Our Seniors, We Seniors
“Doooorrrrrmmmmm Meeeeeeeettttiiiiiiinnnnggggggggg!” boomed through the stairwells of Abbot on my first night. Already in my pajamas, I followed the seniors on my floor down to “Mama’s” apartment. Sitting on her rug next to Rohan (I remembered his name because of Lord of the Rings) and Spencer, my new roommate from Las Vegas who enjoyed heavy metal music and video games, I listened as 29 new faces announced their names, hometowns, and interesting facts about themselves. One student, Tyler, asked almost 20 clarifying questions about “hazeling” before we realized that he had just misheard “hazing.”
Finally, just as my knees began to ache from sitting for so long, we finished reviewing the E Book. Mama, also known as Mrs. Sysevich, announced that it was almost bedtime. More than ready to return to my room and fall asleep, I felt my knees click as I stood up and made my way to the door. Suddenly, halfway up the stairs, someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey Harry,” said Manny, one of the proctors on my floor, “come to my room. We’re having a dance party!”
Intrigued, I investigated. Manny had transformed his room, placing a disco ball on his desk and blaring music from the speakers. I chatted with Daniel and Craig for a few minutes, planning to head to bed right after. Manny burst in again, yelling, “Come on, guys, let’s dance!” Unsure of what to do, we started, not quite dancing, but jumping around. Manny, however, captured our attention. As head of OutKast, he actually knew how to dance. Realizing that we had all stopped to watch him, he asked, “What, don’t you guys know how to dougie?” After a few minutes of his tutelage, we couldn’t quite dougie, but we came close.
Prep year is filled with those moments, episodes of spontaneous fun and random kindness that helped ease the acclimation of a homesick, scared thirteen-year-old from New York City to Exeter life. Although Exeter is an academic institution, and has built its name due to the quality of education it affords its students, the people, both students and faculty, are what make the “Exeter experience” truly memorable. More than anything else, the dorm becomes a small, tightly knit family. Especially for a homesick prep, the dorm was the best possible support system. Seniors became a cross between tutors and older brothers. Their names, Ted, Manny, Ved, Kevin, still carry weight among my Abbot Hall Class of 2014. This year, I lived in “Ted’s room,” despite the fact that he graduated nearly three years ago and no one in Abbot will know him by next fall .
We Abbot Seniors carry the memories of our upperclassmen, because we know that, after our graduation, their names and faces will become no more than pictures in the Abbot section of the yearbook and random initials in odd places throughout the dorm. Nevertheless, we refuse to let the home they created become just a dormitory. Every fac-proc, the Abbot Class of 2014 manages to come up, a constant reminder of the goal that the Abbot proctors and seniors as a whole strove for this year. Abbot can never be home, but if we can do our jobs to the fullest, it can become something even better.
Exeter’s classes, clubs and sports have all created wonderful memories for me. They all teach their participants how to persevere for a goal that affects more than one individual. However, the impact of dorm life on students is by far the most significant and beneficial. Exeter’s greatest opportunity is to participate in the creation of an organic community that can visibly change every single one of its members for the better. This year in Abbot, the seniors tried to do just that. We tried to take the home that we love and make it even better. Honestly, I don’t know if we succeeded. But I do know that we tried our hardest to achieve that goal. I don’t think ‘our’ seniors, Abbot’s Class of 2011, could have asked for anything more.