My sister went, two very close high school friends did, but it was so long ago, I can't offer any info.

I am OLD :o)

Does the county boarding school count? (reform school---LOL)

Susan have you tried contacting some of the others that attended school with you?
Perhaps asking them to write about what they remember of the day to day goings on could be helpful to you.
Worth a shot.

June

June, I'm afraid I remember the full name of only one girl. It's a common name, and she's probably changed it (by marriage) anyway. Plus I have no idea where these girls lived. They came from all over, including other countries. I remember that my closest friend's name was Loretta. That's a big help. LOL

My excuse is that it was so long ago (I arrived there for 5th grade), but I think another factor was that this time in my life was so traumatic (losing my mom, being sent away to school).

I went to a country boarding school here in Australia, and my daughter went to a city boarding school (where we live there is no high school). I'll give you an idea of what we did and that may jog your memory.
Mornings- up and dressed and beds made before breakfast, personal space tidied. After breakfast, everyone had jobs to do- sweep floors, clearing tables, dishes, setting the tables for the next meal, etc. Jobs were rotated each term. On Saturdays bigger jobs were done- vacuuming, floors polished, dusting etc. (My school had no cleaners/other help :-) .) On Sundays we went to church, either before or after breakfast as there were two services and you could choose whether you wanted to sleep in or have more free time after breakfast.
Between breakfast and the start of classes we would take our washing to the laundry, brush teeth, etc and just hang around with friends.
Lunch was in the dining room and again we had after-lunch chores clearing the lunch mess and setting up for dinner. Hang around until class.
After school we would collect clean laundry, do any ironing/shoe polishing/mending necessary (we were regularly inspected for tidiness) and hang around. Some of us had after school activities- sports, music or drama classes, typing or piano practice, and we had a TV to watch (one for the whole school!), a piano to mess around on and a large garden to run around in. A lot of girls had their showers after school, otherwise you fitted them into other odd spare time during the day.
After dinner (and dinner chores finished) we went back to the classrooms for study for about two hours, this is when homework was completed etc so you had no excuses :-)
When study was over we could watch a little TV and then off to bed. Some girls had their showers before bed but you had to be quick to get in before lights out.
Each dorm had a nun who had a little private bedroom area in the corner so she could keep an ear out for us, don't think they did that at DD's school though.
We weren't overtly supervised but the nuns certainly seemed to know everything that was going on :-) There were prefects from the top class who were charged with reporting any rule breaking to the nuns but I don't recall any resentment, it was a real honour to be a prefect.

Yes, indeed. I attended boarding school (high school). It would take me a bit of time to assemble my thoughts but I'd be glad to share with you later today or tomorrow.

This was the same school my mother and all of my aunts attended so it was a family tradition.

I'll try to get some memories together today.

Thanks, Colleen--you have an excellent memory! Or maybe it wasn't so long ago. Your schedule made me realize my school didn't require any chores. I probably liked that just fine at the time, but it didn't work to my advantage later when I had to keep house.

And thank you, Seniorgal! I'll look forward to your memories.

I am also interested in learning about people's experiences in boarding school.

I lived in England when I was in eighth grade and attended a girls school that included boarders.

A friend who lived at school there invited me to a sleepover/midnight feast. I remember several girls per room, sleeping in bunk beds and some ladies checking up on us to make sure we were behaving.

Trying copy again
I attended boarding school for my high school years. I was quite young (11) when starting my freshman year. I recall that I was very homesick the first couple of weeks. The nuns were very kind --they baked a birthday cake for my September birthday.

Once I recovered from homesickness I joined the routine of the school. Although there were a few private rooms most of us slept in a large dormitory room with our 'cells' separated by curtains which could be drawn open and shut. Furniture consisted of a bed, a chair and a washstand with a pitcher and bowl. Our closets were lined up at one end of the room.

To the best of my recollection our weekdays started at about 6:30 when the nun in charge of the dormitory went up and down the aisles ringing a small bell. We went to the communal bathroom to fill our pitchers with warm water which we used for our washing up, We filled a glass with cool water for tooth brushing. When we were washed and dressed we went to the chapel for daily Catholic mass. Following that we had breakfast in the refectory (dining room.). We had some time to ourselves before we assembled in the study hall before classes began. Bells were rung when classes were over and we moved from room to room in orderly lines.

At noon we had lunch in the refectory with some time to ourselves before afternoon classes

After school we went to the kitchen for a snack which varied from bread and jelly or peanut butter to some sort of cookies or crackers. Every afternoon following the snack one of the nuns took us out for a walk of about a mile. We were required to stay in line, two by two.

After the walk there was time in study hall again, then dinner, then recreation. There was no TV in those days. I remember how excited we were when we got a radio. Sometimes one of the girls would play the piano and we would dance, the older girls teaching the younger ones.

Dinner was served at 6 o'clock with an hours recreation following, then more study hall. Around 8 o'clock we went to the chapel to say the rosary, then had more time to ourselves before bed around 9:30.

Sometimes on weekends we went downtown to see a movie, We had a large lawn with a tennis court and benches where we could sit and enjoy the outdoors.

Saturdays and Wednesdays we signed up for our turn to have a real bath in one of the several tubs. There were no showers. On Saturdays we could press our clothes, mend, shine our shoes, set our hair, polish our fingernails, read or play games.

Sunday we attended mass at the church across the street. Aside from an hour in the study hall to write letters or do homework we were pretty free to do as we chose. We could not leave the school without permission.

Wow, Seniorgal--you have a wonderful memory! A couple of things you wrote jogged my own, like the nun ringing a bell to wake us in the morning. (My boarding school was a Catholic convent too.) And my homesickness--although I hadn't forgotten that.

You were so young to start high school! Where was this?

Thanks so much for sharing this with me.

Alisande

This was in southern Minnesota. I had skipped two grades in elementary school, hence the young age at which I started high school. It never bothered me academically, but I think I had more need to adapt socially than some. Everything turned out OK and I graduated at the top of my class.

Thanks for the compliment, Alisande, but my boarding school days were a while back, in the 70s :-) It's scary to think that the 70s were 40 years ago =:-O
I remember a lot of the meals we ate were pretty dodgy :-) One of the nuns would patrol around and encourage/enforce the eating of leftovers, except one day when we were told we didn't _have_ to eat the purple stew (the nun in charge of cooking was experimenting with adding a large can of red cabbage with unfortunate results). We would bring back treats from home after holidays to squirrel away in our lockers and share with deserving friends...it was amazing how many friends one would suddenly have if cake was in the offing. I used to make my cakes look as unappealing as possible so no one wanted to share ;-)
And the laundry was often over-dried and slightly burnt- if you tied your long socks together in pairs (as many did to facilitate finding them) they would end up sort of tie-dye-burnt in stripes....We had name tags sewed on everything but all the dry laundry would be dumped out on a big table and you had to sort through it to find your stuff.

Seniorgal, you must be very smart to have skipped those grades. No wonder you've remembered so much!

I can tell you're smart, too, Colleen! :-)

Thanks again--I'm so glad I asked.