Myth vs Reality: Experiences from International Students

“My biggest fear was that I wouldn’t get along with my roommate.” – Clara (Howe, Y12)

Well, jokes on her – Clara ended up in a room on her own. Even though this solved her problem in some way, I believe that a lot of students had exactly the same thought before coming to RHS – including myself. When you decide that you want to leave home and study abroad, your biggest worry is probably whether you’ll make friends at your new school. You choose a completely new life without even knowing what lies ahead. Every single one of us hopes to find friends for life – a new family. Clara says that she can now almost laugh about how many unneccessary worries she had. Even without a roommate in the first half-term, she had no trouble making friends at RHS. Friendships form much more quickly here and on a deeper level, simply because you’re living together all the time. At the start of the second half-term, however, Clara did in fact end up with a roommate, and she says it’s the best thing that could have happened to her. Shared interests, evenings spent watching a series together, or simply deep conversations – all these things make life at a boarding school feel like one long sleepover.

“I thought the food would taste horrible.” – Gabrielle (Howe, Y10)

Obviously a really important topic: food! Gabrielle expected the food to not live up to her french tastebuds, but surprisingly she enjoys the variety of every day meals. I think we can all relate to the feeling of sitting in period five and longing to finally go to lunch. There is at least one person in every class who secretely checks the food plan of today‘s lunch. And when it finally says ceasar salad wraps, I think everyone agrees that there is a lot of screaming! To be honest, every single international student I talked to, including Gabrielle, admitted that they eat more at RHS than they would at home. Gabrielle especially enjoys that, in the rare case you don‘t like the food, there are always at least one or two other options.

“I was surprised that I had to hand in my phone.” – Philipp (St Vincent, Y10)

Having to hand in your phone is probably the biggest complaint among all RHS pupils. When I asked Philipp about one thing that went differently than he expected when joining the school, it took him like two seconds to answer. These days, our phones are almost like a part of ourselves, and for international students in particular – who aren’t used to handing them in – it can feel like quite a drastic measure. I genuinely think spending some time without your phone means doing more activities with your friends, but this is probably a very teacher like argument and all the pupils would be rather annoyed and say it’s not true. So when all the younger years get their phones back the reception is so full, as if Mrs Marvell were handing out sweets for free. Trust me, that’s not a good time to go to the common room. But don’t worry, Philipp – even though your screen time has decreased since you’re boarding, I’m sure you will survive this separation. 🙂

“I didn’t expect the student-teacher relationship to be that chill.” – Elsa (Howe, Y11)

One of Elsa’s favorite things of being a student at RHS is that you can form way more closer relationships with your teachers than you would ever do in Germany. She feels like teachers at RHS are genuinely interested in supporting you, no matter whether it’s an academic or personal problem. Boarding means that you live together with your teachers and experience them also outside of the classroom. Having a chat with Miss or Matron can really improve your mood on a rough day, whilst at home you would probably avoid talking to your teachers if you don’t have to. Elsa thinks this chill relationship makes even studying more fun and school feels like a great place to be.

“I didn’t expect to spend so much time doing prep.” – Nathan (Collingwood, Y12)

This might be the most relatable statement of this whole article. Being in year 12 means that studying is a really time consuming part of your day and Nathan honestly didn’t expect it to be that big. At RHS you cover way more topics than you would at a school in Germany and this can be really exhausting for an international student at first. Of course, it’s kind of a personal question how much work you want to do for school, but even when you just do your prep, you definitely need to lock in during your frees or your prep time. I think most international people dream of studying abroad and not actually studying abroad, but the reality is that you can’t have one without the other. Nevertheless, I‘m convinced that in a few years Nathan won‘t remember the time he spent doing his prep, but rather the funny moments with his friends in house or all the exciting activities he did during his year abroad.

“Before joining RHS I was really scared of meeting new people.“ – Maria (Hood, Y12)

Maria told me that she was seriously worried about finding friends at RHS because she heard so many stories of other international students joining a boarding school, where the people weren‘t open minded and didn‘t include exchange students at all. So when she came here with bad expactations, Maria was really surprised that she found such a great friendgroup. Visits at the café, funny moment during school and the curiousity of meeting new people made it much easier to bond with british and also german students. Whilst Maria didn‘t know any of her current friends before, she now can’t imagine a life without them and is more than thankful to have found her people at RHS.