In moments of stress, we often find ourselves asking “what if” questions rather than embracing the “what is”. Each April, we host Accepted Students Days for our newly accepted students and their families, and while these days are about showing off the very best of Proctor, they simultaneously help us embrace the imperfection that surrounds us. We fight the urge to ask: What if the weather doesn’t cooperate? What if a family doesn’t show up? What if our students say something foolish in assembly? What if a family doesn’t like the informality of the Proctor community?
Most schools struggle with this notion of authenticity when it comes to Accepted Student Days. At Proctor, because we are such a human community, we have an especially hard time wrestling with how to show visiting families the power of a Proctor education without pretending to be something we aren’t. We want to put our best foot forward and have visiting families experience the ‘perfect’ Proctor day, to learn in depth about programmatic offerings, to have our students all be the little cherubs we know they can be (but that they often aren’t). But when we get real with ourselves, we remember the perfect Proctor day does not exist. Perfect moments within an imperfect day, absolutely. But a perfect day? Never.
So instead we embrace the imperfection that will inevitably come with Accepted Students Day. We focus on the power of the individual conversations that serve as the real takeaways for our visiting families. We recognize that the conversations that need to happen will only occur if we carve out time for them, if we seek to move beyond the curated presentations of adults in the community to the unscripted student panel discussions and very real, raw conversations with our students, faculty, and parent volunteers.
We were heartened to see these conversations taking place on Friday all over campus. We saw families asking good, hard questions of our students and faculty. We saw accepted students jump up in assembly and play “Name that Tune” even though they were likely terrified to do so. We saw our parent volunteers giving up their Friday to share their experiences as parents. Most importantly, we saw connections form that will allow our Accepted Students and their families to make as informed a decision as they can, with confidence that they experienced the real Proctor during their visit to campus.
As we dive into the second week of spring classes, as spring sports teams prepare for competitions and rehearsals for the spring play, A Midsummers Night Dream, kick into full gear, we step back and appreciate what we have been given: a beautifully imperfect life at Proctor. We will welcome another group of Accepted Students to campus on Tuesday, and will remind them, just as we remind ourselves, that there is absolutely nothing more important, nothing more foundational as a community, than being real with each other.
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