Bouncy House Syndrome
The “bouncy house syndrome”: At age three, I attended a party with a bouncy house, and, far too shy to go inside, I sat on the sidelines watching the other kids bounce, biding my time. For two hours. By the time I finally worked up the courage to venture in, the party was over and they were letting all the air out.
My parents have used this episode to tease me ever since. As a new lower, I was that kid (and if you haven’t been this kid, you at least have been in a class with someone) who spends the entire class period synthesizing a complete comment, which he or she will sometimes deliver in one long breath at the very end of class–or, more often than not, swallow in frustration as the final bell rings. I guess I was still deathly afraid that the other kids wouldn’t want to bounce with me. This was also the year when I had aggressively papered the walls of my dorm room with posters of San Francisco, despite having just moved to Missouri—I’m from California, dammit, I wanted to announce to people.
But what I had to realize was that Exeter, as a place to bounce, is incredibly safe. It took a semester at the Mountain School, which is easily and immediately identifiable as a safe place—a small farm nestled in the hills of Vermont, with forty-five students and dozens and dozens of sheep. It is idyllic and pastoral in s every traditional sense. But the safety I felt there did not emanate from the rolling countryside—it came from the teachers, and from the students—their attitudes that we had all gathered here to learn. The teachers wanted to teach us something that would stick, and reminded us of that every time they handed out tests—I’ve never studied harder. We planned our own activities on Saturday nights, and no one ever complained that Bingo night or Contra dancing in the library was “lame”—they’d helped plan it. Apathy was pointless—it was way more fun when everyone was invested in having a good time.
I think much of the Mountain School experience was rooted in its finitenes–we were acutely aware that every moment counted, and there was this constant demand for intentionality—be intentional in everything you do. One eventually gets this sense of finiteness at Exeter, but perhaps this is the reason why everything looks better during senior year. I realized upon returning for Senior Fall that what I had loved most at the Mountain School was not the sheep—I missed the way I looked at the world while I was there. I walked into a classroom with the goal of learning something, and I would walk into a dance we’d set up on Saturday night with the full intention of having an absurd amount of fun.
And those were things I could bring here. Because Exeter, really, is just as safe. But you have to take responsibility for your own experience—nothing’s fun when you’re on the sidelines, either too scared to try something out or too scared to show your genuine excitement at the prospect of doing so. Make your own fun–go contra dancing in town; grab your friends from down the hall and go for a walk in the woods ten minutes before check-in. Speak up, and listen. You are here to get an education. And the only way to get anywhere is to get up, take a deep breath, and bounce.