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Home vs. Home Home

Those moments when you’re at school and packing to go home, and you suddenly wonder if home is really home. Home home doesn’t have most of your clothes, your sheets, your bed, your desk, or your food.

Those even stranger moments when you’re on a year abroad, so you have three homes to choose from: home home, school home, and host-family home.

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“I mean, I practically live at school!” -day student with a lot of homework.

“That’s horrible!” -day student’s friend.

*Boarding student stares silently*

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Extirpate sesquipedalianism!

That’s what some of my classmates should do in English, anyway. Extirpate sesquipedalianism.

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I have seen midnight three times within twenty-four hours.

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Timing?

That moment when something that sounds like the fire-alarm goes off as you open a window, and you're not sure if it is someone's alarm and bad timing, or if you set it off because the window may have been wired.

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Saturday Classes (Pros)

These are harder to figure out than the cons. But, you've got to get through the day somehow, so everyone rationalizes them. Either that, or we all complain about them as much as we do about Dining Hall food. So, pros to Saturday school: Teachers sometimes make food for us; We're all asleep, so nothing we need to think about is taught; We feel diligent, once we're done being dead; And Saturdays are doughnut days--for here, at least. I would say there is less homework, but if anything, there's more. Honestly, I can't come up with much else. Perhaps, Saturday classes keep students from being as bored over the weekend, and consequentially prevent more kids from getting kicked out. Maybe, because of Saturday classes, we have longer breaks than other places. Whatever they might do for us, no matter how you rationalize them, they still are miserable on the surface.

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Saturday Classes (cons)

Saturday classes... the bane of the prep school student's existence. Having to get out of your warm, comfy--if you've got a mattress pad--bed, being forced to get all dressed in your blazer and oxford button down and not-as-comfy-as-sweats pants, having to tie ties and put on socks (for guys), and having to deal with the whole 'navy can't go with black' thing. All before a reasonable hour for a teenager. And on a Saturday. In the winter on Saturdays, having to leave the heat of your dorm for the frosty air of outside, and, depending on how far it is from your dorm to the dining hall, having to freeze as you attempt to sprint there while minimizing wind chill, feels always worse than on regular weekdays. Then, once class finally starts for your 45-120 minute periods (depending upon where you go), trying to not catch up on all that potential sleep you are missing hurts your eyes. After all, there is little better than an off topic teacher's voice to put you back to sleep. We are the masters of eye-open sleeping on Saturdays.

On Saturdays, few teachers aren't zombies. They have equally as long weeks as their students, powered by that much more free-for-teachers coffee from the student center snack place. Some only have one class on Saturday, others have three. Hardly enough to be truly woken for. The dead lead the dead on Saturday mornings.

Mind you, Saturday classes are not by definition bad. Really, there are some definite pros in them too, just not in this post-- that's another subject entirely.

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It's still "grey"

All:

  Sorry about the school-wide e-mail, but I feel compelled to correct a mistake almost all of you seem to be making. The mistake is the way you’re spelling the word “gray.” You’re spelling it as “grey.” That’s the way the British spell the word, and we kicked them out more than a couple hundred years ago, so let’s not spell words the way they do.

Have a nice weekend.