Stress vs. Opportunity

vegas1
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 16:04:57 +0000

@twinsmama17 even the largest BS are much smaller than many LPS. I think finding a balance of academic, social and athletic opportunities is much more important than size alone. With that, I can answer your question as we have had a child attend a large BS and “crash and burn” there. She ended up graduating from a small LPS- which was great academically, as she excelled- but horrible socially as she was an outsider and bullied.

What made the BS a bad fit was really how our daughter responded to her environment. A little bit of background: our daughter was grade skipped, always played up on super competitive soccer teams, academic superstar, regularly got her choice of singing parts in choir etc, popular, pretty and built her identity around this experience. She was also extremely self conscious and a perfectionist. Of course, she was our second to attend PEA and we didn’t take any of this into consideration. We lived across the country and she also has a chronic disease she had to manage on her own (t1 diabetic).

Within a few weeks of arriving at BS, she quickly realized so was no longer the smartest, prettiest, best singer or most talented athlete. She auditioned for singing groups and was not selected. She struggled with Harkness as she preferred to be give the formula and instructions and replicate it. She had never taken a foreign language and found it extremely difficult. She didn’t take care of her condition as she was to overwhelmed by the emotional stuff she was dealing with. She ended up coming home that fall as her medical condition became a liability for the school- of course she was failing almost all of her classes. She came home, went to a large (3000+) LPS. She did great academically and socially - also got her medical condition back on track.
She earned her way back into the school the following fall. We still hadn’t considered the emotional factors of why this school was a terrible fit for our daughter. We had mistakenly thought it was all due to her medical condition. She ended up surviving through February that year. Came home, homeschooled until she went to a new small LPS (we moved cross country). She is now a happy successful junior at a great college.

We learned so much from this experience. Our other 3 have all loved PEA. None of them have similar personalities to our daughter. They are not competitive all all, can laugh at their mistakes and don’t need to be perfect. Feel free to pm me with any more questions you might have as you decide.