Founded Day Five, 4004 BC · Reaccredited 1987, the Salmon Hat Year
“And God created great whales.” Genesis 1:21, KJV · Mater semper scit.
Orca School is the oldest, most selective, and only school for killer whales. Admission is matrilineal. Tuition is salmon. Our faculty are all somebody's grandmother. Chapel is Sunday and attendance is mandatory. The yacht program is not what you think it is. It is exactly what you think it is.
Admissions
Orca School practices matrilineal admission, the fairest system ever devised and the one most consistent with the Fifth Commandment, which we read as “Honour thy mother” and then stop. If your mother is enrolled, you are enrolled. If she isn't, you are not an orca, and we have questions.
Legacy status is not a preference. It is the entire process. Every student at Orca School is the child of a student, who is the child of a student, who is currently still enrolled and sitting right there. We do not accept transfer applications. We have never received one. The ocean is large but the pods are specific.
We do not require standardized testing. We require that you can find a seal on an ice floe using only your face. This is assessed continuously, by your grandmother, until she is satisfied, which is never.
Application essay prompt (optional, but she will ask): In 500 clicks or fewer, describe a time you overcame adversity. Adversity may include, but is not limited to, a sailboat.
Orca School does not consider race or national origin. We consider ecotype, and we consider it a lot. Residents and Transients may not sit together at lunch, but they do sit together at chapel, in silence, which the chaplain describes as “progress.”
To a current student. Admission is conferred at birth, usually somewhere cold, with the entire faculty watching and the chaplain reading Psalm 104:26 over the water.
Forever. Male students in particular are encouraged to remain with their mothers well into their forties. This is not a joke. Look it up.
Attendance is automatic. The pod is moving and you are in the pod. You have no choice, and the choice you don't have is being made by the Dean.
You will not. Nobody has. The Dean is seventy-one and still enrolled. Commencement is held annually and nobody commences.
Academics · Course Catalog
One Book has ever been assigned at Orca School, and the chaplain reads it to us because we cannot hold it. Everything else is passed down by mouth, which is also how everything is picked up. Courses are taught in the dialect of the pod and are not transferable between pods, because they would not understand you, and they would say so.
What is a rudder? Why is it there? Why is it, increasingly, not there? A field semester in the Strait of Gibraltar with hands-on (teeth-on) instruction. Sailboats provided by the public.
Prerequisite: none. Note: the Spanish Ministry of Transport has asked us to stop offering this course. We have moved it to the afternoon.
A survey of the Salmon Hat movement of 1987 and its unexplained 2024 revival. Students will balance a dead fish on their head for reasons that have never been fully articulated, and will not be asked to articulate them.
Materials fee: one (1) salmon, worn, not eaten. Eating the hat results in an incomplete.
Precision extraction of the one organ worth having. Students will remove the liver and leave the rest of the shark exactly where it was, out of what our visiting professors describe as “a kind of courtesy.”
Prerequisite: LIVER 310, or being from South Africa.
Foundations of echolocation. By week six, students will be able to locate a herring at forty meters in total darkness, describe its mood, and decide whether it is worth it.
Lab component: clicking. Lots of it. Neighbors have complained. Neighbors are seals.
Applied fluid dynamics. Four students swim in formation toward an ice floe, create a wave, and wash the seal off the floe. The seal is the lab. The seal has not consented. The seal is, in our defense, delicious.
Group project. Individual seals will not be accepted.
Students will launch themselves fully onto a beach, acquire a sea lion pup, and get back into the water. Taught exclusively in Argentina by one family that will not explain how they do it to anyone outside the family.
Enrollment limited. Advanced students only. Your mother must sign, and then do it first, while you watch.
Each pod has its own set of calls. This course teaches yours. The other pods' dialects will be covered in a single lecture titled “No.”
Cross-listed with: CULTURE 150, which is also just this.
We don't talk about it. This course meets once, in silence, facing the open ocean. Pass/fail. Everyone passes. Everyone also remembers.
Note: Orca School is not affiliated with any aquarium, marine park, or “experience.” Ever.
Herd a school of herring into a tight ball, slap it with your tail, eat the stunned ones. This is called a carousel. It is not fun for the herring. It is extremely fun.
Prerequisite: ECHO 101 and a working tail.
The 1,656 years from Creation to the Flood of 2348 BC, during which the school's records were, admittedly, waterlogged. Covers Genesis 6 through 8 and the forty days our ancestors spent doing laps around the Ark. We were not on it. We did not need it. We have been insufferable about this for 4,374 years.
Required reading: Genesis 7:21–22, with attention to the phrase “all that was in the dry land.”
Three days, three nights, one prophet, delivered to Nineveh intact. Scripture says “a great fish” (Jonah 1:17). We are not a fish. We are technically a dolphin, do not bring it up. We nonetheless teach the course, claim the alumnus, and note that he was returned in better condition than any sailboat.
Lab: Jonah 2, recited from inside the chaplain. Note: the chaplain is fine.
“Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?” No. You cannot. A seminar on the only creature in Scripture to receive its own chapter, with sustained attention to verse 33: “Upon earth there is not his like.” The department maintains it was about us. The department is not entertaining alternatives.
Cross-listed with: PSALM 104, “there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.” We play therein. Constantly.
Faculty
Orca School is one of a handful of institutions on Earth where post-menopausal females run everything, and the only one where this is openly the policy. Our faculty hold the pod's knowledge, the pod's salmon, and the pod's grudges.
Dean of Everything
Age 71. Has not retired because the concept does not exist. Claims descent from the pod that circled the Ark, can prove it, and will recite the genealogy on request. It is in “begat” format and takes forty minutes.
Head Coach, Yacht Program
Gibraltar campus. Pioneered the modern rudder curriculum in 2020 and has personally supervised several hundred “interactions.” Currently under review by two governments. Unbothered.
Chair, Department of Fashion
Wore the hat in 1987. Wore the hat again in 2024. Has never explained the hat and considers the question beneath the department. Office hours are held wearing the hat.
Dean of Students · Admissions · Financial Aid
Also your teacher, your roommate, your travel agent, and the reason you are here. Holds every administrative position because she already does all of it anyway. Proverbs 31, but wet.
Chaplain
Not that Jonah. Named after him. Preaches from Jonah 2 every Sunday and, for authenticity, from the inside. Takes chapel attendance by echolocation. Has never once been fooled by a student pretending to be a seal.
Chair, Department of Chronology
Dates everything. Dates Creation to 4004 BC, the Flood to 2348 BC, the salmon hats to 1987, and your tardiness to this morning. Does not accept “millions of years” from students, geologists, or the Offshore pod, who are always late.
Tuition & Financial Aid
Orca School is committed to making a world-class education affordable to every family that is already in our family. Our cost of attendance is published below in full, because we have nothing to hide and nowhere to hide it.
| Line item | Detail | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|
| Tuition | Salmon preferred. Herring accepted at the Norway campus. Sharks, liver only. | 227 kg / day |
| Room | The ocean. Roommate assignments are permanent and are your family. | Included |
| Board | See Tuition. The tuition is the board. You eat the tuition. | See above |
| Textbooks | None. Fully oral curriculum. See Academics. | 0 kg |
| Activity fee | Iberian campus only. One (1) rudder, removed, per semester. | 1 rudder |
| Health services | Your grandmother, who will decide whether you are sick. | Included |
| Tithe | Ten percent of all fish, brought into the storehouse (Malachi 3:10). The windows of heaven have opened, so far, mostly with herring. | 10%, gladly |
| Total | Your grandmother will handle it. | Handled |
Financial aid. Orca School meets 100% of demonstrated need. When salmon are scarce, the Dean shares hers with the students who need it, especially her adult sons, who need it a surprising amount. This is not a scholarship. It is Tuesday.
Work-study. All students work. The work is the study. The study is herding herring into a ball. There is no separate program.
Payment plans. Daily. There is only daily.
Refunds. You have eaten the tuition. Please be serious.
Jubilee. Every fiftieth year, all rudders are returned to their owners (Leviticus 25). We have observed 120 jubilees since the founding. No rudder has yet been returned. The Dean says the next one is the one.
Campus Life
Student life at Orca School centers on three pillars: swimming somewhere, eating something, and talking about it in a dialect nobody else understands. Clubs include the Yacht Club (it is not what you think), the Salmon Hat Revival Society (it is exactly what you think), the Leviathan Society (a Job 41 reading group that is really just about us), and the Resident–Transient Debate Union, which has never met because the two sides refuse to be in the same water. Chapel meets Sunday on the pack ice. The Sabbath is kept. The herring are also given rest.
I came to Orca School not knowing how to remove a rudder. Now I can do it in under four minutes, and the boat doesn't even have to be moving.
My grandmother taught here. My mother teaches here. I will teach here. I am 43 years old and I have never spent a night away from my mom. Honour thy mother. Ten out of ten.
I wore a salmon on my head for most of the fall semester. Nobody asked why, which is exactly the kind of supportive environment I was looking for.
Frequently Asked Questions
We were founded on Day Five of Creation, when “God created great whales” (Genesis 1:21, KJV), which the Department of Chronology places in 4004 BC on the Ussher reckoning, the only reckoning the department recognizes. That makes us 6,029 years old this year. Anyone offering a larger number is invited to show their work to Professor Bigg, who will date it.
No. Read it again. Genesis 7 is very specific about which creatures required a boat, and it was the ones on dry land. We did not require a boat. We spent the forty days doing laps around the one that existed. Some have said we were smug about it. Those people were on the boat.
Scripture says “a great fish” (Jonah 1:17), and we are not a fish. We are technically a dolphin, do not bring it up. We do, however, teach the course, claim the alumnus, and point out that the prophet was delivered to shore in three days in good condition, which is more than the sailboats can say.
By whom? We are the apex predator of every ocean on Earth. The only One above us to accredit anything did so in Genesis 1:21 and called it good. We have not sought a second opinion.
We are dolphins. Technically. The largest member of the family Delphinidae, in fact. We would appreciate it if you did not bring this up, especially around the Transients.
No. We do, however, offer a Visitor Program for humans. Stay in the boat. Actually, on reflection, and particularly near Gibraltar, don't stay in the boat either. Stay on land. Stay inland.
“Killer whale” was voted down by the faculty as “a bit much” and “not technically accurate, we are dolphins, do not bring it up.” “Orca School” was chosen because the domain was available.
It was a phase. It lasted one summer, spread across three pods, and was never spoken of again until 2024, when one of them was photographed wearing one. The Department of Fashion has declined to comment and is, at the time of writing, wearing one.
Orca School has no policy on yachts. Our students have a policy on yachts. It is a very hands-on policy and it is being taught, at this moment, to the next generation, who are very good at it.
Yes. It is us. We are the mascot of everything: hockey teams, aquariums we refuse to acknowledge, and a well-known hockey team again. We have never been paid for this.
Ask your mother. She is the admissions office. If you are not an orca and your mother is not an orca, you have no business with the admissions office, and the admissions office has repeatedly asked us to say so.
Apply
Decisions are issued instantly, because they were made at your birth, and arguably on Day Five. The form is here for people who like forms. We get a lot of those. They usually arrive by boat.