Senior of the Week: Avery Lavine

By ANVI BHATE and LAUREN KIM

In the columned walls and black-and-white tiles of Wheelwright Hall’s common room, senior and proctor Avery Lavine lounges in the cluster of red armchairs. She is most often seen laughing over hilarious quotes with her friends, helping lowerclassmen out with daunting math problems, and generating the most imaginative check-in questions. A calming presence in the dorm, Lavine is not only a trusted proctor, but she also plays the role of Student Listener, providing a safe space for peers. 

Lavine first arrived at the Academy from her hometown of San Francisco. She attended a day school with her twin brother, and chose Exeter after her revisit day. “I remember wondering which one I would regret the most not attending, and so I chose to come to Exeter,” she said. 

Since arriving at the Academy as a prep, Lavine immediately appeared to be a jack-of-all-trades, developing an interest in the arts, while also excelling in STEM classes. “I love chemistry and physics a lot and I like all math and computer science classes,” Lavine reflected. “Some of my favorite classes definitely included the arts classes as well.”

Honing on her interest in art and design, Lavine is also an editor-in-chief of PEAN, and has served in the club since she was a lowerclassmen. “As an editor-in-chief, you're overseeing all departments. You get to work with amazing people, and end up designing the whole book. It's a lot of fun,” Lavine said.

Besides laying out pages in the yearbook, Lavine also personally creates art, inspired by her own experiences and styles. Her friends, among so many others, find her art pieces fascinating. “Every opportunity I get, I'm like, ‘oh my gosh, look at my good friend Avery’s art,’ and I show them my phone,” senior Coco Lipe said. 

Lipe continued to speak about some of their favorite aspects of Lavine’s art: “She’s excellent at hyperrealism, and I had never seen anything like it before I saw her art.”

  “Her awesome art in the library is definitely a very cool legacy,” upper Sage Murthy commented. “Whenever I go to the library, I see her paintings on the walls. You walk in and in the basement, there's that painting with the face made of all the hands. I think that's crazy. And Avery drew that.”

Reflecting on her journey with the arts, Lavine hopes to pursue a path related to art and design in the near future: “I've just honed in on what my interests are over the years. I've always loved art more as a hobby, but being at Exeter and seeing so many avenues for where I can pursue either design or painting, is really starting to inspire me about where I want to direct my future.”

When asked about what she will miss most about Exeter, Lavine immediately responded, “Wheelwright, for sure. One thing that I have grown to love about this dorm is that it's just naturally so easy to become friends with people in different grades. Over the years, I've found myself really close with people in Wheelwright, no matter what their grade.”

Lavine’s dormmates reciprocated the care she has for them. “She's just very sweet and very considerate. She's always trying to put her best foot forward,” Murthy commented. “Sometimes it's really hard and she tries her best anyway, and I admire that a lot about her.”

Senior and fellow proctor Audrey Aslani-Far describes a card game she and Lavine shared over the years in the dorm. “Since our prep year, Avery and I have played a card game called ‘set together.’ She is incredibly good at the game, and so many of my best memories at Exeter are fiercely competitive late night set matches with Avery on the common room floor,” recounts Aslani-Far. “We have torn up many decks of cards, but it’s all been worth it.”

When asked for some of their favorite memories with Lavine, Lipe shared some of their traditions from last year. “We used to take the Walmart wagon every Wednesday to Walmart, and make obscene purchases and take terrible photos in sunglasses,” Lipe mentioned. “We went to Trader Joe's once on the weekend, which was a very exquisite experience.”

Upper Sage Murthy shared a similar sentiment, one that their friendship never really had a “defined” beginning. Over the years, however, their friendship has blossomed into something beautiful. “I remember distinctly, at the end of fall term, we were building puzzles and singing the entire soundtrack of “In the Heights”, the movie,” Murthy said, speaking about some of her favorite memories with her. “It was very fun and we did a lot of singing to musical soundtracks. I enjoyed it a lot.”

“My favorite thing about Avery would definitely be her sense of humor. She's one of the funniest people I know and is really, really good at making references to things and they always land, they always hit,” Lipe brought up another side to her personality. “She's also just a very caring and kind person. She brings the energy with her wherever she goes.”

Brining her energy to Phillips Church the morning of March 30, Lavine delivered a beautiful meditation reading in the Phillips Church. Her meditation, having been previously read to her dormmates, was focused on her relationships with her twin brother and a brain surgery she had as a pre-teen. “I was nervous to do it just because I was afraid of revealing this part of myself to others,” Lavine said. “I wanted to see if I could find something different, but during the process of writing, it still felt like the most prominent part of my life.” 

Lavine continued, “Signing up to read it in the church was a really kind of big deal to me, as I don't really speak in public that often. It was pretty intimidating to read it, but I've been building myself up to it: first reading to my class, then to the dorm, and then to whoever wants to hear it in the church.”

Aslani-Far, who attended Lavine’s “incredible meditation,” was touched by her writing. “It was an amazing, creatively structured piece that blends her love of science and thoughtful reflections into a beautifully rendered story. I feel very lucky to have heard it, and am glad that the rest of the Exeter community had a chance to experience it as well.”

Lavine has definitely left her mark on the Academy, and many of her friends described the large impact she left on their lives. “Without her, I would definitely not be the same person I am now,” Murthy reflected. “At least for me, she's definitely one of the people in this dorm who's shaped who I've become. That is pretty important to me.”

As graduation nears, Lavine’s advice for fellow Exonians is to expand their horizons, and cherish the time spent growing here: “This is just a very valuable time in life, however long you're here. It's a valuable time to get to know what your passion is, either by developing what you already know about yourself and expanding your horizons, or doing what you’ve always wanted to do since you were a kid. You could even just turn around and start something new. And every way is completely fine.”