I was sent to a strict, English, all-girls’ boarding school when I was 13 years old. It was more than 20 years ago yet I still remember, so clearly, my parents leaving me outside the boarding house where I was to live for the next five years. I was too upset to say a proper goodbye. I pushed them away and pretended to be fine. After all, there was a group of girls watching.
The housemistress took me aside just after my parents left to tell me I wasn’t to call home for the next three weeks.
“It’s a rule,” she said. “You need to settle in. You’ll be homesick and it will make it worse if you speak to your family.” I plastered a wobbly grin across my face and made it my mission to make friends. I knew that girls could be cruel but, luckily, at that point all the other pupils I came across were welcoming and kind.
As the new girl, though, I had to go through lots of boarding school initiations. Nothing too horrendous (in fact my brother, who was also a boarder, referred to them as “child’s play”): dares in the night. Dorm feasts. We would stay up late, stuffing ourselves with junk food, leaping back into our beds when we thought we heard the housemistress outside.
We would be punished if we were caught. I was one of the unlucky ones. It was only my first or second week that I was made to get up at six in the morning for seven days in a row, to clear the school grounds of any rubbish. It was all worth it, though. My only saving grace was the camaraderie from those dares in the night.
Having been forbidden to speak to my family, I felt I wasn’t really allowed to be homesick. And after all, I didn’t really have any privacy in which to shed my tears. So I distracted myself with my fellow pupils. The other girls who, probably, all felt the same as me.
The transgressions then went from midnight feasts to smoking. I’m sure no one enjoyed it too much. It was more the act of “togetherness”. Us making our own decisions in a place where they were otherwise all made for us. We would convene at the school gates, cigarettes tucked neatly in our bras. We’d sneak out, two at a time and meet in the “Concrete Jungle”.
The smoking group grew and grew. At points, there would be about twenty of us, huddled around in a circle. We’d spend the time chewing the fat. Laughing. Crying. It seems ludicrous now. All of us in our school uniform, puffing away, prepped with gum and perfume for the return journey. But that time was a haven for being away from the school grounds. To discuss things that we probably wouldn’t otherwise, behind those four walls. To feel upset and be open about it. For me, it wasn’t so much about the rebellion. It was about thinking I had the emotional freedom to do and say as I pleased. For me, that Concrete Jungle held a sense of belonging that I couldn’t find elsewhere at the time.
And then we would go back to the classroom and things would change. We’d revert back to our “school self”. A “self” that would pretend all was fine, even if it wasn’t. I remember, not long after I had arrived, being called in for a house meeting. A mother of one of the girls had died. We were told not to mention it again. Two of my great friends burst into hysterical laughter. Of course, they were devastated, and nervous and fearful, and hadn’t known how else to show their feelings. No one explained to them that, of course, they could be upset too.
And this is the thing about teen peer pressure – particularly in strict British boarding schools. It comes about from a need to grow one’s emotional strength and identity. On a personal level, I found that the rigid structure of the school gradually skewed my sense of self. I had to behave on an emotionally level playing-field, in case I was isolated. I had no voice in any of my own decision-making, so I had to find it in other ways: drinking in the woods, going out to London clubs when I was supposed to be in bed.
As for the school, they imposed strict guidelines out of fear. Fear of failing in the league tables, fear of losing control. This, of course, partly manifested in my peers in myriad ways: eating disorders, self-harm and depression. Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that. There are many other reasons why some of the girls felt lost, although many of my friends and former pupils I’ve connected with on social media say that they are still struggling now, as a direct result of boarding schools and the emotional strictures pushed on to them.
It took many, many years (I was forbidden from studying English at school lest I bring the league tables down) but my own voice now comes from writing. My novel, The Exclusives, is a psychological thriller set in an all-girls’ boarding school. Although it is a work of fiction, it’s allowed me to find a way of expressing myself that was perhaps not encouraged at my former boarding school.
And I think this is the key in giving the pupils a strong sense of self straight after they leave those four walls, rather than years later. Yes, make them “rounded individuals” but also ensure they realise it’s OK to miss home. That it’s OK to feel upset when someone dies. That despite probably feeling otherwise in those turbulent teen years: it’s going to be OK.
Rebecca Thornton is the author of The Exclusives, published by Twenty7, £7.99
