Exonians Enjoy Respite Over Family Weekend
Over a thousand family and friends of students visited Exeter this past weekend to observe classes. Throughout this year’s Family Weekend, family members had the opportunity to attend addresses from both Principal Lisa MacFarlane and the College Counseling Office, watch performances for many of the music, theater and dance groups and attend fall sports meets.
Each year, Family Weekend provides time for students to spend with family members on and off campus. Parents can also schedule appointments with their child’s adviser and teachers to better understand the Exeter workload and how their child is performing at school, especially since midterms are published the prior Tuesday.
Lisa Weil, lower Tara Weil’s mother, enjoyed watching her daughter play volleyball with the girls’ varsity team against Deerfield Academy. While Lisa Weil noted the games are livestreamed online, she was glad to have the chance to meet the coach and watch the game with other parents. She also caught up with her daughter’s adviser, Director of Studies and English instructor Brooks Moriarty.
In addition to accompanying her daughter around campus, Lisa Weil especially loved taking her daughter off campus for a “couple days of fun.” Tara Weil and her parents spent the weekend eating good food and shopping. They also visited colleges, or the “start of [their] Goldilocks tour,” according to Lisa Weil.
For some parents, arriving on campus served as a return to Exeter. Alumna Lucy Schmitt, the mother of lower Katrina Schmitt, found comparing her life at Exeter to her daughter’s particularly interesting. She also shared a special moment with her daughter in her modern language class as she had been taught by the same teacher, modern languages instructor Ming Fontaine, when she was a student at Exeter 27 years ago. “Seeing my daughter at the Harkness table brings back so many memories,” Lucy Schmitt said.
“I really enjoyed reconnecting with my parents. It’s been a long time since I last saw them and I am really happy to have three days to spend with them.”
Although the cold weather and rain indicated a potentially gloomy weekend, families were more excited about seeing each other and did not feel too disrupted by the weather. “We arrived on Saturday afternoon, so we missed the rain and were able to enjoy two beautiful autumn days in Boston,” Lisa Weil said.
Alumnus Eric Schmitt, Katrina’s father, recalled taking a morning run through the woods on the same path that his daughter runs “I also enjoyed seeing my daughter’s rehearsal and performance in the Bowld Music Hall,” he said.
Similarly to Tara Weil, upper Milena DeGuere traveled to Boston with her mother. Since they only had one full day to spend together, DeGuere and her mother took a trolley tour that stopped in various places around the city. “We were able to see all the historic parts of Boston that we wanted to see with a guide explaining everything without having to figure it out for ourselves,” DeGuere said. They also toured colleges in the Boston area and shopped together.
While Upper Olivia Lei’s parent did not make it up for the weekend, she said she still appreciated the weekend as she felt well rested and got to spend time with her friends. “I spent Saturday afternoon watching Netflix in bed because my parents weren’t here, and it was actually really nice not to have to do anything for a while. I’m so grateful that several of my friends were kind enough to adopt me for the night so I got to meet their parents and have dinner with their families,” she said.
For students whose families could not come to campus, the school provided activities such as a Sunday trip to Boston sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Affairs. Lei and her friends took the bus to Boston and got to shop and eat food. “I’m really glad they organized this trip because otherwise I probably would’ve been alone in my dorm room instead of bonding with some awesome people,” she said.
Even though the pressure of having parents attend classes added stress to some students and parents, history instructor Hannah Lim said that her first Family Weekend went smoothly, even though she had originally felt apprehensive from not knowing what to expect before classes.
“I don’t think that I was the only one in class who felt a bit nervous in class. The dynamics in each class felt slightly different than normal, but the students in all my classes during Family Weekend worked hard at channeling this nervous energy into productive classes,” she said. She noticed that many of the more active participants “tended to yield the floor more” and some students who tend to sit back in class took “stronger leadership roles in shaping the conversation.”
Although upper Jackson Parell felt slightly overwhelmed because the sizes of some of his classes were nearly doubled, he was happy to have his parents involved in his life and daily routine at Exeter.
“I really enjoyed reconnecting with my parents. It’s been a long time since I last saw them and I am really happy to have three days to spend with them,” he said. Parell said that they stayed in Hampton Beach and visited colleges in Boston over the long weekend. He was grateful that his parents could help him begin the college process because of the opportunities that Family Weekend provided.
Parents, students and faculty enjoyed the time together on and off campus. “Once the weekend classes finished, I felt relieved that I now have a Family Weekend under my belt,” Lim said. She enjoyed meeting the several proud family members of her students, and like most members of the community, she is already looking forward to next year’s Family Weekend.