by Jen Freymond

Not worth the price!

For what my grandparents paid for me to attend this “therapeutic” boarding school, I would have expected a more comfortable, educational experience.

First of all, I’m confused about what constitutes a “therapeutic” boarding school. Based on this one, it seems to be a place where troubled teens are humiliated and forced into cult-like submission, but that can’t be right. I’m not sure it’s legal or ethical to throw around the term “therapeutic” so loosely. (I bring this up because I’m thinking about starting my own therapeutic boarding school. But for cats. I’ll charge their owners and then just throw pens all over the floor.)

When you hear “boarding school,” what do you picture? Probably a posh institution in, for example, New Hampshire. You do not picture a ranch in Montana. You think Dead Poets Society. You think A Separate Peace. Perhaps you envision a darker, sexier version like the boarding school for sexy witches portrayed in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. This was not those.

This place had:

1.)   NO lacrosse. How can a boarding school be a boarding school without lacrosse?

2.)   NO extracurricular activities at all, unless shoveling horse shit counts, or being forced to exercise until you crumple into a whimpering, shuddering mass of human bones and skin counts. If you count those, then this place has extracurricular activities out the ass.

3.)   NO Satanic worship like Sabrina had. We could have at least learned one spell or run into some hot, sassy, rich girl rivals. Instead, I spent months digging stumps out of the ground. This was a metaphor for stubbornness. Stumps are really fucking difficult to get out of the ground. I guess that makes them stubborn, like me. This school was big on metaphors. Also abuse. I prefer Satan.

4.)   NO winter vacations in Aspen. We did spend all winter on cross-country skis, but it was uphill instead of down, and we had to carry heavy backpacks full of camping gear. I also had an additional 20 pounds of rocks I carried on my back to represent “the things I was holding onto.”

5.)   NO cute uniforms. We didn’t have uniforms per se; we had LL Bean. We had fleece pants and three T-shirts. Several of us had one with dinosaur bones on it. We also had “poly-pro,” which is what we called long underwear–necessary in wintertime, especially when one of the girls refused to eat her tuna so we all had to move into tents in the snow for a couple months.

The word “therapeutic” would make more sense if the administration or faculty were licensed therapists of any kind. Instead, they had no expertise, no qualifications, and no degrees, yet parents were fine leaving us there to “heal” from the things this school claimed to therapize. For example, for those of us who had issues with drugs and alcohol, they screamed at us. And to treat the severe depression some of us suffered with, they forced us to exercise until we barfed. (The headmaster did have a degree in biology, so that’s cool, and additionally I think he was a sociopath.)

I am a cat foster mom, so I know a thing or two about keeping troubled souls in line. But where I use a spray bottle to discourage kitty mischief, this school used physical and emotional torture. It’s about finding what works for you. I didn’t find that recurring bladder infections from not being allowed to pee were therapeutic, for example. I missed that metaphor.

The school’s methods were great for exerting power and control over us, so I have to give them one star for that. I was terrified 76% of the time during my two years there.

Some of the amenities the school offered:

1.)   Grown men calling me a piece of shit.

2.)   The promise of continued nightmares for the rest of my life.

3.)   Grown men turning us against each other through fear and manipulation.

4.)   The twelve steps. While the founders and “counselors” were not at all, in any way, at all, qualified to provide therapy, they were all in recovery, knew the twelve steps, and labeled every single one of us an “addict” so they could use AA as therapy. Convenient!

5.)   A warm place to sleep, unless someone didn’t eat their tuna. At least I won’t have to worry about that with the cats!

I am giving the school one star for giving me the idea for my therapeutic boarding school for wayward cats. Did I mention they would be wayward?

This place also gets one star instead of zero because I did not die.

Jen is a writer, podcaster, educator, mother, and total jackass living in Olympia, WA. There is no greater glory to Jen than making you laugh. You can find her work in McSweeney’s, The Offing, The Belladonna, Points in Case, The Rumpus, and many more. Find her complete list of work at jenfreymond.com, and check out her podcast, called I Never Saw That.