I am, by definition, a prep school kid. I went to a private college preparatory school for 13 years of my life – kindergarten through 12th grade. I graduated with only 46 people in my class, and I knew most of those people for most of my life (or at least since I was 5 years old). I had some phenomenal teachers, and I made some great friends and memories. The classes were amazing: we had Latin as one of our language options, a strings ensemble that counted as credit for an arts elective, and even a theater shop class. But some of the most important things that I learned in my years at private school weren’t taught to me in a classroom.

In my opinion, aside from the academics, I learned a great deal about people -- the kind of person that I want to be, the kind of people that I like to hang out with, and the kind of people who are better left alone. That lesson has served me well since I’ve graduated and gone to college. I have had far fewer friendship pitfalls than most, and I have almost always had a fairly clear picture of exactly the kind of person I want to be. That has been a crucial part of my consistent success; because I know who I want to be, I can constantly work towards that and avoid the typical college sidetracks along the way.

Let me explain to you how private school did this for me. Every year as part of our curriculum, we went on “field studies” (class bonding) trips with our grade. These trips took us to places like Caroline Furnace, the Skyline Drive and even Luray Caverns. Every year from 4th grade onward, I spent at least one night off campus with my classmates. This alone should prove to you that we were a very close community, and it is only a tiny representation of the amount of time we all spent together. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew everyone’s business.

That being said, I always knew who had lots of money, who had a huge house, who drove a nice car or who got a trip to Jamaica for their birthday. I knew these people personally, and while it certainly wasn’t the circle of people that I floated in, I had a front row view for every aspect of it. I quickly learned that I didn’t want to be those people. They never seemed happy. They floated from friend to friend, they gossiped, and they got in trouble for partying.

As a kid, it’s so easy to think that money will buy you happiness. It’s perfectly logical to think that because money buys you the clothes you want, the makeup you want and the car you want. But if there’s one thing that private school taught me, it’s that in reality, money never buys you happiness. By the time I was 18 years old, I knew that I didn’t want to be rich. I knew that wasn’t what mattered to me. I knew who my four best friends were, and I knew they’d be my friends for life. By the time I graduated, I had learned more about real life and adulthood than I even realized. In fact, it took me almost four years to fully process the lessons I learned at that school. But those lessons (and of course, the education, the teachers, the college counseling office and those four best friends) are the reason that I will forever be grateful that my parents chose to send me to a private school. It’s a lesson only experience can teach, and having that experience at a young age was absolutely invaluable.