James Burrell, a freshman, wakes up every morning at 6 a.m. He has to get up early just to get to school on time. On mornings when he has football practice, James must get out of bed at 4:30 a.m. He said Stratford coaches Mark Farriba and Sean Sweeney are understanding of his situation and are able to work with his schedule. While many Stratford students live less than a couple miles away, James lives a total of 43 miles from Stratford, meaning it is a 86-mile round trip. James lives in Jackson, Ga.. Jackson, where the Netflix series "Stranger Things" is filmed, is about halfway between Atlanta, where his father works, and Macon, where his mother works.  His father usually takes him and his sister, eighth-grader Isabella Burrell, to school every morning. Afterward, his dad makes the long drive to his job in Atlanta. During the car ride, James usually studies and completes homework. He said if he “cannot do it in the car, then it is hard to find time to do it.” James said he does not typically hang out with people in Macon because he lives so far away. Instead, the majority of his friends are from Jackson. Nate Jones, a junior, has a similar situation as James. He lives in Monticello, which is a round trip of 68 miles. Nate wakes up every morning at 6:50, and leaves his house around 7:20. He arrives at school around 8 a.m. If Nate has after school activities, he typically stays in Macon and hangs out with his friends and gets something to eat. Nate said if he has plans with friends, he has “to make them in advance to get a heads-up on what time to leave.''

Alex Hall has changed her hair color so many times she could be a chameleon. Alex, a sophomore at Stratford Academy, has dyed her hair about a dozen times. Her natural hair color is black. At one time, she changed it to blue. Last year, she showed up at the beginning of the school year with red hair. School officials asked her to change it to a different color. Now, she has brown and black hair, and she recently cut herself bangs. “I defied the system, it has two colors,” she said. School guidelines allow teachers and students are allowed to style their hair in many different ways here at Stratford, as long as it is not dyed an unnatural color. Boys are not allowed to have hair long enough to touch their shoulders. Sophomore Madison James has long curly hair. “There is not much I can do with it,” she said. She does not enjoy having curly hair and wishes it was more manageable. Junior Thomas Sachy has long brown hair. “It’s long because whenever I have short hair it sticks up and doesn’t look good,” he said. Despite this, he claims it is not hard to wash or take care of it. Senior Austin Slocumb has the opposite views about his care routine, though. “It is the most painful part of my nightly routine,'' he said. "I have to rinse it with way more shampoo or else it gets really greasy and bad.'' He has some of the longest and curliest hair out of all the upper school guys.  Austin and Autumn Land recently were voted as having "Best Hair" for the Senior Superlatives in the yearbook AP World History and World Geography teacher Dr. Nicholas Ercole does not approve of long hair and has a partially shaved head. “I look good, and everyone else looks stupid,” he said.