HOSTEL LIFE: MY BOARDING SCHOOL SAD SACK STORY
Hostel life conjures up images of ragging to begin with. Ragging per se is fine if done with finesse. Some freshers can get into hilarious situations and remember them for life. Others may end up traumatized but emerge stronger mentally at the end of it all.
The earliest you can get to experience this life, is in a Boarding School. Thereon, should you pursue higher studies, chances are you could end up living in hostels. In the Military Academies, hostel life is majorly different from the rest. So is hostel life in Colleges. In schools there is no freedom, like in College hostels.
Tips? What tips? None in a school anyway.
THE GREAT MILITARY SCHOOL: INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
I started off in a Military School, lived there for the last three years of my school life. The initiative was not my parents, it was all mine. I persuaded them to let me join this super duper Military School.
When I did join the School, I had a hard time adjusting to the life out there.The first few months were horrendous.
Coming as I did from the liberal co educational environment of a Bombay school, I found the Military School students a bunch of mentally retarded jokers. Take a hundred street kids from different parts of India, dress them him up in Khaki uniforms, berry caps, lanyards, make them believe they are some kind of soldiers of fortune and you have a Sad Sack comic strip like guys walking everywhere around you. Their behavior pattern bordered on the absurd.
I joined in the 9th class but I felt awfully sorry for the small Sad Sacks who joined in the First Standard!
The hostel had beds laid out in two lines with a cupboard one for each Sad Sack,
The Daily Routine was charted out Monday to Sunday. We lived by this crazy monotonous routine week after week, month after month, year after year.
Everything was time bound, the morning reveille at 0530 hrs, the silly line up for morning cup of tea , then dress up like a cartoon for morning PT. The PT itself was a routine of useless exercises. Sometimes we also had a band. The next year I joined this good for nothing school band too. It was easier beating drums than doing the awful PT.
Then dress up in the Military like uniform, go to the dining room. Here even the table and the chair for all Cadets were fixed for life! Some 300 Sad Sacks would dutifully gobble down all that was served to them. The food per se was good, but just when I was looking for a second helping, the Head Prefect would clang some bell which meant, “All Cadets, stop eating!”
Then the academic classes. Here too the desk and chairs were fixed. Come evening and 2 hours of compulsory games. That was the good part.
Ah the Prefect system is an innovation borrowed from British Public Schools. Most of these guys were supposed to be role model students, great in sports, academics and excelling in Standards set up by the School administration. Some were boxing champs, some great at Elocution/debating. These fellas had red tabs on their shoulders and behaved like some third rate Army Sergeant Majors. Some were good no doubt, very talented.
The entire system in this Military School was designed to Regiment all the students into some standard product of certain standard uniform quality, much like consumer products like Cadbury’s or Surf or Personal Computers. When we Cadets did gather together in some kind of a Parade, we all looked like some hundred crates filled with Pepsi, all neatly lined up.
After a week of this nonsense, I rebelled with great force! I think I rebelled because I felt that this system was out to destroy my individuality and re create me into some oxy moron, some standard brainless product that I saw all around me. However, the House Master, the House Prefect, the Principal counseled and brainwashed me into falling in line.
I did not succeed with my mutiny and had to fit into the system, eventually.
Which was a smart thing to do.
Some six months down the line, I did begin to appreciate some of the major advantages being here in this school as opposed to other day schools that I had studied in. I missed the girls though.
What we did learn:
To manage our lives independently. Adaptability. Time management.
No molly coddling, throwing tantrums and getting away with it.
Great outdoors, field games, horse riding, swimming, tennis. Decent supervision, and follow up. Participating in Inter School tournaments. A good all round development.
Meeting students from all over India, culturally so different from each other and learning from them. Making great friends for life from both the senior and junior classes. The Old Boys Association is an Institution by itself..
Well provided for hobby centers, debating clubs. NCC was compulsory, though taut. The Camps were tough and well organized.
Availability of wide-open spaces, playgrounds.
Good follow up systems for students academically weak at no extra costs.
Very good Teacher to Student ratio.
Good career counseling.
Dedicated staff.
Pocket money some 10 bucks a month!
SOME TIPS
For those parents looking at boarding schools as an option, some factors need to be considered.
Working husband and wife, NRI parents living in countries with poor educational systems, parents in a situation unable to give children quality time, single parents, latch key kids, maybe boarding school is an option. Well Boarding Schools is an option should parents be looking to inject something more than what the neighborhood day school has to offer. Costs? How bout Rs 100,000/- per year?
The decision to send or not to send is a difficult one to make. Anyway having made one:
Choose schools, which are co-educational rather than all boys or all girls’ schools.
A good time to get in is Class 7 but not earlier than Class 5.
Location of the school: The good ones are located in hill stations like Nainital, Ooty, Sanawar, Shimla and many other places.
I see plenty of advertisements in newspapers of new boarding schools opening up all over India. It takes time for a school to establish a reputation, maybe 25 years.
Check for the quality of the school from parents who have their kids studying there.
Boarding schools, all in all, is a good way to start a life.
