How boarding school offered me important life skills

When most young teenagers hear the phrase “boarding school,” they shudder as if the term connotes terror. My EF Academy boarding school experience was nothing like that. Looking back on my memorable days at EF Academy New York, I realize it was one of a kind.

Some alumni friends and I have even agreed that such an experience at its peak might not so easily appear in our lives again. However, I do believe there is a lot more of the world we are yet to experience as our professional and educational journey progresses.

As life goes on, I sometimes look back on my EF Academy days because they enabled me to launch some essential life skills.

Resilience and Adaptability

They say “don’t grow up, it’s a trap,” but the truth is that growing up is inevitable. As you move up a ladder in any academic or career setting, it is very common to experience challenges or changes. Boarding school helped me launch an important skill-set in life to deal with these challenges: resilience and adaptability.

Boarding school trained me to be adaptive and headstrong toward new settings and challenges. Spending 2-3 years of your life away from home, family or your comfort zone at a young age sounds daunting, but truthfully, I am very glad I appropriately stepped out of my comfort zone at a young age by attending boarding school abroad.

At the end of the day, I was proud of myself for being able to blend in with my new found home away from home! The biggest rewards were earning real friendships, overcoming challenges, and completing the rigorous IB Diploma in a completely different atmosphere than what I’d ever experienced before.

Interpersonal and Conversational Skills

By being around people of different cultures in boarding school, my interpersonal skills grew because it pushed me to put myself out there to adapt to, appreciate and immerse myself in different cultures.

Every conversation I had with people from different backgrounds on several universal topics has made it easy for me to relate with different course mates at university or colleagues in the workplace. I highly believe that having the right people skills will take you far in life no matter what professional path you pursue!

Moreover, it is very important to become the person that brings charisma and positivity to a classroom or a workplace with great interpersonal skills.

Analytical Skills

Lastly, my boarding school experience made me more open-minded on situations, decisions, politics, entertainment, and life in general. Because of being more open-minded, my analytical skills highly developed as I always viewed situations from multi-perspectives. In our highly globalized world, it is essential to have a mind-set filled with multiple perspectives to succeed.