<p>We have a lot of discussions about all the great things about the BS experience. Sometimes what's not working right may shed more light than what's working right. Please post any problems you encountered at BS or you wished you had something that is lacking that could have made your experience better. If you are a current BS student, what do you see as downsides? This info is useful to prospective students/parents. (Issues: Academics/Teachers are not as great as you were made to believe, lack of adequate school facilities, How relevant is the education to 21st century needs, missing home, lack of transportation limiting ECs, peer pressure, relationship problems, rich/poor divide, bullying, cheating, substance abuse, partying, disrespectful/mean people, and anything else.)</p>
<p>pulsar - do you secretly work for Fox News?</p>
<p>Take a wild guess and it will be as good as mine, trust me. :)</p>
<p>so these are some of the complaints i would make to friends who didn’t attend a prep school.</p>
<p>sometimes the administration will make absolutely ridiculous decisions. there are a few people who will think they are better than everyone else and act like they own the world (not everyone, just a few that i’ve met from a collection of prep schools in new england). right before vacations being at school gets to be annoying and you find the people you live with to be intensely irritating. by senior year you just want to graduate and go to college and have freedom. the lack of freedom and the intense micromanaging can be almost suffocating. </p>
<p>there wasn’t a lot of bullying. just drama. everyone knows everything about you. </p>
<p>besides those aforementioned things, i loved going to boarding school. best decision of my life.</p>
<p>My four years at a BS were the best four years of my life. My first year there was great. And each year thereafter was even better than one before. If I had a problem with my BS experience, it was that it was too great. Almost everything thereafter fell short of the joy, excitement and contentment I embraced in BS. Still, I thank almost daily my parents, my God and my good fortune for the four amazing years I had at prep school.</p>
<p>smski, Thanks for your post. The people who think they are better than everyone else, are you referring to the administrators or students or both? </p>
<p>toombs61, Is your perfect BS experience something to do with your athletics/wrestling? For example, bullies may be scared to approach you if you are a wrestler. Or your personality helped you make the experience best, ie making friends easily etc. In your opinion, what characteristics of you helped to make your BS experience the best for you? Is your BS experience recent? I heard a lot of bullying on facebook etc. now-a-days.</p>
<p>pulsar, being an athlete, in fact a pretty good athlete, definitely helped me thrive in BS. But don’t be fooled. Athletics was not enough. I was energetic, hard-working and inquiring in studies, student government, art, religion, etc. If the school had it, I wanted it.</p>
<p>I was thristy for knowledge, challenges and achievements. BS helped satisfy and then sustain that thrist. BS was a perfect match for an overachieving kid. The school fed me all I wanted, guided me gently when I strayed and then honored me for my accomplishments. And best of all, I liked every one of my classmates. Every one. Incredible. Life was near perfection then.</p>
<p>I am an old sucker. I attended BS in the 60’s. Luckily, I was untouched then by the madness of the 60’s. But then came college, the madness and the lost of the charm and beauty of BS. Too bad life after BS was not like BS. But such is life.</p>
<p>Wow, that’s some time period to have survived. But we have the internet madness now. How do you see the changes now compared to the good old days, better or worse?</p>
<p>i’m referring to students. the stuck-up ones weren’t actually from my school, but others that i experienced during games that would make my friends and i roll our eyes and be like “who do they honestly think they are?”</p>
<p>but i’m not trying to put down boarding school. i loved it. i recently graduated and miss it a lot. i’m planning on visiting this week and the week after next week. i am getting a coffee with a former dorm parent and going out to lunch with my favorite teacher. i loved my alma mater and as much as i adore my current college and being at my house, my boarding school was truly my “home”.</p>
<p>It is, generally speaking, better to burn up the internet than an ROTC building. Still, the passion of students in the 60’s changed the world, for better or worse. I think that students today need more public passion and less facebook. The world, especially the financial world, is in flames. Kids today could be facing years of ruin; however, they hide in their rooms playing on computers instead of pouring into the streets demanding retribution for political and financial crimes.</p>
<p>toombs, if the kids don’t protest now, you can be sure they will be protesting 10 years from now when they will still be paying for all the bail outs now going on.</p>
<p>I hope the facebook crowd realizes that all the problems of the world haven’t gone away. :(</p>
<p>Back to the thread topic: Problems at Boarding Schools </p>
<p>We have a lot of discussions about all the great things about the BS experience. Sometimes what’s not working right may shed more light than what’s working right. Please post any problems you encountered at BS or you wished you had something that is lacking that could have made your experience better. If you are a current BS student, what do you see as downsides? This info is useful to prospective students/parents. (Issues: Academics/Teachers are not as great as you were made to believe, lack of adequate school facilities, How relevant is the education to 21st century needs, missing home, lack of transportation limiting ECs, peer pressure, relationship problems, rich/poor divide, bullying, cheating, substance abuse, partying, disrespectful/mean people, and anything else.)</p>
<p>I would like to see schools devote more – and serious – attention to character & leadership development. (No, I am not a Hyde alum or parent.) I recognize the core foundation for character is built in one’s home, but much can be done in those crucial teen years at BS. For all the good & great things done in many BS, this area often gets little real focus. Additionally, I would like to see time management taught deliberately & proactively. These comments are not a dig at any school; rather, they reflect my own biases.</p>
<p>Klements: I think you make very good points. Recently, more ethics courses are introduced into business school curriculum also. There is a lot of talk about time management in BS, but I guess it’s not an integrated part of the curriculum yet.</p>
<p>Post#93 by Sunflowersuzie on this thread seems to be a cause for concern: [thread=860291]Click Me[/thread]</p>
<p>I didn’t see anything alarming in the Andover statistics. If anything, the reported rate of sexual activity is low. You seem to be trying to dig up dirt when there isn’t any.</p>
<p>Why do you call it dirt? They are stats, just like SSATs. Only difference is you want one to be high and the other low or zero. I didn’t say alarming, I said a cause for concern. Zero percent would be no cause for concern, for me anyway.</p>
<p>@Klements and Pulsar: Time management. One of my teachers who used to work in a boarding school in NH (not Exeter or St Pauls) says a big part of boarding school is learning how to manage your time wisely. Also, many (but of course not all) students who go there are the ones who are able to already manage their time wisely.</p>
<p>Good point Urban, as Exie says BS are self-selecting.</p>