Boarding School graduates bring a distinctly greater comfort level to college than their day school peers. They arrive on their respective college campuses knowing the feel, concepts, and angles of living in the close proximity of a boarding environment.
These students have been sharing bathrooms and living space as well as working through the intense, and sometimes tense, relationships that come from living in close quartered, tightly knit community.
Of course, a collegiate environment will never be as tight or closely-knit as secondary boarding school. In college the space is just bigger.
The collegiate environment features room to breathe, and faculty that don’t place nearly so many demands on student behavior.
Heck, moving from boarding school to college, you might be able to wear shorts and t-shirt to class instead of your jacket and tie.
But boarding school looks and feels a lot like college.
Boarding school graduates have been eating in the dining hall, sharing a room, attending dorm meetings, having free academic periods in their schedules, managing their free time, as well as independently handling their peer relationships for years.
For a boarding school graduate, it’s easy to fall into a comfort zone when going to college making observations like, “I’ve done this before” or “This isn’t so different from my boarding school” or “I know how this works.”
The challenge for boarding school students hitting their first college campus is to stay mindful that the situation is new, different, and you need to learn the ins and outs just like everyone else. Know that while your boarding experience is good and valuable, everything about your college is new.
As a boarding school graduate, make certain that you plan to combat the comfort and complacency that can set in when you arrive on your college campus.
New is good.
Immerse yourself in involvement. Get out and meet people. Yes, you know how to ‘hang out’ in a dorm room and meet everyone on the hall. Learn your new school.
Commit to attending all the little pieces and gatherings of orientation. Orientation is the best opportunity to meet the broadest cross section of people. You’ll soon enough find yourself in a tight circle of activities and peers.
Don’t be bound by existing relationships and experiences. Don’t let yourself get caught in clique of friends all of whom you knew from boarding school or all of whom have boarding school backgrounds.
Go to class.
Don’t compare your college to boarding school. Don’t let yourself say, ‘we did it this way at x.” This is annoying to your peers.
Maintain the routines and schedules that made your boarding school life successful.
Schedule your day.
Don’t sleep late.
Go to class.
Don’t waste time.
Plan.
Set aside study hours.
Set aside time for exercise and fun.
Use your boarding school experiences as reference, but don’t get trapped in a boarding school-centric outlook. You’re not in boarding school anymore.
Brian Fisher blogs about boarding schools for AdmissionsQuest’s onBoarding School Blog. AdmissionsQuest serves as community hub for parents & students researching boarding education.
Sean Cook has 15 years of experience working in Higher Education, as a Student Affairs Professional. He is a Certified Life and Career Coach through the Life Purpose Institute, a program accredited by the International Coach Federation. Sean also writes about career issues in higher education for our companion site, HigherEdCareerCoach.com and is a periodic contributor to the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog.
