memories
serena caused me to read this today. it's the senior mag column megan/serena/and I wrote, two years ago...
We’re typing this in the front parking lot. No, really. We are. It’s freezing out here, but only because we’re spoiled Saratogans. There is, however, a distinct lack of activity in Saratoga, which explains why we’re parked here at 2:27 a.m on a Sund-oh, Monday morning. Being seniors, we’ve put off writing this column until the wee hours of our deadline day. It runs in reverse order, beginning with 2 a.m. insanity and ending with 8 p.m. lucidity. Parents: skip to the end.
-----------------------------------------
By 2 a.m., we had all begun to lose it. We decided to invite our teachers to an imaginary discussion about our question: Why do you love Saratoga? Six showed up. (For the humor-challenged: we made this up. Please don’t sue our teachers. Drennan’s already been. More than once.)
Dwyer: I love Saratoga because I maximize my utility teaching here. And the kids never come to school with toothaches, because they all have healthcare.
Drennan: Wrong. Yo yo, check this-there’s no scum / on their gum / or their bum / but they still / rather dumb.
Dwyer: No, these sons-of-b****s are smart. I’m always right, except when I’m liberal. Trust me on this. It’s a tested, verifiable fact. Not normative. Ask Alan Blinder at Princeton, Jeffrey Sachs at Harvard, Gary Becker at Chicago….
Drennan: Speak up, Todd, I can’t hear you. Hey! You contaminated my Kleenex!
Unland: Don’t worry, here’s another box. Personally, I love this place because the kids here really know how to use their magical blue chalk.
Anzalone: And I can trust them with Starbucks runs. Oops, did I say that out loud?
Kucer: And I would dedicate my life 24/7 to my students if I had to. Wait, I already do. Anyway, speaking of too much caffeine in the womb, here’s Lisa.
Cochrum: AWW! KUCIE-POO, THAT’S SO SWEET OF YOU!
Kucer: I know, that’s what I get paid a million bucks a month to do.
----------------------------------------
Prior to losing it, we had been chatting about a trip we’d taken during spring break. The three of us flew to Boston along with our friend Jessica Kuo (“Most Likely to Become Ansel Adams”), whose photos appear on this page. We went for various reasons: visiting one of Boston’s 329 colleges, seeing friends, and thwarting hijackers at Logan International. Somehow, we ended up spending four days together at MIT with mutual friends, meeting some very interesting people.
One of them, Mike Short, had a cardboard tube. It was on steroids. (left) Mike put each of us into the tube and let us wander into walls. This tube represents Saratoga. It’s confining. It’s safe; even if you trip, you’re protected from much harm. Mike has rolled people down the street in it without injury. Like Saratoga, it gets boring after a while.
Okay, it’s a terrible analogy, but you get our point. That is, we’ve found our stay here pleasant and rewarding. We feel fortunate to have chosen our parents so wisely. Still, we know we must leave Saratoga to grow. Some of us won’t go far; others will cross the country. It’s hard to go, but we’re all wriggling out of the tube.
-------------------------------------------------
Around 10 p.m., after discovering we could get online through at least three unprotected wireless access points, we looked up Amazon.com’s top ten book list for Saratoga, California. It contained two SAT prep books, an SAT II Math prep book, and two math textbooks. Intense? Yes-and intensity defines the class of 2004 even more sharply than in Saratoga High as a whole.
Saratoga High’s stratospheric achievements and accompanying pressures lead to an ongoing backlash against its perceived roots. Teachers, parents, and peers indiscriminately bombard us with contradictions. SAT scores don’t mean anything in the real world? But if you score high, you’re seen as intelligent and talented… and vice versa?
We are expected to excel; to do well, but not focus on doing well. School newsletters, for instance, often contain eloquent pleas reminding parents to emphasize the seven virtues over the seven 5.0’s. The rest of the newsletter displays a laundry list of recent student accomplishments, academic and otherwise. Some weeks, there are more names in bold than in the National Enquirer.
Our class sets academic records every year: higher AP class enrollment, an SAT score average 50 points higher than the class of 2003, and a record number of National Merit Scholars. We think 2004 deserves recognition for its ability to fulfill expectations of excellence without the appearance of pesky problems. It seems the ideal student here would be a duck: able to paddle furiously beneath the surface while maintaining serenity up top, or the appearance of such.
2004 charges into its activities like Dr. Skelly into new fundraising campaigns. And there are many. Between Homecoming and AP workload carnage, you can almost see blood on the mortar walls. Saratoga’s social norms aid academic achievement: hallway gossip about prospective valedictorians spreads as fast as news of prom pairings.
So while we can’t tell you if Saratoga’s ambiance is a good thing, we will say that the unique atmosphere has shaped us into who we are now, and in what we consider a good way. When we leave Saratoga High we plan to take with us our competitive instincts and hopefully benefit from them.
----------------------------------------------
When we met at 8 p.m. we had nowhere to go (it’s Saratoga!) and nothing to write, so we headed for the Saratoga High parking lot armed with a laptop, optimistic we’d finish in no time. While brainstorming ideas for this column, the first obvious topic that came to mind was friends.
Many of us have been in this little town since our Foothill and Argonaut Elementary School days. Some have hung out with the same people ever since we were young, others have floated from group to group. Throughout the years, each person has made friends here, and most will have to leave them for the first time.
Here at Saratoga, each of us have made friends, stay friends, and reached a very high comfort level from all the years of being together. Now comes the hard part: letting go of these friends and having to start over. (Well, unless you go to a UC, where, chances are, you are rooming with another Saratogan)
To quote Vitamin C’s “Graduation,” we hope that as we go on, we’ll remember all the times we had together, and as our lives change, come whatever, we will still be friends forever. We understand it won't be like it was before; we might not see each other for the better part of a year. Our conversations might turn into a quick online hello and how are you and damn, << I lost another sock :’( / My roommate sexiled me >:( / I ran into William Hung today! :D >>
All that will matter, though, is that when our paths cross again, we can pick up where we left off and laugh about old times and chat about what's new. It’s a new sort of friendship, more independent of distance and time and contact frequency. It’s friendship based not on convenience-because it's no longer convenient-but on genuine affection.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Three weeks and three days from today, the class of 2004 will go home for the last time. In just a few months, we will be as close as 20 minutes or as far as 3,000 miles away, but we’ll still love Saratoga, unapologetically and always.
it's true
We’re typing this in the front parking lot. No, really. We are. It’s freezing out here, but only because we’re spoiled Saratogans. There is, however, a distinct lack of activity in Saratoga, which explains why we’re parked here at 2:27 a.m on a Sund-oh, Monday morning. Being seniors, we’ve put off writing this column until the wee hours of our deadline day. It runs in reverse order, beginning with 2 a.m. insanity and ending with 8 p.m. lucidity. Parents: skip to the end.
-----------------------------------------
By 2 a.m., we had all begun to lose it. We decided to invite our teachers to an imaginary discussion about our question: Why do you love Saratoga? Six showed up. (For the humor-challenged: we made this up. Please don’t sue our teachers. Drennan’s already been. More than once.)
Dwyer: I love Saratoga because I maximize my utility teaching here. And the kids never come to school with toothaches, because they all have healthcare.
Drennan: Wrong. Yo yo, check this-there’s no scum / on their gum / or their bum / but they still / rather dumb.
Dwyer: No, these sons-of-b****s are smart. I’m always right, except when I’m liberal. Trust me on this. It’s a tested, verifiable fact. Not normative. Ask Alan Blinder at Princeton, Jeffrey Sachs at Harvard, Gary Becker at Chicago….
Drennan: Speak up, Todd, I can’t hear you. Hey! You contaminated my Kleenex!
Unland: Don’t worry, here’s another box. Personally, I love this place because the kids here really know how to use their magical blue chalk.
Anzalone: And I can trust them with Starbucks runs. Oops, did I say that out loud?
Kucer: And I would dedicate my life 24/7 to my students if I had to. Wait, I already do. Anyway, speaking of too much caffeine in the womb, here’s Lisa.
Cochrum: AWW! KUCIE-POO, THAT’S SO SWEET OF YOU!
Kucer: I know, that’s what I get paid a million bucks a month to do.
----------------------------------------
Prior to losing it, we had been chatting about a trip we’d taken during spring break. The three of us flew to Boston along with our friend Jessica Kuo (“Most Likely to Become Ansel Adams”), whose photos appear on this page. We went for various reasons: visiting one of Boston’s 329 colleges, seeing friends, and thwarting hijackers at Logan International. Somehow, we ended up spending four days together at MIT with mutual friends, meeting some very interesting people.
One of them, Mike Short, had a cardboard tube. It was on steroids. (left) Mike put each of us into the tube and let us wander into walls. This tube represents Saratoga. It’s confining. It’s safe; even if you trip, you’re protected from much harm. Mike has rolled people down the street in it without injury. Like Saratoga, it gets boring after a while.
Okay, it’s a terrible analogy, but you get our point. That is, we’ve found our stay here pleasant and rewarding. We feel fortunate to have chosen our parents so wisely. Still, we know we must leave Saratoga to grow. Some of us won’t go far; others will cross the country. It’s hard to go, but we’re all wriggling out of the tube.
-------------------------------------------------
Around 10 p.m., after discovering we could get online through at least three unprotected wireless access points, we looked up Amazon.com’s top ten book list for Saratoga, California. It contained two SAT prep books, an SAT II Math prep book, and two math textbooks. Intense? Yes-and intensity defines the class of 2004 even more sharply than in Saratoga High as a whole.
Saratoga High’s stratospheric achievements and accompanying pressures lead to an ongoing backlash against its perceived roots. Teachers, parents, and peers indiscriminately bombard us with contradictions. SAT scores don’t mean anything in the real world? But if you score high, you’re seen as intelligent and talented… and vice versa?
We are expected to excel; to do well, but not focus on doing well. School newsletters, for instance, often contain eloquent pleas reminding parents to emphasize the seven virtues over the seven 5.0’s. The rest of the newsletter displays a laundry list of recent student accomplishments, academic and otherwise. Some weeks, there are more names in bold than in the National Enquirer.
Our class sets academic records every year: higher AP class enrollment, an SAT score average 50 points higher than the class of 2003, and a record number of National Merit Scholars. We think 2004 deserves recognition for its ability to fulfill expectations of excellence without the appearance of pesky problems. It seems the ideal student here would be a duck: able to paddle furiously beneath the surface while maintaining serenity up top, or the appearance of such.
2004 charges into its activities like Dr. Skelly into new fundraising campaigns. And there are many. Between Homecoming and AP workload carnage, you can almost see blood on the mortar walls. Saratoga’s social norms aid academic achievement: hallway gossip about prospective valedictorians spreads as fast as news of prom pairings.
So while we can’t tell you if Saratoga’s ambiance is a good thing, we will say that the unique atmosphere has shaped us into who we are now, and in what we consider a good way. When we leave Saratoga High we plan to take with us our competitive instincts and hopefully benefit from them.
----------------------------------------------
When we met at 8 p.m. we had nowhere to go (it’s Saratoga!) and nothing to write, so we headed for the Saratoga High parking lot armed with a laptop, optimistic we’d finish in no time. While brainstorming ideas for this column, the first obvious topic that came to mind was friends.
Many of us have been in this little town since our Foothill and Argonaut Elementary School days. Some have hung out with the same people ever since we were young, others have floated from group to group. Throughout the years, each person has made friends here, and most will have to leave them for the first time.
Here at Saratoga, each of us have made friends, stay friends, and reached a very high comfort level from all the years of being together. Now comes the hard part: letting go of these friends and having to start over. (Well, unless you go to a UC, where, chances are, you are rooming with another Saratogan)
To quote Vitamin C’s “Graduation,” we hope that as we go on, we’ll remember all the times we had together, and as our lives change, come whatever, we will still be friends forever. We understand it won't be like it was before; we might not see each other for the better part of a year. Our conversations might turn into a quick online hello and how are you and damn, << I lost another sock :’( / My roommate sexiled me >:( / I ran into William Hung today! :D >>
All that will matter, though, is that when our paths cross again, we can pick up where we left off and laugh about old times and chat about what's new. It’s a new sort of friendship, more independent of distance and time and contact frequency. It’s friendship based not on convenience-because it's no longer convenient-but on genuine affection.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Three weeks and three days from today, the class of 2004 will go home for the last time. In just a few months, we will be as close as 20 minutes or as far as 3,000 miles away, but we’ll still love Saratoga, unapologetically and always.
it's true