Senior of the Week: Ginny Little

By Lina Huang, Tina Huang and Amy Lum

“I look back at the person I was before Exeter like how someone who writes an autobiography looks at the person they’ve written,” senior Ginny Little said. “The person who I was seemed very [two-dimensional]—not necessarily bad, but someone who fits on a page. Of course, I'm grateful to that person for getting me to Exeter, but I've become a person with more interests here. It’s not that I've become a whole new person at Exeter; it’s that I've allowed myself to experiment with different hobbies and personality traits to find who I want to be.”

Little grew up in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where, prior to attending Exeter, she attended a small Catholic school with a class of about thirty kids. “One kid from our school got in, and then eight years later my sister got into Exeter,” she said. “But my sister went, and then she immediately, on the third or fourth day, said, ‘You need to go here. You’re going to love it here.’”

The summer before she came to Exeter, Little’s family moved to Puerto Rico, so she switched her application to boarding status. “I was really nervous because I thought that I might not get in, and then I would have to go to school in a different place and be the only person that didn't speak Spanish. But fortunately, I did get in,” Little said.

When Little arrived on campus, she planned to focus on debate, but she soon found interest in other activities. “My first year, there was a proctor in my dorm and she said, ‘Beyond things that you really need to do, you don’t have to do any of these clubs. If you don’t want to do them, you don’t have to take this certain course if you don’t want to take it, try and make this as enjoyable as you can. Exeter will be hard no matter what path you take, so you might as well enjoy it while you’re working,’” Little recalled.

Initially, Little shied away from connecting with her roommates. “I was one of the people who checked in and left. I really stayed in my room,” she said. However, she grew to love spending time in McConnell. 

In her lower year, Little decided to host a radio show. “The application was due at midnight, and it was 11:30. I called up one of my friends, Grace Ferguson, and I said, ‘Do you want to do a radio show with me?’ We had met doing archaeology after prep year. We went to France with the classics department and we had been roommates the whole trip,” she said. “We've talked about international music. We've done classical music. We've done just Irish focused shows. And then I decided that I love it so much that I wanted to be on the board.”

Now Station Manager, Little enjoys the freedom that the position affords her. “I didn't think of myself as an artist before; I can draw stick figures and all of my teachers can attest to that. And that’s it,” she said. “So I thought radio was a really interesting form of art because you can say something and you can make a mistake and it’s gone. It’s like drawing in the sand you know the tide will come in and will take it away. It’s just for you, really.” 

In her upper year, Little chose to be a day student, but in her senior year, she switched back to boarder status, giving her a unique perspective as a proctor. “Because the day-student affiliate thing is relatively new, in fac-proc meetings, she’s always conscious of including day students in our dorm activities,” senior Candy Tanti said. “Ginny also lives in the hall opposite from me, which a lot of new underclassmen live in. Even though she’s always busy with Latin, she is always looking out for others. Throughout the year, I remember her running to my room to talk about reaching out and finding different ways to help those having a tough time.”

History Instructor Michael Golay, who served as Little’s adviser and dorm faculty, commented on Little’s big personality and wide range of interests. “She's lively, clever, imaginative. She’s very good with words. She has a remarkably sophisticated sense of humor. And her sense of irony is more highly developed than that of most adults I know,” he said. “She is strangely into Latin and Greek, of all things. I know she’s enjoying the ornithology class, so maybe she’ll get into birdwatching. She told me she had her father film a gull gobbling up an eel.”

Science Instructor Townley Chisholm added that Little’s interest and skills in biology shine. In June of her lower year, Little participated in the Academy’s Summer Travel Program to Yellowstone National Park. “Both in the classroom and in seven intense days of animal observation in Yellowstone, Ginny deeply impressed me with her kindness, her observation skills, her curiosity and her joyfulness,” Chisholm said.

For Little, entering classics was a challenge. “My first class, almost everyone knew something about it [Latin]. A lot of people [had] already taken a year, or a summer course, or been self taught. I did not know anything.”

However, Little grew to love Latin and decided to go for the classical diploma. “It's hard for me to think about Exeter without classics… It’s been something that’s contributed so much to my personality. My friends would say my sense of humor is almost too much based around classics,” she said.

After taking Latin for a while, Little decided to start her own ESSO club, along with seniors Grace Ferguson and Angele Yang, teaching young children spoken Latin and myths. “I came to Exeter expecting there to be an ESSO Latin Club (because there are clubs for other languages), but I was surprised. I remember thinking to myself my prep year that ‘if someone started it, I'd sign up!’ but I never thought I'd be the one to start it. We focus on spoken Latin and mythology, and I've loved seeing the children become more interested in Classics,” she said.

Her study of the classics also offered Little a valuable life lesson. “It [the classics] taught me about getting back up and not accepting that I’m just bad at this,” she said. 

Classics Instructor Sally Morris noted Little’s academic development during her four years at Exeter. “I met Ginny when she would visit PEA for her sister’s Family Weekends,” Morris said. “She has grown over the years from being a bit reticent to share her opinions and methods of approaching the discipline to an engaged, confident, poised young person, ready for the challenges that lay ahead in college.”

Furthermore, Little also worked at The Exonian. Prior to joining, Little was initially apprehensive due to the club’s stereotypes. “I was scared because I knew the reputation of the club as [competitive],” Little said. “I was told they're going to give you 15 hours a week to do just one article [...] like an extra class.”

However, Little found that there was a place in The Exonian community for her. “I was drawn to [Life] because it made people happy,” Little said. “People certainly enjoy reading some of the [News] articles, but I found with Life that I could really connect with the Exeter community in a way I just couldn't on my own.” 

While at The Exonian, Little’s contributions and zeal made an impression on her fellow club members. “We would spend hours and hours working, procrastinating and losing our minds in the newsroom,” Tanti said. “After newsroom Wednesdays, she would already be making plans for next week, though, so I’m pretty sure she looked forward to coming to the newsroom.”

After working together in a professional setting, The Exonian’s former Editor in Chief Suan Lee described the newspaper’s positive influence on her friendship with Little. “Working on The Exonian together definitely strengthened our relationship. We learned how to have professional conversations, even whilst maintaining our very close, joke-heavy friendship outside of the newsroom,” Lee said.

Additionally, Lee admires Little’s work ethic and reliability. “She has inspiringly high expectations for herself [...] It’s a privilege to be her study partner,” Lee said. “She’s the first person I go to whenever I’m having a difficult night. There were moments at 2am when she would stay up talking to me, listening as I rambled for hours.”

Considered a large part of Little’s Exeter experience, The Exonian introduced her to people on campus she would not have met otherwise. “I remember being a lower and interviewing some seniors that [weren’t in my clubs], weren't in [my] dorms, anything like that,” Little said. “In 20 years, we can all come back and look at these solid copies and be like ‘This is something that we did when we were 16 and 17.’ It's very special. As hard as The Exonian is, I think it's the best of the large clubs on campus.”

For Senior Mia Kuromaru, Little’s supportive personality warms the people around her. “She's very understanding, patient, and has the ability to make people around her smile no matter what,” Kuromaru said. “She's definitely someone who I am so grateful to have met, and I hope that everyone has had at least one interaction with her and her bright energy.”

In addition, fellow WPEA Board Member and upper Alica Coble appreciates Little’s more humorous and focused side. “She’s really funny, but she’s also really hardworking, a balance you don’t see too often in people,” Coble said. “I’m going to miss those little moments in the common room and after meetings. If I’m having a hard day, she can always make me laugh and help me be in a better mood.”

Throughout her time at the Academy, Little mentioned her growth as a person of faith. When Little first arrived at Exeter, she was unsure whether she wanted to stay Catholic. Little’s time on the Interfaith Council was an opportunity to converse with students from a variety of religious backgrounds. “[Interfaith Council] taught me how to respect other religions and how to stand up for my own faith,” Little said. 

 Initially, Little had a difficult time finding a Catholic community on campus. “I've been really happy to meet people like Stephen [McNulty], the Op-Ed editor, who is one of the most inspiring people I know just in terms of his faith in his life and his ideas.” A current cohead of Catholic Exonians, Little also described her personal relationship with the club. “A lot of the clubs [are ways] that I have grown with other people,” Little said. “I feel like for Catholic Exonians, it's a way I've grown by myself.”

Little gave some advice for Exonians entering Exeter. “Exeter, it's a place where you can be really happy about your successes but people think, I failed one thing at Exeter and that's my whole career gone. It is not like that,” she said. “You can still get back up no matter what your mistake is.” 

Through her time at Exeter, Ginny has built a supportive network of close friends. After her prep year, Little also went on an archaeology trip to France, organized by the classics department. There she met one of her closest friends, Suan Lee. “All the girls stayed in one room there. It was interesting because Suan was always the first to get up, and I was always the last to get up. So she would always be trying to wake me up,” she said.

Little met another one of her closest friends, Grace Ferguson, on this trip. “Grace and I were assigned randomly roommates at the beginning. And then, fortune smiled upon us in the classics tradition, and we were roommates every single other time on the trip,” she said.

Through the years, the Little, Lee and Ferguson have stayed connected through common activities and interests as their friendship grew. “Suan through The Exonian and Grace through radio, we've all stayed together.” 

Little also mentioned the addition of senior Angele Yang. “We picked up Angele Yang our lower year. She also did classics and was in The Exonian. An interesting dimension. For our group, she actually chose the place where our senior photos were taken. The train tracks, very Angele-esque,” Little reflected. 

When thinking back on the impact her friends and classmates have made on her, Little found it hard to put into words. “It’s hard, because I think they [the impact] are all little tiny pieces and you don't really notice it until you look back on yourself until you reach a big milestone, like applying to college together, or I guess, graduation for us, looking back and realizing the person I was before I met all of them.” she said. 

Little expressed sadness about the way her Exeter career was coming to an end. “It's hard because I think all the seniors have to say goodbye in this weird way,” she said. “We’re trying to say goodbye to Exeter when we're not there.”

However, Little appreciates every moment on campus, especially classes. “The nuts and bolts of your Exeter experience really are your classes. I'll miss being able to sit down at the harkness table and know that I'm in a community of people that will support me, will build off of my points, that kind of thing,” she said. 

Little pointed out her efforts to pay attention to the little things at Exeter. “Every night, when I walk back from The Exonian or from dinner or from class, I'll look around at the buildings, at the trees if they're flowering or if leaves are falling down, and especially at the sky,” Little said. “There's actually a spot right in between Elm and the library…[if you] look up and there will be the one pine tree that's in the quad. You look at it and feel like you're in the middle of nowhere.”

Little ended with her thoughts on that spot on campus. “It always put me into perspective, looking up and seeing a plane or stars,” she said. “It made me feel like I have a home here, but that this isn't the only place that will ever be home. I miss it. Everyone misses it in their own way.”