St Michaels is a great boarding house to be in, as all the staff are really nice.  St Michaels is the junior boarding house and we all get the same opportunities that the older boarders get in the other boarding houses. The Year 7s get to go to bed at a slightly later time and they have their own common room just for us. At the weekends we get to go on exhilarating trips that sometimes test our skills. One time we went to a high ropes course which tested my fear of heights a little bit!

Our dorms are split evenly into year groups (the boys go in a room together) and we have a dorm inspection each morning and the dorm who has kept their dorm the tidiest gets a fun little prize. We all have access to computers for homework, although we only have four of them, so we each get thirty minutes.   We have easy access to  personal space if we need/want some time alone, as the staff understand that we have our moments.

After tea, we get twenty minutes to get our school bags ready for the next day (so we aren’t rushing about in the morning) we get given a snack and are allowed a piece of fruit if we have a sports club or fixture. The year sevens get to go into town on a Thursdays, and love interacting/playing with the other boarders. After tea if we don’t have free play we will have a fun games night like bingo or a quiz night, we have a box that contains paper and a separate box that contains pencils and pens that we can use for homework or drawing.

We can have our phones to play games on but we mainly have them so we can call our parents when the house phone is in use, the house phone is a phone that is there for us to use if our phones don’t have charge. In the dining room we have a massive board with all of our names on it.  On the board is a medal system which is a bit like the schools merit system, when we are good we get a bronze medal and if we get three bronze medals we get a silver medal and when we get three silver medals we get a gold and when we get a gold medal we get a privilege which is a choice of a small bag of sweets, cinnamon toast for breakfast, or a five minute later bed time.

Every year we get what’s called a gap student which is a student which has finished school and has a year of traveling before going to university. St Michaels is a good cheery place and I would very much recommend it. At the boarding house I have made so many happy memories and if anyone else joins boarding I and sure that they will have fun too.

Eloise Trushell, Year 7.  October 2017.