Four years ago, I stepped on Exeter’s cam- pus for my revisit day on a rainy, dismal April morning. Only a few weeks earlier, my mother had woken me up by screaming and banging on my door at 6 AM after receiving a congratulatory email from the Academy. My parents had always dreamed of me attending Exeter, a place that was a source of intrigue for my parents’ parents, who drove through the little town on their way up to campus. I was excited that my academic accom- plishments had been rewarded with the chance to go to class in the hallowed halls of the Academy Building and that I could eat lunch at my choice of not one, but two dining halls. I also got to live in my own dorm, which, at the time, seemed like a glorified version of summer camp. Before Ex- perience Exeter, I couldn’t wait for September to come and thought that my mind had already been made up to attend.Unfortunately, the only thing standing in the way of Exeter’s flawless image in my head was the school itself. The day of my revisit was terrible, to say the least. While my parents loved it and spent their day making friends with attractive PG’s in the dining halls, I was dragged along by my host through interminable Latin and math classes and past lost looking souls trudging along alone on thepathways. Was this the place that I wanted to be? Did I want to turn into one of these miserable zombies that Exeter seemed to produce? Questions like this haunted me throughout the day and at the end of my visit, I was certainly not convinced that this was the place for me. Luckily, however, my parents had a different experience and were convinced that I could make this place whatever I needed it to be for me. They told me to give it a shot and, luckily for me, taking their advice was the best decision I could have ever made.
To the untrained eye, Exeter looks like hell. For some, Exeter can be hell. Exeter accepts a very special pool of students and molds them into someone completely different than the naïve eighth graders they were when they arrived, through methods of late nights crying over the terrible amount of work you have and early Saturday morning classes. Not everyone survives the process, but for those who do, being one of the solitary students rushing to class through the rain becomes a point of pride. We try to one up each other with who has the most homework and who stayed up the latest writing their 333. While we toil in our suffering, we secretly love it because we are suffering together. Exeter produces a student who is critical, quick thinking and proud, and in typical Exonian fashion, we will deny that the institution had anything to do with the exquisite people we are today. I am a product of Exeter and I love the parts of me that Exeter has given to me. I love the part that can discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Mr.Golay and I love the part that will not complain about getting back from a crew race at 9:00 pm and still having practice on Monday. I am grateful for the environment of Amen Hall that taught me how to be an older sister to younger girls and how to do laundry in such a way so that all of my clothes don’t smell like mildew. I’m indebted to the Academy for bringing together such an amazing group of people who now include all of my best friends and teachers that I will forever remember and look up to. Exeter has molded me into someone who will question everything and never stop striving for excellence and because of that, on graduation day, Exeter will have given me something more valuable than a diploma: the permission to take the invaluable lessons I’ve learned here and use them to mold my life in a way that will hopefully allow me to give back to the institution to which I owe so much.
