We had a similar reception from another Bais Yaakov. Not outright rejection, but a cool response hinting to the fact that I was unwelcome

Ipace the dimly lit path outside our camp bungalow, cell phone glued to my ear. “Shaindy, I can’t do this!” I shout. “What did I get myself into?” I barely listen to what Shaindy has to say in response as the anxiety rises within me. What have I done?

That was the summer of eighth grade. Camp, panicked phone calls, tears, fears, and not much sleep. I hadn’t expected it to be that way, at all. On the bus to camp, I’d been as merry as the rest of them — shouting and cheering and waiting for the action to start. But not this kind of action.

In retrospect, this story started a good few years before that summer. It’s a story of a kid who had one life at school and another at home. The story of making it work, trying to fit in, when I was completely and totally different. Like when I realized that my mother dressed differently than my friends’ mothers and that we just seemed to have a different mentality toward so many things. That I was a different breed.

Once the realization that I was different hit — somewhere around fourth grade — it was there to stay. Although I had great friends and teachers, I always carried that awareness of how different I was and how my home life contrasted with my school, which felt so stifling. I comforted myself that come ninth grade, I would make my exit and go to a school where I felt I belong.

When it finally came to applying to high schools, however, I hit upon a snag. Whereas it would have been easy enough to continue in the same school system as I had attended for the last number of years, changing to a more "regular" Bais Yaakov was not simple:

“You’re probably going to have a hard time getting in,” warned a staff member from the first school, after my entrance exam. Apparently, my background was too different. Boy, did that hurt. All those years of not fitting in came flooding back — not only did I have to suffer through that, but now I couldn’t even spread my wings elsewhere? Ouch. We had a similar reception from another Bais Yaakov. Not outright rejection, but a cool response hinting to the fact that I was unwelcome, filling my stomach with knots.