This spring, in the spirit of “YOLO: You Only Live Once” (or “carpe diem,” if you’d prefer to be more classical), I decided to dye my hair. I still have yet to clean off the layered spots of dye that speckle my dorm room, a map of the colors my hair has been this term—blonde, red, brown, black. It’s gotten to the point where my teachers have started asking what my natural hair color is, and my friends pretend they’ve forgotten what it was as well. Now it’s black, and while it’s been fun, I have to admit that I can’t wait until my hair fades back to its natural shade of brown. It’s fitting that I’m spending my last term at Exeter switching between different selves, since my time here has essentially been spent just that: finding and exploring novel concepts, and trying ideologies out for size. There’s quite a nice line in Moby Dick where Ishmael says that there are certain times in every person’s life when “he bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun ints.” This gob- bling happens during times of extreme tribulation”—for us, this might mean a term at Exeter or simply the unsteadiness of being a teenager.
Over my past four years, I’ve witnessed such gobbling around the many tables dotting campus—the Harkness tables, and, more casually, the tables in Grill and the dining halls. Gobbling is something that is essentially Exonian. Our emphasis on diversity encourages the expression of all beliefs and creeds, and creates the expectation for us to internalize different viewpoints. We argue for sides we don’t support in class debates, we write antitheses for our es- says, we play devil’s advocate around the table. And this is good.But at a certain point, I yearn for structure, and something more personal. I can read the Aeneid in the light of feminism, environmentalism, Marxism—any “-ism” you’d care to name— but it’s only recently that I’ve been able to gure out which of these readings speaks most to me. Likewise, I can see myself in many different lights—quiet student, strict proctor, obnoxious advo- cate of polyamory—but it hasn’t been so easy to gure out which of these diverse (and, at times, contradictory) descriptions suits me best. Diversity is not an end in itself; we advocate for it because we hope that by being exposed to different ideas we can, eventually, nd the one that is right for us.The funny thing is, of course, that in the end Exeter students are not all that diverse. We have all chosen to attend Exeter, and have tacitly chosen to accept a certain way of being. Wearing the mask of an Exeter student means sacrificing certain things we love (time with our family, sleep) in order to better fit that mask. It’s hard to stay true to yourself when you have many different selves— the student-self, the friend-self, and the self you can be when you’re alone. It can be something as small as joining a club that you don’t care about just to put it on a college application. We think we are being authentic to ourselves, but slowly the weight of our own desires crumble, to be replaced by what we see as the proper aspirations of an Exonian.Sometimes, especially when I first started here, I wasn’t sure what lay be- hind the Exonian mask I was forced to put on. But between the mask-switching and being bombarded with thousands of beliefs around the Harkness table, I’ve sometimes had to consider whether all that lies behind my mask is a mirror. This worried me, because mirrors aren’t people—and I’d prefer to think of my- self as something more than a cold sheet of glass that reflects whatever ideology it encounters, always in flux. I want to be a tree that still exists even if no one hears it fall.
In my anxiety, I had forgotten one thing. When my parents dropped me off at Exeter on that September day four years ago, they didn’t just leave me with boxes of skirts that barely fit the dress code: they had also gifted me with a moral compass to guide me through the maze of prep school. On the surface, I might seem different, even from day to day. But my core values, the paradigm in which I live life, the things that scare me and excite me—these have not, and will not change.This state of outer evolution is no better mirrored in this school that I have called home. The Class of 2013 has lived in many different Exeters. We started school the same time Tom Hassan began his “prep” year as principal, and watched as drastic changes were made to Exeter’s schedule and curriculum. Some claim we haven’t experienced the “real” Exeter, because our time here has been colored by so many changes, both temporary and permanent: equal trimesters, drastically reduced Saturday classes, the removal of a required RAL, 24-hour internet. But this implies that there exists some Platonic Exeter that has remained constant since 1781. Like people, this institution gobbles—picking up and integrating new ideas into the brick foundation of the campus. Some of these new ideas might not be the best (my lovely advisor, Townley Chisholm, has some thoughts on the matter), but hopefully most of the ones that are per- manent will be for the better. Perhaps I am naïve, but I hope that at its core, the Academy remains an institution that values learning and the development of its students. The changes have all been superficial primping, just like dying one’s hair.
I don’t have a definitive idea of who I am. I’m still gobbling like crazy. But I think the past four years have done a good job of circumscribing who “Tez” is little by little, so that I can asymptotically approach some understanding of myself. I’ve learned what kind of books I like to read, what kind of art I like to see, and what kind of thoughts I like to think. I’ve learned that it’s okay to reverse myself on some matters. Change still scares me, but let’s be real—who isn’t scared of it? Being able to hold many ideas at an ironic distance can make one feel detached, but it can also be satisfying and fun. In a few years, I might be able to bolt down a general personal philosophy out of this pile of mental curios I’ve collected over my four years at Exeter. But until then, carpe diem.
