One Week From Graduation
10:17 p.m.
Sunday, May 29, 2016
One Week from Graduation
My right index finger pressed down on my laptop’s mousepad to submit the final draft of the final paper for my Women & Gender course. It was the last paper, test or assignment of my high school career. I had been working on it all day, leaving my mind exhausted, but my body restless. I walked over to the window of my dorm room that looks out over Elm Street, a quaint row of white colonial houses built in the late 1700s. If the cars in the driveways were replaced with buggies and the garages transformed into stables, then I don’t think my eyes would have been stimulated any differently than George Washington’s as he rode down the street in 1784. The sun was starting to set and it was shooting its light golden rays through dark silver clouds casting an almost violet hue over the street. Through the weathered window screen, I felt that the dense humidity that kept me from going for a jog in the afternoon had worn off. So I decided to go for a run.
I opened my closet and pulled out my blue Nike running shoes, the same shoes that were on my feet when I took my first steps on Exeter’s campus back in September. I grabbed my iPod and headphones and began to head down the stairs and out the door. The melodious organ in Van Morrison’s “Street Choir” was filling my ears as it carried me down Elm St. and onto Front St. I passed the 100-foot-tall white steeple of the First Congregational Church of Exeter, and ran over the granite block embedded into the sidewalk reading “Woolworths,” the only remaining piece of the old five-and-dime store that burned down in 1964. I then flew past the Masonic lodge and turned right onto the riverwalk pathway when I reached Stillwells Ice Cream Parlor.
The street lights had now come on and the regular picnickers and dog walkers that usually lined the pathway along the river had already gone home. I accelerated over the cement-paved path to the bandstand that looked west to the river and north to downtown. The stars and stripes on the pole in front of the bandstand were resting at half-mass in honor of the fallen veterans who would be remembered on Memorial Day. Across the river stood the 300-yard line of apartment buildings that had once been textile mills. The lights from inside the rooms bounced off of the water and up into the sky, underlying the clouds to make a murky yellow overtone that draped over the entire town.
In the water I could see the blurry reflection of the apartment buildings and imagined that I was actually looking at the reflection of the old textile mills that were powered by the river’s flow. I then thought about all of the buildings and houses that I had passed on my way to the bandstand, specifically the Congregational Church that I had attended earlier this morning, the same church that Abraham Lincoln attended one Sunday while he was visiting his son who was studying at Phillips Exeter. The water’s reflection provided an image of American industrial development in undeveloped nature. It felt like I was seeing the same landscape and infrastructure that New Englanders saw during the textile boom of the 1830s. In that moment, I could feel America’s past like never before.
I remembered how my American History textbook taught me that it was Eli Whitney’s cotton gin that inspired the construction of these textile mills. The textbook explained that the mill ran on water-power, but it never mentioned how the cotton gin ran on slave-power. Slaves were the first piece of the puzzle, and it had taken me until this spring, when I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, “Between The World and Me,” in Mr. Perdomo’s English class, to finally have the piece that I needed to finish the puzzle. Coates talked about how the American Dream rests on the backs of African-Americans and how America has turned black bodies into sugar, tobacco and cotton. Coates explained to me that as a white man, it is paramount for me to be conscious of the social injustice with which America has conditioned me, and that I must “respect everybody singularly,” constantly interrogating myself as to why I tend to place negative stereotypes on people who are different from me.
Looking at the water’s reflection, I reflected not only on the wisdom that I have gained this year about the world around me, but also on the wisdom that I have gained this year about myself. Being away from my hometown and my family for the first time in my life, I have been able to understand myself in a new lens. Phillips Exeter has made me wiser and stronger and I am as happy and comfortable as I have ever been in my life. I then turned my eyes to the north and saw the steeple of the Congregational Church towering over the downtown area. I remembered the sermon that I had heard there from the pastor, Emily Heath. She reminded the congregation that as they read scripture and learn more about God, that they must then go out into the world and use their knowledge for good. To put it in other words, they must not lose the forest for the trees. That is a lesson that I can also relate to the mission statement here at Phillips Exeter Academy that speaks of “knowledge” and “goodness,” encouraging students to use their knowledge to bring goodness into the world.
I questioned whether I have lived out Pastor Emily’s sermon and the school’s mission statement throughout my time here in Exeter. I know that I have certainly left my mark on the school. My sweat has soaked into the floor of the gym as I played basketball, my voice has echoed into the ceilings of Assembly Hall as I sang, my tears have fallen on the stage of the theatre as I acted in the play, and I left my name on all of the tests and papers that I handed in. I am also sure that I have left my mark on the people here. I hugged my basketball teammates after games, I held hands and bowed with my cast members after performances, I harmonized with the other singers in my choir and I kissed a girl goodnight after going to a movie together.
When I graduate next week, I will be leaving pieces of myself behind in both the people and places of the Phillips Exeter community. I pray that those pieces will bring love and happiness to the people that they touch, and I pray that when I leave here next week that I continue to grow, and leave every place that I touch better than the way I found it.