It’s Different, People Care

My favorite moments at Exeter always seem to come late at night, more specifically during those April nights when it is just warm enough to wear short sleeves, and a light breeze still brings life to the air. I like to think these types of nights only happen in New England, and that the best way to enjoy them is on a campus as beautiful as the one I have been blessed to spend four years not appreciating. It is during those short walks back from Phillips Church after EP, or strolling down Swasey late on a Friday night, Stilwell’s in hand, that make me never want to leave Exeter. To say the night sky is the only thing I am going to miss about Exeter would be criminal, but our campus has a mystique about it that accentuates nighttime in a way the rest of New England cannot claim to.

This mystique is not by chance. John Phillips did not get lucky and choose the spot that I, two hundred and some years later, would find most appealing to go stargazing. The stars and the wind will be there no matter where I am, but Exeter always has and always will be a place where I just feel warm. I don’t know why I feel this warmth most fully late at night. Maybe it is because surviving each and every day feels like a victory, or maybe it is because the after school hours are what transform Exeter from a school into a home.

No, I have never lived at Exeter, and I have always been mixed about whether my experience would be better if I did live on campus, but Exeter is still home. I can’t say that it was midnight screams, dorm wrestling, or deep philosophical debates at three in the morning that defined my Exeter experience, but I believe not living on campus has made me appreciate Exonians and this place even more than I may have been able to if I were a boarder. Being a day student means I have been able to remain intimately connected with my town and the surrounding community. I too am different than most day students because I live far enough away that I can say my friends and peers at home are completely unaffiliated with my friends and peers at school. At least half of my friends at home have never even heard of Phillips Exeter. Now I can’t speak for everyone, but many of my friends who are boarding students have said that being a boarder has isolated them from their local communities not just during the term, but also on winter, spring, and summer breaks because they have been away for so long that they just can’t keep the relationships with old friends that they hoped to. For that reason I believe boarders become totally consumed by the Exeter bubble and sometimes forget what else is out there. I, being still involved in some weekly activities at home and often spending my weekends at home rather than on campus, have remained close with many of my old friends while also continuing to make new ones outside of school.

I bring this up because I feel I can speak to the contrast between Exeter and “the real world” better than most. I love my friends at home, and I love my town of Ipswich very much, but nothing compares to Exeter. I do not mean to sound elitist or make it seem like Exonians are special or superior because in many ways the more “average” people of Ipswich are superior. But while Exonians are not inherently superior people, I have no problem saying that Exeter is unmatched in the group of people it has brought together. I love and will miss Exeter most because of its students. I believe I have been in somewhat of a unique situation for the past four years which has allowed me to fully appreciate these people.

What is it that I love so much about Exonians? It is not because they are smart and talented. I am amazed at the things I have seen people do during my time here, and I only ever speak highly of my peers, but I can go on YouTube and easily find equally impressive people. I love Exonians not because of their abilities, but because of how they have chosen to use them. Every day my peers push me, challenge me, and inspire me to be better than I am. Their desire to be the best excites me and fuels me. While I am a competitor at heart, I have not been dragged into the total craziness that students here express in order to succeed. I have instead learned to appreciate such high levels of motivation, especially because it contrasts directly with the attitudes of my peers at home, and have learned through and with my peers in order to better myself.

While everyone, unfortunately, is driven largely by the prospect of going to a good college, I do believe that Exonians have maintained an incredible level of authenticity and true intellectual curiosity. I have never met more passionate, sophisticated, and respectable people in my life. I am astounded by how strongly people stand by their convictions and will fight to the death for what they believe in. I think one of the things I will miss most are the shouting matches I’ve had in Grille, at Me & Ollie’s, and on the bus ride home from volleyball games over everything from the best type of pie to the existence of God. I have these fights with my best friends, teammates, and whoever else wants to argue. I am elated when our discussions get as intense as they do because it demonstrates that they care as much as I do. That may be the best way to express why I love Exonians, because they care. They care about each other. They care about life. They care about about learning. I know that people who care are the ones who change the world.

Somehow I’ve gotten this far without directly mentioning many aspects of Exeter as an institution that I’ll miss. I wholeheartedly believe that your peers define most of your educational experience, and that is why I have focused on them thus far. However, it would simply be unjust if I failed to talk about how much I will miss the Exeter faculty and the educational foundation to which I’ve grown so accustomed. One of the biggest things I believe I have missed out on by not living on campus is developing close relationships with faculty. I have gotten to know certain teachers fairly well, but I have not known any faculty members as a sort of surrogate parent like the boarding students have. I do regret not reaching out to faculty more than I have, too, by not going to my teachers for help or staying after class to ask them some of my burning questions. Nonetheless, the Exeter faculty have had a profound impact on me. I see many of the faculty as role models. I see the faculty as the people who have most earnestly embodied what Exeter is all about, the truest Exonians. Very few of the faculty view Exeter as a workplace, but as a home and a place of learning, too, almost as if they were students themselves. Many faculty members volunteer to serve as club advisers, attend sports games and concerts, and become personally involved in their students’, advisees’, and coworkers’ lives, none of which they are required or asked to do.

It is mind-boggling how brilliant and also humble the faculty is. Teaching at Exeter seems to me like an enormous sacrifice. These geniuses, many of whom have achieved the highest form of mastery in their fields, do the least talking during class. My teachers find more joy in allowing my classmates and I struggle to find the answers ourselves instead of pouring out all of their knowledge; they acknowledge that the best type of learning is through doing, and they care about seeing us truly learn. Like my peers, I see that my teachers care.

And yes, I’m going to miss Harkness, the tool that truly differentiates Exeter. I’ll miss throwing around hopeless ideas about the effect of Seamus Heaney’s use of alliteration in the fourth stanza of that one poem. I’ll miss discovering the vast and complicated history of the Middle East so as to completely change my view on the modern disputes there. I’ll miss being the only one left who’s arguing that life actually does have meaning after reading Sartre and Camus. I think I’ll even miss math, where repeated practice in presentation and reasoning skills has made me the confident speaker I am today. I’m going to miss each and every one of the brilliant discussions I’ve had in my classes. But I’m not simply going to miss Harkness simply as a practice of continual classroom participation. I’m going to miss Harkness as a concept. Harkness for me has been about never really being sure if I’ve arrived at the right answer, but later demonstrating that I understood the problem well enough that I could teach it to someone else. Harkness has been about learning through application, never explicitly being taught anything. One of the most distinctive parts of the Exeter education is the lack of a math textbook. By only being given problems to solve with no process to solve them, we are forced to connect concepts we previously learned. Harkness asks more of a student than traditional class settings, but the challenge is one I’ve come to embrace.

Harkness is one of the many challenges I’ve faced at Exeter. Rather than straying from these challenges, I’ve taken them on with verve. I’ve failed a lot. I sometimes think I never really experienced failure until coming to Exeter. Learning to fail and to be middle-of-the-pack were some of the single toughest lessons I’ve ever had to learn. Now, looking back, I’m so glad I had those experiences. The amount I’ve grown in four years is incomprehensible to me. (I’ve grown five whole inches!) The amount of personal development Exeter has fostered in me is something I will surely miss. I realize that high school is a huge part of life in terms of maturation regardless of where you go to school, but I feel as though Exeter has accelerated my personal growth in ways no other institution could or probably ever will. I feel as though if I stayed at Exeter for even two more years I would be the next Ghandi, and if I stayed for five more years I might even become the next Mr. Vorkink.

I don’t know if I’ve really answered the question “What will I miss most about Exeter?” There is no one answer to that question for me. Everything that makes Exeter great is all so inextricably tied together. The people wouldn’t be who they are if it weren’t for a classroom culture which fosters curiosity and self-discovery and that encourages disagreements while maintaining respect and a team mindset. Harkness wouldn’t work without teachers and students who fully buy in to the concept and the rigor it entails. Needless to say, I’ll miss Exeter. Exeter isn’t perfect, and there are plenty of things I won’t miss, but my Exeter experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I know I didn’t take full advantage of all of the opportunities that Exeter offered me, but I still know I have been extraordinarily blessed to be able to have called this place home.