What It's Really Like To Attend An English Boarding School

We totally thought that English boarding school would be EXACTLY like Hogwarts—but Sushii24 tells us the real deal.—Sparkitors

I’m currently an A-level student in a private English boarding school in the countryside.I went to boarding school hoping for midnight feasts and all the other things I’d read about in Enid Blyton books. This is what I got instead:

7.20 AM: Bell goes. One of the biggest advantages of sleeping in school is that I don’t need to get up insanely early to commute. I spend a moment feeling very sympathetic towards the poor day school pupils who are already outside before heading back under the duvet for two more minutes.

8.15 AM: My delightful dreams of chocolate muffins are interrupted by the registration bell. I leap out of bed and begin frantically hunting for clothes. As I’m in the final year, and therefore supposed to be mature, there are no longer any housemothers to drag me out of bed. Regrettably, I don’t seem to have reached maturity in the field of getting myself up in the morning.

8.20 AM: Registration. I sit around sleepily, trying to get my head together before my first lesson. As I do A-levels, I only have 4 subjects, and each day is different. This is my average Wednesday.

8.45 AM: Double maths (all my lessons are doubles, as a single lesson is only 40 minutes). This is easily my worst subject, and having it first thing in the morning really doesn’t help. I sit there trying valiantly to understand integration by substitution, but alas fail miserably.

10.05 AM: Double English. This lesson will either be really good, or torture, depending on the mood of my teacher. She marches in and opens the window—not a good sign. I manage to avoid the line of fire for the first hour by keeping my head down and scribbling frantically, but my luck runs out at 11, when I find myself being asked why my essay on Paradise Lost is “3 pages of messy drivel.” How am I supposed to answer this?

11.25 AM: Break. Head to the break shelter hoping for pain au chocolat, but alas, there are only apples. Shame.

11.40 AM: Double free (yippee!) I’m hoping to study law at university, so I plan to spend this free doing some background reading. First, let me just check my email…

12.30 PM: Start reading.

1.00 PM: Lunch. Surprisingly edible compared to my old school. I have lasagne, followed by apple crumble, telling myself that I can have seconds because I didn’t have breakfast (yes, I’d have had seconds even if I’d had breakfast, but that’s not the point.)

2.00 PM: Double physics. One of my favourite lessons, especially as the class is tiny, so there’s a good chance of digressing off the syllabus, and maybe even a cup of tea if we’re lucky.

3.20 PM: Double history. Spend 80 minutes wondering how my teacher can make something as interesting as the Russian Revolution so boring.

4.40 PM: Lessons finished (a downside of not having to commute home is that we finish lessons quite late). Head off to a friend’s room to work (i.e. to complain about the amount of work we have).

5.00 PM: Orchestra rehearsal. Despite weeks of practise, the Blue Danube still sound more like a tortured cat than a waltz. Wonder (not for the first time), if wearing earplugs would seriously impede my performance.

6.30 PM: Dinner. Thanks to orchestra running late, most of the good food is gone, and I’ve already eaten the snacks I brought from home the previous weekend. My school is in the countryside, so there’s nowhere to go shopping until we go home for half-term.

7.00 PM: Schoolwork—fun fun fun!!!

8.30 PM: Head to the showers early  to avoid the mad dash for the one pressure shower in the school.

9.00 PM: Hang out with some friends in my room. Start watching a DVD, but we have to stop when we hear a housemother (my school seems to think that DVD’s are on the same level as illegal drugs).

10.15 PM: Kick friends out, and try to finish my work, but end up doodling all over the maths paper instead of doing any of the questions. Go and find someone in my maths class, and beg for help.

11.00 PM: Lights out.

And there’s a typical day for me.

Man, we really thought there'd be more MAGIC and spells and stuff, didn't you?

Related post: A Day In The Life...