Graphic courtesy of Katherine Chong ’25
What time did you wake up this morning? Five o’clock? Six o’clock? 7:59 a.m. just before the start of your English class? These answers differ across the student body depending on different variables — if you’re a morning person, if you go to breakfast in the dining hall, or if you can run across campus in less than three minutes. Yet, there’s one variable that affects student wake-up times across the board: whether you are a boarding or day student.
Day students often start their mornings much earlier than boarding students, simply because of the time spent commuting to campus. Compare living a hop, skip, and a pathway away from your first class to living a hop, skip, and a 45-minute wait on the highway just to get to your locker in St. John Hall. As thrilling as it is to begin your day by climbing two or three flights of stairs to an angrily beeping wooden rectangle, the lockers that day students are assigned aren’t especially useful. Being small and inconveniently located, lockers are not often used to store bags and books.
Now, you might be wondering, “Why are books very rarely stored in the place where books are intended to be stored?” The response of most day students would likely be a very loud groan as they dump their overstuffed backpacks at your feet. While many boarding students can promptly deposit and retrieve their belongings from their dorm in time for any classes or commitments, day students must keep all their belongings on them at all times. Too infrequently do they have a specifically scheduled time, such as a highly-treasured free block, to pick up their books from their lockers in time for their next class. All over campus you can identify day students by their bent over backs, bowing under the weight of their school backpack, their sports equipment, a tote bag with a change of clothes, three different chargers, and a trombone.
One further disparity lies in the difference in sleep schedules between day and boarding students. Boarders can stay up to absurd hours and then wake up at 7:45 a.m., watch a few TikToks, toast a bagel, and make it to their first class early. But, when you have to wake up at 5:30 a.m. just to get to school on time, staying awake to study isn’t typically an option, at least if you want to avoid the morning traffic on I-91.
And, the commute home is equally time-consuming; transportation time varies from ten minutes to 45. So, while borders can walk down the path after a long night of sports, club meetings, or other extracurricular and social obligations, day students get in the car for the return commute, during which they lose time for homework and sleep. When events and meetings are held at odd hours and on weekends, it’s hard for some day students to even find a ride, forcing them to miss out on the experiences that foster a stronger sense of community.
This can lead to a disparity in integration that boarding students may not notice. Last winter, I lived on campus due to Covid-19. During that period, I participated in more social activities than I had been exposed to throughout the entirety of my freshman year: my friends and I hosted surprise parties, went sledding, attended meetings for clubs we hadn’t considered prior to our on campus relocations, and befriended people we otherwise wouldn’t have met.
It’s important to be mindful of how the day student experience differs from that of boarding students who live on campus and are able to engage fully in all the social aspects of the Choate community. If you forget all of my in-depth analysis on the disparities experienced by Choate students based on their boarding status, I ask that you remember to be understanding to your day student friends.
