Lena Kornprobst was an exchange student
at our sister school
Convent of the Sacred Heart, 91st Street
in New York, USA.

Letter from New York

Since September 6th, I have been on exchange in New York City where I am living with a host family and going to the school Convent of the Sacred Heart.

Many things in the school in New York are different from my school in Vienna, but they also have many things in common.
First of all, the American school system is simply different from the Austrian. The classes in New York are smaller than in Vienna, there can be as few as 3 or as many as 20 students in one class. Neither students nor teachers stay in one room all day, we have to go to another room after each period and the breaks are only 5 minutes long. At first it was surprising for me that there is no bell ringing at the beginning and the end of each period, so it was sometimes hard for me to come to class on time since I always waited for a bell to ring.
Each day we have 9 periods that are 40 minutes long, during one of them we can eat lunch in the cafeteria at school and at three days a week we are allowed to have lunch outside of the school. I also have some free periods almost every day during which I usually go to the library.

What I really like about the school here is that there are many different courses offered, therefore everyone can choose which classes she wants to take and what she wants to learn. You can choose between different Arts-classes like ceramics, photography or drawing, you can decide which language you want to learn, if you want to take Latin, etc.

Since the school is a Sacred Heart school, the five Sacred Heart goals are important here, too and feasts like the one of Mater-Admirabilis are celebrated aswell. For the feast of Mater-Admirabilis, we were all allowed, or even supposed to wear something pink or purple, since October 20th was also the international day against harassment of homosexual people and many people world-wide were wearing purple that day. Last week on Spirit Day we were all wearing a red shirt and on the friday before Halloween everyone, even some teachers, dressed up and went to school with their costumes. I love the idea of letting the students wear a shirt in one specific colour that represents something for one day, as that shows the unity and social awareness of the whole school.


As the teachers here do not grade me, I actually do not have to study for the tests or do my homework. However, I still take all the tests and I do my best trying to finish all my homework every day (which is hard because they get a lot of homework each day). I think it is really nice to go scholl without having the pressure of getting good grades all the time, especially in subjects like French or Spanish. All the teachers and students do their best to help and support me, I really feel integrated in every class.

All in all, I have to say that I am very happy that I went on exchange to New York, it has been a unique and amazing experience, I have learned a lot about American culture and the city of New York, and I have made many new friends and a second home.



Lena Kornprobst