<p>Thanks for all these responses.</p>
<p>Yes, I definitely come from an over-privileged lifestyle. However, both my parents came from poor, rural areas and worked to get where they are. Would I choose that kind of life instead? Probably not. Education from a young age is something I have been blessed with by a privileged lifestyle. </p>
<p>I realize how snooty that sounded - describing boarding school kids as spoiled rich kids, etc.
However I re-iterate I spent 8 years in various private prep schools. I am sick of the small-world mindset these kids have, all they want is a leader to follow the trends of mindlessly, they are just inexperienced at life and they are too preoccupied with the images they project to have any substance that I can identify with. </p>
<p>Of course there were exceptions. I was one of them. I dressed simply instead of trying to look rich and sexy, I didn’t adopt a valley-girl voice, I didn’t crush on all the boys, I didn’t cower to the “popular” kids. I was, of course, the subject of all the gossip and childish attempts at harassment that happens with teens. There were a few of us, and we hung together often for safety, but I felt we were all embarrassed about who we were. </p>
<p>I’ll be brutally honest: ALL the others were people of color. It wasn’t hard to see where the divisions lay. I sat with them everyday at lunch because they were safe. There was always an air of something a little sad about the group. I spent all my time with them and I got to know them: they were simply embarrassed about who they were.
They hated being the outcasts.
They probably thought it was something wrong with THEM. After all, our principal ranted on and on about equality and peace and happiness in our utopian school community, and our teachers turned a blind eye to the goings-on.
Somehow, they never really bonded with me, I think because they felt I didn’t really have a right to be unpopular. I came from a well-to-do family, my skin color matched the popular girls to a T, etc. And if they WERE going to try to be friends with a white girl for a bit, well, they would choose a popular girl. </p>
<p>Yes, I had problems then. I was nervous and thus unattractive, I started mumbling terribly, I had a hundred internal problems (like all adolescents), but… the roots underlying these issues can’t be explained away.
My time in private school was the most emotionally straining time I have ever experienced. When I first left, I literally had to undergo a “healing phase” and it was half a year before I started opening up, feeling the world again, seeing beauty and feeling comfortable in my place in the universe. </p>
<p>Of those outcast kids I used to sit with at lunch? Most stayed at the school, because their parents wanted them to get a private school education. A few transferred to boarding schools.
I’ve stayed in touch with a few. One of them, the closest thing to a friend that I had in school, went to a VERY well-known BS.
Where is she now, almost 3 years later?
Doing fine in school. Getting A’s. But as we talked last, just an online chat, I pressured her to tell me what her new school was like. She made a vague comment about straight white people ruling the school, then told me abruptly that she is going to enlist in the military after high school. Against her parents’ wishes. She said she had to feel meaningful. That she was sick of being alone and powerless and removed from humanity. That offering her life for the good of other people is the only option she sees left to do to make her life worthwhile. </p>
<p>I don’t agree with most military intervention, but that’s not the point. And her point hit home with me. Too close, too deeply home. Too resonant with my memories of what I felt, of what I still sometimes feel, but not nearly as often. </p>
<p>Being alone/depressed/etc. is very powerful and can result in very strong creative urges, etc. however it is also very painful and can be very dangerous. </p>
<p>In our private schools, their is some terrible malcoordination of well-intentioned but willfully blind administration, lofty ideals taking the place of real people, and the richest, most attractive, etc. students, or those who project such an image the most, are happy. But there are always a few left behind… some of them, forever, and remembered by the school as only a mentally-ill blot on their shining conquests in the name of progression. </p>
<p>All this to say that I do not approve of prep schools. I didn’t even go into my academic gripes with them. I’ll spare you another rant. Perhaps I sound like I am mentally ill, also, in which case I regret that I’m unable to stand up for truths that only half-broken people know.
I don’t mean to, and hope I did not, discredit any of your children who may be very happy at boarding schools. Most kids are just a heck of a lot more easy-going than me, and don’t notice or care about these things. </p>
<p>I thought I was lonely in school, but at home I simply don’t have enough contact with people. I have to stop taking it out on my parents. We’ve had a lot of trouble with my older siblings and it’s just been a hard year for everyone. I’m going to try to pull it together and start taking courses at my state school and just apply to other colleges in another year. </p>
<p>Perhaps I spoke too quickly regarding Yale.
I know the Sacred Music program is officially only for grad. students. However I already have connections with a few of the faculty, who would be very interested in taking me on as a private student should I attend Yale. I don’t doubt also that I could join in on seminars, etc. hosted by the Sacred Music dept.
My test scores are certainly sufficient, and with paper records from a few actual courses, I have reason to believe I would be offered acceptance.
I am definitely looking at other schools, and may eventually choose another school than Yale.</p>