Recently, I’ve been thinking about boarding school as the end of eighth grade approaches. It’s kind of scary to think about leaving home in September, leaving my community and leaving my friends. It’s almost like I have to build everything over again from scratch, including friends, relationships with teachers, a new lifestyle [since I won’t be with my parents and will be managing most things on my own], and reconstructing a reputation.
I’ll have to manage my life on my own with the help of teachers and friends. I’m anticipating that this will help me develop more independence and responsibility, as I will be laundering my clothes every weekend and managing my own varying schedules week to week. Mom will no longer have to take me to my piano lesson every Saturday morning…I will have to remember to go weekly myself. Dad will no longer drive me to tennis practice weekly. I’ll have to remember to practice with some peers. My decisions are becoming closer to me. It’s on me.
Being a control freak, all of this sounds pleasant to me, knowing that I am in full control of how I run my lifestyle at Andover. Yet at the same time, it scares me to know that I will have to start almost everything again from scratch, an average of 4 years earlier than most kids when they leave for college. I’ll have my past experience to guide me to make better first-time around decisions at Andover but as I reconstruct a boarding school lifestyle, I will also fall into new pitfalls I hadn’t fallen into before with my parents around me all the time.
High school seems like such a big time ahead of me. It manifests itself as some of the most critical years to my success, as it leads directly into college. I’m on for this challenge, this new life I plan on building at an early age. It’ll give me new opportunities to understand more about how the world works. It’ll give me more responsibilities to attend to. It’ll help me make more friends. It’ll prep me for later in college. That I know I’ll appreciate.
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