By Maddie Thompson
As a part of my ongoing career to be the most insufferable person at parties and excel in general pretentious douchebaggery, I’ve been going to an exclusive arts boarding school for creative writing for the past few months. Don't be fooled, this does not make me a “good writer” by any means, but just a very obvious looking arts kid, who will look good on brochures playing frisbee in the park and smiling in a way that says “I’m happy to be away from home and paying thousands of dollars for this!”
During my time spent at my new home/school/prison, I’ve come up with a helpful list titled “Top 5 Reasons Why Boarding School Sucks and No One Should Go To It.” To give to people who ask for my opinion on the situation. Here it is:
1. The food is terrible
This should be expected going in, but just in case for anyone who is unaware, boarding school lunch is no different from regular school lunch, except for the fact that it is your breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every. Single. Day. (Unless you want to waste your precious allowance money on a $20 DoorDash order just to get a McDonalds happy meal.) A day of this food typically consists of waking up, realizing you have to eat the most styrofoam tasting eggs of your life for breakfast, going to class, dreading whatever concoction they've made up for lunch, eating said concoction for lunch (typically just stale pasta and artificially colored marinara sauce.) And then spend your next few hours waiting for dinner, questioning if your stomach can take another round of the mystery meat the cafeteria staff is most likely to serve. (Spoiler alert: It's not.)
2. You will never escape anyone.
You know Jermey in your third period Chem class? The one that smells like pickles and parental disappointment? Yeah you live with him now. His pickle smell follows you everywhere, he is behind you while waiting in line for dinner, next to you in the library while studying, he's even a part of the women's only book club. How did he get there? No one knows, but he's there and you have to smell his pickley odor 24/7, 365 days a year. Tell him to invest in deodorant. It will help everyone in the long run.
3. Your teachers are EVERYWHERE
I’m not talking about just the occasional bumping into them at the grocery store, I’m talking about seeing them on weekends, holidays, mornings, nights. Do you think you have a good relationship with your English teacher? Just wait until she sees you in your Snoopy pajama bottoms at noon on a Sunday, eating dry cereal from a coffee mug. It's a sight enough to make any relationship strained.
4. Laundry
You do not know true pain until you forgot to take your laundry out of the washing machine and someone decides to throw a couple of your socks out the window as punishment. Those were my favorite socks, dude!
5. Pooping
When asked about living at a boarding school and having to share a bathroom with 3 other people, one of the most common questions is “Where do you go when you have to take the most earth-shattering, life-changing, child-sized dump?” And the answer is, you don’t. Unless you want your roommates to know just how many baked bean burritos you had last night, you gotta find somewhere else to go number two. This often boils down to taking three flights of stairs, going through two separate buildings, and passing about a dozen onlookers to find a suitable throne. It usually ends up being the bathrooms by the library, or the normal school restrooms in the science building. What happens in there is between you and God at that point.
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