Strict School Survival Guide

It's no secret that schools are a huge part of our lives. We spend a large chunk of the day there and while you're still in school, the way your school does things will have a large bearing on how often you smile in a day. But when some of us end up in schools that believe in tough love a bit too much, life gets hard. At times, very hard.

Without naming names, there are various schools in the country that get the title of "prisons." And they often have teachers who boast about that flattering (?) label. All schools have workloads to some extent but there are schools that really take it up a notch. Here's a guide to dealing with them if you do end up in one.

Don't moan about it.

Honestly, this doesn't help. Trust me. A year and a half into my time at a school where the Principal made sure to drop into classes to see if teachers were being hostile enough, I realised that if I tried to overlook the negatives, there were some things to take from here.

For one, hard work never really goes in vain. If you have a Math teacher that makes you do seven assignments on the same trigonometry chapter, you'll probably end up being better at that chapter than your contemporaries from other schools. And since the four years of Secondary/O Levels and Higher Secondary/A Levels are really important for the future, the prison sentence might end up being a blessing in disguise. Even if you have some mental scars to show for it.

Don't think you can get off so easy.

If your school is very particular about things like practical notebooks or reading assignments, don't think you can get away by being clever. In all likelihood, the work will just pile up towards the end of the year. And if you thought doing one experiment per week is annoying, don't bother with doing 17 in one week. Trust me, when your school cares enough to set these things up, they definitely care enough to check up on which of their inmates, I mean students, have done their share.

Enjoy the free future forecast

Yes, having to do after-school, make-up or remedial classes is a huge drag when your friends from other schools are out partying. They're posting Instagram photos of the new brownie in town while you're sitting there, trying to make sense of the university text books your teacher thinks you should take a look at. But guess what, life after school isn't all that easy. And the wake up call that others will get later? You already got it. 

One of the main reasons 'strict' schools choose to be as such is because they know that sooner or later, when you go out into the competitive professional world, you will have to cope with pressure. And as much as it stings me to say, hating my school because of the torment it put me through for a year and half has toughened my skin and prepared me for the time my boss asks me to meet deadlines while I'm on vacation. Not that bosses in SHOUT do that. Na-uh.

While you'll probably hate me for defending systems that feel like torture, it might cheer you up to know that people from stricter schools generally do much better academically and in the future. Hey, hard work never goes to waste. Even if you hate it real bad.