(no subject)
Something ridiculously pertinent, stolen from Andy:
"Recently, my mother brought me to the house blessing ceremony of an employee of hers in Livingston. They wanted to talk to me about Pingry, where they hoped to send their young daughter. We crept in half an hour late, leaving our shoes at the door.
I felt very much a foreigner there. I was the tallest person, a role I have never played. A man with a stern beard and two white chalk lines on his forehead chanted and I desperately hung to his Hindi, trying to glean some understanding. Failing that, I watched the little girls that wandered off from the ceremony, the shrine of fruit and flowers, staring in amazement at me with their hands half in their mouths. A culture shock for both of us, I think.
It was nice weather so we ate on the deck afterwards, pulling food from aluminum trays, eating with both hands. The girl's mother and I sat in rusty white chairs; she asked questions with a quick tongue and I tried to answer her. Most of them were about college, though her daughter was only ten. Then she stopped for just a moment to hum and purse her lips, asking, "But is Pingry right for everyone?"
I don't think I've ever considered that question.
Pingry has been an incredible place to grow up in; I have learned so much from my teachers, my peers, my classes; these halls, they are my second home. I think my best friend Caroline said it best when she told me that she felt ready to go to college but not to leave high school. We always say that we will cry at graduation, but it didn't hit me until recently that I really am graduating. My camera is ready, but apprehensive, sad, blushing.
I hope that we've given each other a chance to grow. I think that, sometime in freshman year, we each took out a clean sheet of paper, inked a blueprint of what we thought our class meant, and folded it up neatly into our back pockets. Now and then, we found an unfamiliar situation, pulled it out, and tried to make what we saw conform to our drawings - not always, not everyone, but often. I think it's time we tore them up. I do not know that I would be more or less real had I gone to a different school, made different friends, eaten in a different cafeteria with different napkins, but it would be different, for sure.
I think for most of us, just as it was at the big house with clean white walls and vaulted ceilings, college will be a culture shock. We will be challenged to forge our own personalities, absent of a community we are altogether too familiar with, and it will be hard. And somehow, after all the little experiences, we will become ourselves, very much molted. Maybe nothing will change except our hair and, hopefully for me, we will grow a little taller. But I already see it happening this year, slowly; we are pulling away.
And next year, when we come back, the landscape of our class will have changed dramatically because, no, this was not the place for all of us. And maybe we will get back to the clock tower and fall delightfully back into our assumed roles and seem like we haven't changed at all, because the halls will just be too comfortable. But I think we all know what will have happened.
So maybe all I want to say is treat your lives with humility; we are only eighteen and we have a lot to learn about each other, about ourselves. And thanks to everyone, teachers and students all; I will keep you all in my wallet, with the loose change and the gift cards, with the bad jokes and worse dances, with the speeches and tears and leftover smiles we have collected."
"Recently, my mother brought me to the house blessing ceremony of an employee of hers in Livingston. They wanted to talk to me about Pingry, where they hoped to send their young daughter. We crept in half an hour late, leaving our shoes at the door.
I felt very much a foreigner there. I was the tallest person, a role I have never played. A man with a stern beard and two white chalk lines on his forehead chanted and I desperately hung to his Hindi, trying to glean some understanding. Failing that, I watched the little girls that wandered off from the ceremony, the shrine of fruit and flowers, staring in amazement at me with their hands half in their mouths. A culture shock for both of us, I think.
It was nice weather so we ate on the deck afterwards, pulling food from aluminum trays, eating with both hands. The girl's mother and I sat in rusty white chairs; she asked questions with a quick tongue and I tried to answer her. Most of them were about college, though her daughter was only ten. Then she stopped for just a moment to hum and purse her lips, asking, "But is Pingry right for everyone?"
I don't think I've ever considered that question.
Pingry has been an incredible place to grow up in; I have learned so much from my teachers, my peers, my classes; these halls, they are my second home. I think my best friend Caroline said it best when she told me that she felt ready to go to college but not to leave high school. We always say that we will cry at graduation, but it didn't hit me until recently that I really am graduating. My camera is ready, but apprehensive, sad, blushing.
I hope that we've given each other a chance to grow. I think that, sometime in freshman year, we each took out a clean sheet of paper, inked a blueprint of what we thought our class meant, and folded it up neatly into our back pockets. Now and then, we found an unfamiliar situation, pulled it out, and tried to make what we saw conform to our drawings - not always, not everyone, but often. I think it's time we tore them up. I do not know that I would be more or less real had I gone to a different school, made different friends, eaten in a different cafeteria with different napkins, but it would be different, for sure.
I think for most of us, just as it was at the big house with clean white walls and vaulted ceilings, college will be a culture shock. We will be challenged to forge our own personalities, absent of a community we are altogether too familiar with, and it will be hard. And somehow, after all the little experiences, we will become ourselves, very much molted. Maybe nothing will change except our hair and, hopefully for me, we will grow a little taller. But I already see it happening this year, slowly; we are pulling away.
And next year, when we come back, the landscape of our class will have changed dramatically because, no, this was not the place for all of us. And maybe we will get back to the clock tower and fall delightfully back into our assumed roles and seem like we haven't changed at all, because the halls will just be too comfortable. But I think we all know what will have happened.
So maybe all I want to say is treat your lives with humility; we are only eighteen and we have a lot to learn about each other, about ourselves. And thanks to everyone, teachers and students all; I will keep you all in my wallet, with the loose change and the gift cards, with the bad jokes and worse dances, with the speeches and tears and leftover smiles we have collected."