Learning how to be a nun was nothing like I expected it to be. Everything had happened in a blur ever since Father Hamilton and his small group of nuns had toured several Catholic schools in my area on a recruitment drive earlier in the year.

I’ll never forget the day they came to our school and set up a desk in a spare office for girls to sign up for their preparatory course for nuns.

Their visit was announced in the middle of lots of other notices first thing in the morning. Most of the other girls didn’t seem to pay any attention to our teacher at all but...