Belonging
When I was applying to boarding schools, I was informed by my parents, both alumni, that if I chose it, Exeter would be the hardest thing I had ever done. They were not wrong. Exeter has broken me down, at times, but it has always built me back up. Exeter stripped me of a naïve perception of knowledge, bruising a bit of my ego for sure. But, for all the times I doubted myself, how I ended up in these halls or why I deserved a spot in a discussion, I was told that someone saw something in me. I was assured that I was being given all the tools to mine whatever glimmer of greatness someone else perceived. We are told for all our time here that we belong here, that admissions saw something in us, that we earned our place. But I have realized that belonging is a funny concept.
I have never won any prizes or awards for academic excellence. It took me until upper year to make any varsity sports teams, and even then I was fighting for playing time. The only place I ever truly felt I belonged was around a table, and in my dorm. Those were the only two places where I felt smart, where I felt I contributed, where I felt I brought something to this community.
There is no single sentence to capture what this community has given all of us.
My perception of belonging has shifted radically over the past four years, from an ill-fitting idea of excellence in every endeavor, to finding a network of support and love within whatever world you surround yourself. It is a world, what I have found in Exeter. It is a web of people with different interests and experiences who have come together in the right time, in the right way, to share their worlds with me. In my Spring in Love class recently we spoke about how much our previous stories impact our current ones, about the roles past loves play in a new relationship, and I realized everything I loved most about Exeter came from the different pasts my peers and I had assembled. The idea, then, that Exeter is rapidly becoming of the past has been met with great anxiety and much trepidation. As much as I have aspired to become a part of Exeter, to belong in this intricate lacing of people and stories and time, I know Exeter has become the biggest part of me. Fourteen to eighteen encapsulates a lot of growing, and most, if not all, happened on this campus. Knowing that I am closing the door on this space in less than a month has stunned me, has shaken me from the warm haze of another springtime into the desperation of senior spring, a time where we each enjoy the weird warm feeling of getting to feel nostalgic about a period of our lives while still living it.
When I try to reflect on what Exeter has given me, I fall back into the exact things Exeter stripped from me my first fall: cliché. I think of the relationships I have built with people; faculty, staff and students, each evolving everyday, and each so precious to me. I think of the strength Exeter has built in me; the confidence in my own opinions, the dedication to my work, the perseverance through pitfalls. I think of how Exeter has shaped my character, how it has transformed me as a community member. What I have come to realize, as I sift through all the things I have to be so grateful for, is that there is no proper way to reflect on Exeter. There is no single sentence to capture what this community has given us all. There are only ways to thank Exeter; there are only ways to express gratitude for the people who pushed us further than we thought we could go, for the friends who picked up the pieces, for the dorm mates who sat with us until it was closer to sunrise than sunset. These are the thanks I will be trying for a lifetime to give; these are the people I will be trying forever to credit. So thank you, Ladies of Langdell Hall, each of you from 2012 to 2016. Thank you Ms. Stahr and Ms. Burke, coach Bartkovich, coach Thompson, Coach Gunst. Thank you Third Eye, thank you to all the people who shared a table with me in the classroom or in the dining hall. To the Class of 2016—each of us is a formation of many different pieces, and all of you have contributed some part to my whole.
Last, but never least, I would like to thank the Academy.