During this morning’s faculty meeting, Interim Head of School Steve Wilkins reflected on this day twenty-three years ago. He was standing in the back of a pickup truck on Leonard Field leading assembly (the brand new Meeting House was not quite ready for occupancy) when he shared that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. As we find ourselves doing on a daily basis at the start of this year after losing a member of the Class of 2025 just before the start of the school year to a tragic accident, we are balancing grief and joy, a profound sense of loss and equally profound hope in who we can become as a community this year.
This first week of classes allows us to settle into the rhythms and routines of the school year and to see our vision for who we could become start to take shape. The chaotic waters of Wilderness Orientation and the first weekend on campus have begun to calm as we pass the midpoint of the week. We find our friends, our paths from class to class, meeting to meeting, and begin to recognize the opportunity a new year provides to define ourselves both as individuals and as a community.
While there are absolutely very normal moments of uncertainty in this process of becoming, perhaps more so than any year in recent memory, campus is filled with a remarkable enthusiasm from our students. Maybe it was our inaugural leadership camp, or perhaps a more unified registration days to kick off the year, or the amazing new faculty who have joined our community, but the smiles have never been more genuine, laughter more contagious, and conversations around the dining hall table more authentic.
As our faculty begin to chart the course forward in their classes, teams, advisories, and dorms, our students are active partners in the shaping process of the year. It is a beautiful thing to watch students step into leadership roles, to take ownership of this community as their own, and to risk failure through leading imperfectly, and to be vulnerable in joining a new community.
Our balancing of grief and joy will ebb and flow in the days, weeks, and months to come. We will experience periods joy and excitement (like this week), and then unexpectedly be struck by the absence of a member of our community when we least expect it. What we know, however, is there is no better place to experience the ups and downs of life than this community. Here’s to an amazing - not perfect - year ahead!
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