Chances are if you're reading this article, you went to a Catholic school at some point in your lifetime. It's even more likely that you went from kindergarten through high school! Consider yourself a Catholic school survivor if you know all of these things to be true...because we know not just anyone can survive!
1. Uniforms.
Khaki, plaid, school logo...need I say more? We hated them back when we were forced to wear them, but now we wish that we could wear them when we can't decide what to wear!
2. You still struggle to get dressed in the morning in college and after.
What do you mean I have to choose something other than khakis and a polo shirt to wear? This is the result of being wearing forced to wear uniforms for about 180 days of the year, each and every year.
3. Every day started with prayer and the pledge over the announcements.
Each time the morning bell rang, you knew the next thing was to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance and Prayer to be said over the intercom. It was like clockwork and never changed.
4. Ash Wednesday was a competition of who had the better ash.
Did you get a blob too? Wait you got an actual cross?! You win the best ash of the year!
5. Fake tucking your shirt in was a skill and you were proud of it.
Somehow, teachers never found out that your shirt was not fully tucked in, if you were lucky! It took years of practice, but if you mastered it, you never went back!
6. Your school's name was "Saint Something," "Sacred Heart of," or "Archbishop So-and-So."
Marian, St. Joseph, Christ the King, Holy Cross...pick your choice it was probably the name of your school!
7. You were assigned a Saint for All Saints' Day and maybe even dressed up as one in grade school.
Halloween didn't consist of normal costumes, but was, instead, everyone dressing up as a different saint. There might even have been a competition of who was the best-dressed saint!
8. People dropped like flies on Mass Days.
If you ever wondered why so many people were missing on a certain day, it was most likely because there was mass that day and people didn't want to come to school.
9. In grade school, you blamed the CCD kids if anything in your desk was touched, or worse, disappeared over the weekend.
You always checked your desk on Mondays when you got back to school to check if everything was still in its exact space even that pencil that you threw in the back of your desk and never used.
10. Friday lunches during Lent meant fish sticks or pizza.
If you were lucky, they would alternate between the two, but it was almost always one or the other. Unless they tried to throw some weird food that nobody knew what it was in the mix.
11. Mass Days typically meant shorter classes.
There was a special mass schedule and classes usually took one for the team and were shorter. They were sometimes even shorter than planned if mass ran long!
12. You loved dress down days probably more than you would like to admit.
This meant you got to wear sweats or whatever you wanted, but most importantly, it meant you probably got to sleep in longer because you didn't care how you looked.
13. You were trained to think tucking in your shirt is more important than actual class.
If you weren't able to fake tucking your shirt in or if you just didn't care and had your shirt untucked all the time, you most likely had a number of detentions to prove that, for some reason, a tucked in shirt was more important than learning in the eyes of Catholic school teachers.
14. You know what “Leave room for the Holy Spirit" means.
And you always had friends that would say it to you.
15. Your high school graduation had a lot of the same people that your kindergarten graduation had, and you were most likely still all friends.
Kindergarten to senior year, everyone went to the same school, because once you go to Catholic School, there is no turning back! Catholic School people stick together!
16. You would never have a two-hour delay or snow day on a mass day.
Oh, the bishop is coming today? Don't worry, we will still have school despite it being a travel advisory out on the roads and blizzard conditions.
Even though you might claim to hate that you went to a Catholic school, you secretly loved it. It taught you a lot and gave you some of your best friends that are still best friends to this day!
