six other girls. A year later and it was nine other girls. And then fifteen. And then nineteen. At least by that point, we were in smaller dorms. But still. We had such little privacy, even then. It was the biggest adjustment I’d ever had to make and I don’t think there have been any changes I’ve made since that have matched up to it. Perhaps there never will be. As difficult as it was, I’d like to think it made me a better person, more tolerant and less selfish. You learn to put up with the annoying person in the bed next to you because you have no choice. You like it or lump it. And you adjust your own habits to be less anti-social. You don't play loud music all hours of the day or run up and down the hallway at awkward hours because that's how you lose friends. You learn. You adapt. You improve.

But boarding didn’t just change the kind of person I was. Growing up in such close quarters with my friends meant our bonds became deeper and more affectionate than any friendship I’d experienced before, however different we were to each other. And we were very different. One of my closest friends from school is training as a nurse before doing a post-grad medical degree, all funded by the army which she will give at the bare minimum three years to. But, knowing her, it’ll be her life. Another of my close friends is doing a chemistry degree at Oxford, one’s finishing her geography degree at Cambridge, another History and Politics at LSE. Our minds could not work in more different ways, our passions and interests could not be more different and yet when I see them, however long it has been, a month, six, a year, two years, it’s like no time has passed at all. We pick up just where we left off. The girl who I’d had trouble with in my first year and I are good friends, she knows what questions to ask when we catch up, however infrequent, and exactly what to say to put me on the spot and find out what I’m up to. She knows me. They all do. We’re like sisters. Which was the reason I’d wanted to go in the first place. In that respect, boarding school didn’t let me down.

However, I never felt like I quite fitted in in the sense that I was different and I didn’t know anybody who looked at the world in quite the same way I did. I didn’t always feel able to say something without standing out. Plus I was most definitely not sporty and at boarding school you survive better if you are. But, despite our differences, my friends and I learnt to accept each other and love each other for them. It is rare that you find people like you at school but at least through boarding I still made friendships that overcame that and have lasted after we’ve left. Seventy years before me, my grandmother went to my school also as a boarder. She still remains firm friends with the girls she met there. One was her maid of honour. Her maid of honour’s two granddaughters were in my year at school and I was, at some point or another, good friends with both cousins. Going to boarding school makes you more than friends, it makes you family. And you accept your family, no matter what. Love them always, however long you spend apart.

Yes, we missed out on some of the fun and experiences teenagers have but we got to have other experiences other people our age didn’t and we knew that, I remember saying so at the time. Even then, we knew our bonds were unique. How many people can say that they successful upturned their entire home, moving the kitchen furniture into the garden and vice versa, cover their front hallway in tin foil, steal the shower curtains, build a web in front of their dining room, up turn their sitting room furniture, hang a sign saying ‘brothel’ outside and put a cardboard cutout of their (insert appropriate adult figure here) in the bathroom and relock it, all while the adults were sleeping? We can. It might not sound much to you but my ‘Muck Up Day’, the day when your junior boarding house wakes up to the mess the Fives have created the previous night before leaving to go to their Sixth Form houses the next year, was brilliant. It’s one of my best memories of my childhood/teenage years. And it’s unique to boarders. 

Just as the game ‘Quiz, Ego’ is. If you have something you want to give away, some tuck, or something you want to get rid of/not deal with, maybe some rubbish, you shout ‘Quiz?’ (Latin for who?). The first person to shout ‘Ego’ gets it. Whether or not they want it. I remember some particularly foul beef jerky an overseas girl brought from Hong Kong being passed round that way. I also remember finding some in my shoe one morning. But I digress. The point is you might think you’re getting something good and end up with something bad, or vice versa. I absolutely love my friends from university. For the first time in my life, I’ve found people with the same passions, interests and way of thinking. We’re all insane and not afraid of it. But sometimes, I have the urge to shout ‘Quiz’ when I want to get rid of the last biscuit or a penny and have to stop myself. They’d have no idea what I meant.

Yes, boarding school was one of the, if not the, most trying experience of my life so far but it gave me so much I could never regret going. Even if it means I missed out on some things, even if it was difficult to begin with, even if I hated it at times.