When I was fourteen, I began boarding school in Connecticut. I grew up in a ski resort town in Colorado, and very few people understood why I would ever want to leave. My parents were initially opposed to the idea, hesitant to let their oldest daughter would venture to the other side of the country before it was necessary. The headmaster of my grade school said I was an ideal candidate and my parents should at least explore my options. When I first toured the school that would come to be my home for the next four years, I asked my dad to take a photo of me in the parking lot. I felt giddy and hopeful; the fantasy began of my idealized prep school identity.
There are some elements to a boarding school that are so specific to this niche experience that very few will relate. However, these aspects are deterministic of our constitutions. The lingo we use, the relationships we hold, the way we perceive ourselves-- all of these notions are impacted by the years we spent living in the bubble where little else outside of the campus bounds felt relevant.
I loved my high school journey, yet at the moment it was all-consuming and emotional. It has made college wildly unexciting. It is the time I reference for when I reached personal highs and traumatic lows. It was not ordinary and I do not believe any author could do the complexities of the era justice… it is too nuanced. However, for her Senior Thesis at a top liberal arts university, a student who was a senior in my freshman year of high school wrote an exposé on her prep school story and the piece went viral throughout the prep school community. Alumni, current students, teachers, and parents were all confronted with some explicit and silenced realities about teenage years spent in a picturesque illusion.
The author, who will remain anonymous in my analysis, embraces vulnerability and transparency in her writing. The introduction to the memoir gives a summation of the obstacles we faced, but yet our eternal love for every moment:
“This is a story about disorder; about propriety and impropriety; about contradiction. I explore the tension between what the school looked like and felt like, between the beautiful, manicured exterior and the neglected spaces of the school where the actual “coming of age” that the school purported to provide actually occurred. The Puritanical roots that informed the school’s administrative standards facilitated a tradition of female humiliation, a normalizing of eating disorders, a heavily medicated and alcohol-dependent culture, and the public nature that growth — both sexual and emotional — was forced to play out in. What both fascinates and repulses me about my experience is that I continue to miss it almost every day.”
I have always felt this conflict of nostalgia for high school, but also resentment towards the way I was socialized. The expectations at boarding school are clear-cut, but if you do not reach those standards, you are an outsider. Of course, there are the academic and extracurricular benchmarks, but there are also those silenced codes of behavior that become so ingrained in our bones, that when we enter the real world, our idea of how to conduct ourselves is unevolved. For me, the misogyny, of which I was unaware for all those years, took its toll I entered college. While in high school, I did not realize the extent to which I engaged in these detrimental cycles of losing my authenticity and self-esteem. I was simply staying in alignment with the trends. It was common knowledge that the boy was meant to walk you back to your dorm for all the students to judge. By tradition, the next night, you ‘hookup’(whatever that means) with that same boy in the laundry room, the stairwell, the locked classroom, or the piano practice room. In the shadows the women did the dirty work, then gracefully smiled as we were escorted back to our dorms. It was assumed that you keep your mouth shut about how far you wanted to go, and just go; it will be over soon. To fall deeply in love with the boy that will control your outfit, your diet, your friendships. To lose yourself in a romanticized version of what you think you are experiencing when in reality, you are blind to the hurt and confusion that is yet to come.
The eating disorder is practically the right of passage to graduate. We bought ‘clothes’, or lack thereof, for our Saturday night dances from a certified stripper website. Each body was built differently, but we tortured ourselves to look the same, whatever extremes were necessary to get there. We would show up to the dances praying not to bump into our English teachers because we were uncomfortable with how much we were showing. Yet, if we did not exploit our bodies, no boys would notice us and the other girls would think us prude. There are very limited people who could confidently wear those small pieces of cheap fabric and not criticize some part of their appearance. My abuses against my body started in high school, but I did not acknowledge my actions until years later… until I was threatened with the hospital until my mom could hardly bear to look until my disease pushed me to the gym floor.
So the girl can make the first move? Do you actually want to take me on a date? You will still like me even if my stomach isn’t flat? You sure I can order more than just a salad? These are all questions that baffled me when I arrived at college. The most formational years were spent under the reign of female perfectionism…and like the alumna author, who I idolized, I miss those days every day. I lived in a facade of happiness; I knew no better. I thought this was how high school was for everyone. I did not doubt the quality of the experience or lessons I was learning. The exhilaration and love I felt drove me. I was addicted to the adrenaline linked to the potential of being a star student at an elite boarding school. The opportunity to shine, no matter how slim, generated my ambition and motivated me to be the best in everything I did. I was handed independence and autonomy to make my own choices, even if those choices herded me into a devotion to pleasing others. The strength I felt was rooted in my ability to morph myself into what was craved.
As I reflect on these tendencies in retrospect, I agree with our author; the ‘coming of age’ did not involve the discovery of our genuine selves. It is a tale of stripping us down to a place of indignity, allowing us to suffer whilst believing we were in control, and now, years past, sorting out the wounds. It gave us a high while walking the halls, but this buzz was short-termed as we presently understand how oblivious we were to the sexism and self-depreciation. I know that I was scarred from my years spent at the bubble, but I am so grateful nonetheless. From all the evils came the goods. The friendships, education, and memories are incomparable. While at the bubble I was not in touch with my honest self, however, without the bubble, I would have never arrived at my authenticity years later. The mistakes I made came earlier in the playbook of life than expected, yet I do not have to spend time dealing with the tribulations now. I crumbled during this period of my life and from there was able to rebuild myself to reach my truths. I will forever love the bubble and see that we must persevere through the darkness before we are able to welcome the light.
Klein, C. T. (2019). The Final Evening Bell: A Prep School Memoir. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.14418/wes01.1.1579
Comments