Andrew Kavchak was 13 when his divorced parents sent him in 1976 from Montreal, Canada, to attend Westminster School. Andrew’s parents expected him to spend his adolescence living at the school and then pursue his education at Oxbridge. Things did not turn out that way.
In this autobiographical account, Andrew describes his experience as a Canadian in an elite boarding school in the heart of 1970’s London, and the long-term impact on his life.
This book is about opposites: belonging and exclusion, success and failure, history and modernity. Above all, it is about a teenager’s reactions to all six. Andrew delves, for example, into the prolonged separation from his parents and the resulting sense of abandonment and alienation. He reflects on the pitfalls of a foreign name, accent, vocabulary and previous education. He also describes how he coped with his circumstances and how this experience affected him for many years.
Anyone interested in “Boarding School Syndrome” will find his insights fascinating.
Available here.