Hi! I am a high school senior recently diagnosed with T1 diabetes.
I do carry snacks with me at all times. Typically, this will include an Atkins meal bar for whenever I do not want to stab myself for lunch, a snack that is around 15-20g of carbohydrates and some source of protein or fat to treat a low, and fast acting glucose in the form of either glucose tablets or a Capri Sun pack (1 pouch is 17g sugar). I like to keep a travel-size vial of glucose tablets in my backpack and another vial in my lunch bag, so I know that, if I go low, I can treat myself in class for up to 10 lows (about 150 minutes or two and a half hours of hypoglycemia), and have an unopened vial I can quickly grab if there is a fire/lockdown drill and keep with me. I also have two or so granola bars in my diabetes box in the nurse's office to treat lows.
Currently, I am not given rights to my meter, and all testing and injecting is done in the nurse's office. These are done independently though, and the nurse is only there to put my BG into the computer and confirm that my calculated insulin dosage is correct. There are two nurses at my high school in addition to a few nursing and med tech students, so I know there is someone trained at the school at all times.
I am independently managing my diabetes (I still need to teach my parents how to test my BG and administer insulin/glucagon. That is how clueless they are.
). After returning from the hospital, I did get a 504 plan set up for myself. Essentially, the plan explains that I am allowed to take unlimited trips to the bathroom/fountain/nurse for diabetes-related care, should be allowed to eat and drink in the classroom (a lot of my teachers oppose this, but I still sneak in a glucose tablet if I am going low), and I am allowed extended testing for if I need to leave the classroom to treat a high/low. Surprisingly, all of my teachers were very cooperative when I emailed them at 3 AM explaining that I was in the ER for DKA and will be in ICU for a few days and will need the makeup work for both my hospital stay and the additional week I took off to help me manage the diagnosis.
For lows, I tend to treat in the classroom when symptoms appear. If I am still feeling symptoms after treatment (and there is nothing going on in class), I will go down to the nurse to double check my BG, take more glucose, and have a snack. My BG has not been incredibly high yet, so having a correction bolus during my lunch is suffice.
It is a lot simpler for me to pack my lunch instead of buying it in the cafeteria. My school lunch program only gives the average carb counts for the entire week, so it is not the best thing to use when bolusing. With it, I could go deathly low on Monday, and I can be spiking up into the 300's on Tuesday even though I bolus the exact same amount. I tend to keep a piece of paper in my lunch bag that has my total carbs for the day and my BG for it plus any additional notes, like whether I bolused the full amount or took some off to correct for a lower BG.