Senior Spotlight Tiggy Valen: “On Cloud Nine” with Tiggy

A member of the Discipline Committee, crew team coxswain, varsity basketball player, proctor and DJ at WPEA and proctor for Amen Hall, four-year senior Tiggy Valen has experienced all the juicy aspects of Exeter life.Coming from a family that has had to move every two years, Valen, who is from Oakland, California, was thrilled when she heard about Exeter at a summer crew camp called Oakland Strokes. Unlike her siblings, who have moved schools at least three times in the past five years, Valen has been able to develop relationships and stay committed to a diverse range of activities at Exeter."I went to a public middle school and I knew that my high school probably wasn’t going to challenge me as much as I wanted a high school to. I liked the idea of boarding school, of doing all your activities in one place, like rowing for Exeter, singing for Exeter, doing all this stuff in one place," Valen said. "I wanted a place that had a really good Chinese program and a good crew team, so Exeter fit the bill pretty well."Valen lived in Lamont Hall her prep year and then moved into Amen her lower year, and has lived there ever since. "I lived on the fourth floor during senior fall, and then I went to China, so I didn’t get my room back. But that was the closest I’ve been to any girls ever in the dorm and so I’ve really loved being here. I’ve made some really good bonds with the people on my floor and around."During her four years at the Academy, Valen has since implanted a lasting effect on the community. "Tiggy has been one of the leaders in Amen this year in organizing dorm events and fomenting dorm spirit. Her thoughtful observations and suggestions have been valued by Amen faculty and students alike," dorm head Paolo Reichlin said. "The connections that Tiggy has made with some of the underclassmen in the dorm are impressive. Even over the summer and during her winter term abroad in China, when her presence in Amen was sorely missed, she made every effort to stay in touch with her dormmates and be supportive of them. We were lucky to be able to get her back this spring."Lower Christina Rossitto expressed her appreciation for Valen’s helpfulness and kindness in both extracurricular activities and the dorm. "Everyone loves Tiggy. She’s so charismatic with a great dorm spirit. As a proctor, she’s really approachable and gives good advice," Rossitto said. "When I was deciding to run for DC, I must have asked her a million questions, but she was so helpful and encouraging. She’s an important presence in the DC, boathouse and dorm, and I’m really going to miss her next year!"Prep Tessa Vaccaro agreed. "Tiggy is really good at giving actual advice that is actually helpful—no standard stuff that doesn’t even help. Plus she never targets anyone and is really good for support with anything," she said. "She has been an amazing proctor and I’m going to miss her so much next year!"In addition to leading by example in her dorm, Valen plays one of the most important roles on campus on the Discipline Committee. "Being on the Discipline Committee has really taught me just not to judge people, because you’ll have a case and you’ll hear about it from other people and there will be rumors floating around and you just know the facts of the case and you think it’s going to turn out a certain way and then you get in the room and your whole perception is completely changed," Valen said. "It’s the opposite of what you thought, and these situations have really caused me not to have any judgments towards people and to be really open-minded about pretty much everything. We have some really good discussions as a committee, and it’s made me value this place so much more than I did before, because you really see how much people care. You can really see how much this place means to people and that has made me value it so much more."Fellow Discipline Committee members believed that Valen’s passion for the committee has shown throughout her years on the committee. "Tiggy always presents her opinion with a strong and confident voice," senior Kelvin Lee, a fellow member on Discipline Committee, said, "She is a great addition to the DC and I’ve enjoyed working with her the past couple of years. Tiggy is always holistic and reasonable."Valen’s abilities to make crucial decisions have made her not only a compassionate Discipline Committee member but also one of the coxswains of New England’s number-one crew team. Valen started rowing at a two-week summer camp back at home in Oakland with the Oakland Strokes, one of the nation’s top rowing clubs. "I actually rowed for three years and then this year, because I’m coxing next year in college, I signed up to be a manager for the boys crew team so I could learn how to cox, but then one of the JV boys coxswains failed the swim test so then I got to be a coxswain, which is great," Valen said. "It’s exactly how I wanted it to work out because now I get to learn how to be a coxswain before I go off and do it in college. I absolutely love it. I really like coxing, and it’s the best part of my day for sure."Her crew coaches and the rowers on her boat love her athleticism and leadership as a coxswain. "If we had any MVP chances, it would probably be Tiggy," prep Jake Della Pasqua said. "She’s also really fun to hang out with in the boathouse and on the buses to races. She is one of my role models, and she accepted me as a prep and taught me a lot."Prep Nick Macadamiola agreed. "Without Tiggy, we wouldn’t be as good as we are. In a sense, she holds us all together on B3. I don’t know how she does it, being the only girl, but she keeps us all in check," Macadamiola said. "Tiggy has a great sense of humor, and she knows when to joke around and when to be serious. She is really nice to follow and she gives great encouragement and never messes up on her calls."Sally Morris, coach of the rowing team, praised Valen’s rowing skills in addition to her abilities as a coxswain. "Tiggy actually rowed for the girls for three years and rows beautifully. She always gave her best to any boat when she rowed and I loved her independent, funny personality," Morris said. "I encouraged her to cox in college because she has rowed so long and so competitively, winning a gold medal at the New Englands in 2012, and because she is so smart, plus she is a tough athlete with a strong, authoritative voice."Valen also shows off her stellar tastes in music every Wednesday night DJ’ing on her WPEA radio show Cloud 9, which she runs with her senior friends Caroline Boudreau and Ainsley Fahey. "There are a few certain places on campus I find myself gravitating toward— places often peaceful and where I do my best thinking––and the radio station is one of them," Valen said. "I love spending time down there, listening to other students’ shows and broadcasting my own. There’s a great vibe down there and I love knowing that what I say or play on air is potentially being heard by all kinds of people in the town of Exeter. Not much is better than spending time with friends and bonding over great music."Apart from her extracurriculars, Valen is an avid Chinese learner. Starting Chinese as a novice prep year, she has mastered the language to the point where she has taken two Chinese 999 courses this year, one in the fall term and one currently in spring term.This past winter term, Valen went for a term abroad in China and described the experience as one of the best times she has had ever since coming to Exeter. "China was absolutely amazing. We were at a school—it was an all-Chinese school with a thousand-ish students—and we—there were eight of us from Exeter—and we were all in our own class and the teachers came to us," Valen said. "We were in Beijing and we took five classes and it was just amazing. Chinese culture is really different so it was a shock at first because it was completely different from anything here. Everything from the food to the way you’re talked to and addressed. It was such a cool experience and I learned so much about the language and about the culture. Just living in a different country and getting to know the culture is amazing."Next year, Valen will attend Princeton University, where she hopes to major in international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs while studying neuroscience. She plans to pursue and continue her passions and dreams in college. Valen will be a coxswain for the Princeton men’s heavyweight crew team next year, and she will be continuing her Chinese studies in college as well. "Growing up as the daughter of a diplomat, I’ve always had a fascination for various languages, cultures and travel, and I hope to become fluent in Chinese. As far as my future goes, I am interested in both international relations and neuroscience, so hopefully I can fuse those two together; maybe I’ll become a neurosurgeon for the government."Valen fondly reflected upon her four years at Exeter. "I’ve already learned so much from this place, to appreciate the little things and how to take these experiences and really value them and implement them in your life," she said. "The bonds that I’ve formed here with people are going to last me for so long and there’s no real substitute for that. I could not have picked a better fit for me than Exeter."