Boarding School

  I went to boarding school the entire time I was in school. I went to over 30 schools in 19 countries. I was expelled 14 times and suspended over 80 times. 

  While I was in one of my orphanages I had to complete a test to determine my IQ, I got a very high mark so it was decided that my entire education would be paid for as long as I kept above a 95% average. As I couldn’t attend normal school while constantly moving from orphanage to orphanage, I was put in boarding school. 

  There are three types of boarding school, weekly, day boarding and full time. Weekly boarding students would  go to school Monday- Friday and be sent home Saturday and Sunday, day boarding would go to school every day of the week, going home at night, and what I usually attended, full time, would go to school every day, sleep at the school, and only go home for holidays.

  The boarding school is laid out similarly to a normal school, but with a few obvious exceptions, the great hall, the dining hall and residential houses. 

  When you go to boarding school you are put into the house system. A house is a group of students, not a literal house. On the first day you and split into a “house”, typically by age, gender and type of boarding. 3-7, 7-10, 10-12, 12-13. Lower line 13-14, 14-15, 15-16. Sixth form  16-17 17-1, except in Europe when you switch schools at 13 to specialize in a specific subject. You are also assigned house colours. For example, one of my houses was called Gibbs and our colours were silver and purple. Houses sit together in the dining hall and compete against each other in sports, if there is more than one house with the same age. 

  Residential houses were typically outside of the actual school, the girls on one side of the campus and the boys on the other. Typically there are about 50 students per residential house, depending on the school population. Each residential house has dormitories, a library, and a common room. It’s one house per residential house, and other houses and forbidden from going into another houses residential house. Each residential house has a housemaster/ housemistress, dorm parents, a residential adviser, a house tutor and a matron. In boarding school we always spent most of our time in the house common room, which contained a TV, a refrigerator full of snacks, a few games.

  Each dormitory would contain two or three bunk beds, a closet, two dressers, a computer and desks. The computers had limitations, no internet other than a few study sites and email, but there were ways to get around that. We could usually decorate however we wanted…as long as it followed the Christian way. We were allowed other boys in our rooms but they had to be out before bed. There were random checks for drugs/ alcohol constantly. We clearly got around that.

  In some schools there is a “prefect” system. There is a senior prefect, house boys and house girls. Prefects can give punishments and basically run the school outside the classroom, sometimes replacing housemasters/ housemistresses. They are chosen by best behaved and best grades. When I was 15-17 I was a prefect, obviously not for best behaved. The schools I attended seemed to think that it would help with my behavior problems…obviously it didn’t. Prefects are generally assholes, and I definitely adhered to that role. I was to take care of a 13-14 house…and pretty much ruined their lives.  As soon as an adult left, the house we had to take care of was fully under our control and we could punish them if they wouldn’t listen.  I made them do my homework, my laundry, get my food etc. 

  Punishments varied depending on the country. In European countries punishments could range from a simple detention to beatings, depending on the severity of the offense. For example, there was a boy at one of my schools who would constantly say shit about Ben’s girlfriend, so one day we decided to shove him out a window and beat him with baseball bats. The headmaster chose to punish us instead of expel us. We were to wear shorts that were about mid thigh short and come in for a caning on our legs for one week. Obviously that wouldn’t happen in the UK, but that’s Europe for you. 

  The day begins at 6am. The housemaster/ mistress comes around and wakes everyone up for breakfast. You can choose to skip breakfast and sleep in until the first class, but nobody ever did because eating was always…interesting. We weren’t allowed much socialization outside of our own house, sometimes eating gave us a chance to talk to others. Food was always given buffet style, with typically about 7 food choices to choose from. If you got there late, you wouldn’t eat because some fat kid would eat it first. Eating with a different house/ different gender was usually forbidden, depending on the school. After breakfast there were two classes, classes usually about an hour, double periods were 2 hours. Teatime came after the two classes, followed by a break, then two or three more classes. Classes ended at 5 or 6pm, then came dinner. You could stay in the dining or great hall until 8pm, if the professors were in a good mood they would let it slide and let us talk to other genders, it was rare though. At 8 we were all expected in our common rooms, then lights out at 10 or 11 depending on age. On Saturday and Sunday class ended at 3 and we could do whatever we wanted until 11. Some days, depending on our schedule, we would have a class off. 

  

  If you can't already tell, I'm horrible at English. This whole post is going to be written in Czech then translated to English and fixed up a bit. There is no way I would have passed in the UK with such high grades if this was the quality of my material I was handing in. So, I would convince my professors to let me hand assignments in written in other languages, usually German, Latin or French. If they wouldn't let me, I would force another student to properly translate it.

  I ALWAYS had a uniform. The uniform would be dress pants for boys and skirts for girls. In more prestigious schools we had to wear a button up and blazer every day. In less prestigious schools we had a choice between a button up or a collared t shirt, and a choice between a pullover jumper and a cardigan.  We always had uniform pajamas, usually just a button up shirt and pajama pants in our school or house colours. Sometimes we were even given uniform underwear…no idea why. The girls didn’t bother wearing underwear and wore their skirts as short as possible, making sure to bend down in front of guys. 

  The first boarding school I ever attended was in Germany and was weekly. It was a huge pain in the ass; I would have to take a train four times a week, alone, just to get to school. I was always put in the same house/ dorm with Aiden and Ben. We all came from orphanages so it was believed that we were socially retarded. I met Matt and Sonny on my first day of school, we all shared a dorm room. It stayed that way the entire time we were in school, usually scaring off new kids put in our rooms. If we were separated we would torment our roommates, screaming at them all night, pouring water on them, locking them out, taking their bed apart, or hiding…disgusting things…under their pillow, until they would beg the residential adviser to change rooms. 

  Parents seem to think boarding schools are drinking/ drug proof. Wrong. Of course we would be IMMEDIETLY expelled if we went a step off of school grounds…so we had to find other ways to get shit.

  There were three ways to get around rules, sleeping with a housemistress, making friends with a janitor or sneaking out. Sneaking out posed the problem of actually having to buy your own drinks/ drugs….and nobody had money to get anything so that left the janitor or the housemistress. They would go out and buy us drinks, sometimes the janitor sold us weed in return for favours. Most people pathetically smoked dryer sheets. Heroine and meth was a completely different story, we had to sexual favours for someone in town or make it ourselves. To get the material we would have to sneak to the kitchen or steal some sick kid’s medication at night. The halls were guarded so it was an…ordeal…especially when Aiden was involved because he is literally the loudest person on earth. Older schools would have passageways that we could use instead…it just took a long time to find them. We would hide in them too if needed. After we had the materials we would have to sneak into a science lab, usually befriending a science teacher and persuading them to leave the room open. If we could find a passage that obviously hadn’t been used for years we would grow in it and sell for whatever we could.

  Our drug habits are the reason why Aiden is…messed up. He used to be perfectly normal, great at sports and had the highest marks. That was until we got desperate and used the wrong ingredients. He overdosed in a passageway and nobody found him until two days later. He got extreme brain damage from it and hasn’t been the same since. 

  Sneaking out and into other resident houses wasn’t easy, especially since I was always put on the third or fourth floors to prevent me from sneaking out. It was easy to jump out of the second floor without breaking a bone, but above that it was a little bit difficult. Girls would never sneak out, other than Sunny of course, because it we would be expelled if we were caught. Instead, we would sell drugs for spare cardigans or bed sheets, or steal them to fashion ropes to climb to the ground. The grounds were guarded as well, so we would have to sprint and make sure the girls were prepared to get us in the window before we were caught. Sex in dorm rooms was pretty much impossible, not only were 5 other people staring but housemasters would walk if there was ANY noise, once one walked in because I was drinking water at 3 in the morning. People usually had sex in empty classrooms, gym change rooms, on the school grounds or in passageways. Nobody had condoms though…we usually stole from live in parents. 

  We were never allowed to stay in bed sick unless it was really serious.  To get around that I had to get creative. I snuck out at night and stole a recorder from a local store and recorded myself throwing up. I would drink bleach before the wakeup call so I would look sick, throw up and be in pain when I was checked on. As soon as they left I would plant the recorder in the bathroom and keep it on repeat. Sometimes it worked…sometimes I would get suspended for faking. 

  During holidays everyone was sent home, at 15 you could start making the decision to stay at school…but it was depressing. Christmas holidays were the best because the school would go full out in decorating and a huge tree would be put up in the great hall. I never celebrated Christmas until I was 18 so it was always exciting for me. When I could I would stay at school during the holidays to get away from the abuse at “home”. The schools were empty except for about 10 people so it could get interesting if the guys would stay.  Since there was so little supervision we would go mad. 

  The schools were part of the reason I would switch homes so much. On the first day of school every single year I would come in with broken bones, ripped out hair, homemade stitches, bruises and untreated open wounds. I look destroyed in every school photo. The same would happen when I went home on Saturday and Sunday, which is why I got put in full time boarding. If I said anything about what was happening the school would call my “parents” and they would immediately drop me out and do something even worse, that’s why I have a knee replacement. One time I said something when I was 10 and they broke my arms, legs, and ribs, then left me in the snow for days… that was the last time I ever said anything. The school would notice and call services instead of my “parents” if I just didn’t say anything. I would always dread going home, summers were hell for me. I remember being dragged off the train every year when I was younger. Honestly, I would be dead if it weren’t for boarding school. There would be no way in hell I could have survived if I went home every day. 

  I used to be a fucking asshole in school. I was constantly bullied when I was younger because my eyes are two different colours, I’ve always been weirdly tall, I would back away from social interaction and since I was constantly moving countries I couldn’t keep up with what language to speak. I never really understood how to be normal or caring because I didn’t grow up in a safe environment, so by the time I was 11 I just snapped. The drugs made the violence a million times worse. 

  Boarding school restricted individuality and I was always so self conscious of my scars, so the guys and I learned how to tattoo with stolen inks from the art room and sewing needles. We pierced each other with safety pins and covered ourselves in the ugliest tattoos imaginable. Of course rich prep school kids became extremely intimidated by us and we used that to our advantage 

  I was expelled for the first time when I was eight years old…on the first day of school. I came in with a broken nose, half my hair ripped out, burns on half my body and a broken arm. A few boys wouldn’t stop calling me an orphan and saying I deserved it because “my parents killed themselves because of me”. I just wasn’t in the mood so I pushed one of them out a window.

  I was usually expelled for petty things, fights, drugs, sneaking out, parties, sex…humping the headmaster, nothing too interesting. I did do a few stupid things to get expelled though. My friends did a few things to get me expelled too. I’m not going to explain all of the stupid things…because...not appropriate and I’m honestly afraid LOL. 

  My football coach would collect Playboy magazines and keep them in his office. The guys broke in one day and stole all of them. You know how some people cover their friends rooms in sticky notes? That’s what mine looked like…except with photos of naked women. I was expelled the second my housemaster walked in. Since I went to a strict Catholic school it was considered one of the worst things that could be done, and my room was burned. 

  When I was a prefect one of the students I was supposed to watch over was kind of an asshole. Overnight the guys and I made a raft and tied the kid to it, sending him down a nearby river. He eventually got saved and was fine…but obviously we got expelled. 

  Being around students constantly probably wasn’t the best thing. We were constantly socializing and there was no down time/ alone time from it. This leaves little time to become your own person. You’re raised by the student body, taking in their opinions and thoughts rather than developing your own.

  Obviously all boarding schools aren’t the same; this is based on my experience in Catholic boarding schools in the UK. European schools were different, but each country was different so it’s a bit harder to explain. The structure was usually the same, but some were more lax, and some could be even stricter. I don’t wish I went to normal day school, boarding school created a family for me that I didn’t have on my own.