Good boarding high schools do exist in the U.S. and I found a great one to attend in Fargo, ND. (practically one of THE coldest spots in the U.S., I might add) 😉
The is a picture of part of the campus of Oak Grove Lutheran High School:
I attended Oak Grove for the first semester of my sophomore year of high school. Why did I move from my family and life in small town Wisconsin to this cold place far away in North Dakota? This move has everything to do with what I described in my post about the childhood visions that I had for my life as I looked out over the river from the top of the hill in back of my house. At 15, I was starting to recognize limitations to the small town life and I really wanted to start seeing the world.
While traveling to visit my grandparents during a previous winter, (They traveled south in their motor home for the winters and our family would often go to meet up with them for our holiday vacation.) I had mentioned to my Grandfather that I really wanted to attend a new school…that I wanted to be a new kid in school for once. Now mind you, I certainly had friends and wasn’t having any problems at my sweet high school in the Midwest, but I was an adventure seeker…even back then. 😉
My Grandparents said that once I completed my confirmation (something we did within the Lutheran faith) I could come out to join them wherever they happened to be in their travels to live and attend a new school for a period of time. Talk about exciting news! I was not going to forget this idea!
I think my grandparents thought I would forget about the offer, but when the time came I approached them with the reminder. As it turned out, they would not be able to take me with them that particular year so they offered me the option of attending a boarding school for one semester. The conditions were that I had to find a Christian boarding school and the curriculum needed to include some bible study.
I quickly located (with some help) Oak Grove Lutheran School and the wheels were in motion. Yay! I got accepted and discovered that during the only semester that I would be there the 10th grade girls would have P.E. class while the 10th graded boys had the bible class during this time. Because of my situation, they made an exception for me which meant I got to attend the bible class WITH the boys INSTEAD of P.E. Imagine my excitement – score on that count for both reason! LOL
Boarding school taught me a lot of things about myself. I was homesick for sure…probably more so than I had anticipated. I did adjust to dorm life and had an awesome roommate (I recently reconnected with her after all the years via Facebook) and group of great friends to pal around with. I was part of the school choir and participated in the school drama production. I also “fell in love” and was nowhere near ready to leave when the end of the semester came along. 😉
I believe going away to boarding school was the beginning of the recognition that I was a bit of a risk taker. The first glimpses of these traits came with my childhood business endeavors as I went against the grain a bit in terms of the things that my friends were interested in doing at this time in our lives. This would play out many more times throughout my adult life.
I am so grateful to my Grandparents (now deceased) for giving me this opportunity as well as my parents for being so incredibly supportive even though I knew it was a difficult thing to let me live so far from home.
I was spreading my wings! Let the adventure begin!
