News and Events NMH News

Let this be a Foundation

Sarah-Anne Tanner

Good morning everyone. When I tell people that I go to a boarding school, inevitably their eyes pop open, their jaws drop, and they either ask “Is it all girls?” or “Geez, what’d you do?” Everyone has this grim image in their head of whole classes bunked in one big room, evil school marms cracking the whip. Sometimes I wish I had a cool answer for them like “Yeah, I stole a car and made a break for Mexico” instead of “I don’t know... I thought it sounded neat?” I know I’m going to be faced with this reaction from people for the rest of my life. People will tilt their heads to one side, furrow their brows and say “Really? Boarding school? …Huh.”

And indeed, why boarding school? I came here for the same reasons that many of you all came: the public school back home really wasn’t great, I’d done well in school and enjoyed learning, and liked the idea of living with my friends. I wanted to come to NMH specifically because it had the most relaxed reputation of all the New England boarding schools and because of its block schedule, things that brought many of you here as well. I wasn’t particularly thinking of preparing myself for as bright a future as I could muster or laying the groundwork for the rest of my life.

There was one thing that was a little weird to me during the application process. A lot of the NMH paraphernalia that I received quoted kids saying how much their time at NMH had changed them. Beaming parents talked about the changes they’d seen in their children. This made me very nervous. I didn’t want to change. “I’m fine as I am! I’m a big kid! I’m going to high school now!” But I did change. I am now more confident and take more risks – try telling that 14-year-old that she would go to Russia, or get sucked into that crew cult and become a coxswain, or perform at Disneyland, or go swimming in the Connecticut River in January, or be the only girl in a wrestling class – all endeavors that were risky indeed at the outset. I bet you can all think of things that you’ve done here that you never expected, like taking a really random class or picking up a new sport or over time spending hundreds of dollars at the local Thai food place.

How else have I changed? I’m more responsible now. In middle school I procrastinated. Now I procrastinate…less. Before I came here, my schedule was simple and monotonous, and now I can balance three classes with a sport, two singing groups, a play, tutoring, a radio show, and on and on and on. And I now know how to keep myself organized enough to be able to do all that. In fact, I’m coming away from this boarding school experience with lessons beyond those I learned in the classroom. Some of the more important ones: 1) Rap is the best music by which to do math homework, 2) If you try to do homework outside, it will take an hour longer than it would indoors, 3) You’ll save a lot of money if you don’t worry about it and just wear the same dress shoes to every single fancy occasion, 4) not all Chinese food is created equal, and 5) you really don’t have to separate whites and colors when you do laundry.

To be serious though, this school has taught us many important lessons. Take a moment and realize that this is a place where, whether or not you loved it, you got a great education and learned how to take care of yourself. Let this be a foundation upon which you can build. You don’t have to plaster your next dorm room with NMH insignia (in fact, please don’t, people will think you’re kind of dorky) nor do you have to talk about it all the time (no one will have any idea what you’re talking about anyway. “You had lights out until you were eighteen? Hogolympics? Pie Race? Lamplighter Way?). But you should realize that here you (hopefully) developed at least one great relationship with an adult for maybe the first time, were pushed harder academically than ever before, and got to spend a year or a few years with some remarkable people, all things that provide a basis for larger schools, for jobs, for living in a community. Here is where we built that foundation. We should recognize that.

Not only that, but we should commend ourselves! Do you realize what we’ve done, in graduating? It’s been hard – it was totally hard, perhaps for our class especially. There were times when it felt as if those guys in the Dean’s Office were working on commission or something. “Boy oh boy, if two more kids get in trouble this month I can finally put in that pool!” But I think though that most of us know deep down that it was never like that, and that overwhelmingly the adults here make a huge effort to help us out whenever and however they can. Having these resources has taught me to be comfortable with speaking up for what I need, and that is a skill that I will call on for the rest of my life. When I ended up in Honors Chemistry because the Regular class was full, Mr. Rees came early to class every single day to help me and others who were in the same situation. When I had trouble with the final essay in AP US History, TK let me start all over and extended my deadline a week because he wanted me to do well. When I was making my final college decision, Sarah Hoffman gave up an afternoon and personally drove me to one of my colleges to go on a visit.

Speaking of college, when I was interviewing at schools this winter I was always asked about boarding school and what had made it a unique experience, and I talked about two things. Rewarding relationships with adults, which I’ve already mentioned, and the high level of student initiative we have here at NMH, which has always really impressed me. Three of the five plays I’ve been in here were student-directed. Our all-school meetings are run by students, which I’d like to point out as being a pretty cool and unique thing. All the clubs and projects and fundraisers that I can think of were created by students. Let us all remember the energy, the will, and the interest that we have been involved in and that we have witnessed in others. Let us not lose these heralds of dedication, passion, and enthusiasm – let them be part of your foundation.

For as soon as we entered this community, we were surrounded by smart and creative people. Do you remember when you registered for the first time, or your first day of school? My first class ever was Arts Foundations, and I got so lost trying to find my way to Olivia Hall that I ended up following a boy (whom I later found out to be named Spencer Russell) just because I had overheard him say to someone else that he had Arts Foundations first too. It’s so hard to believe that that was four years ago – I still feel like a freshman, but this is also one hundred percent my school, and I am now so prepared to take on whatever is coming next.

This is something I realized on a college visit a few weeks ago. I got the seventeen million separate signatures required to miss those two days of school – man, you’ve got to love College Counseling – and off I went; flying and changing planes on my own, attending classes, eating in the cafeteria, going to a concert, a radio show, hanging out with students, spending a night in the dorm. And it was on one of my return flights that, engaged in a conversation with a perfect stranger about various bones we’ve broken and eavesdropping on the two video-game reviewers sitting behind me (yes, it’s a real job after all!), I realized: this was in no way, at any moment, scary. I already know how to live in a dorm, how to approach a teacher out of the designated “school day,” how to balance a social/academic/athletic life, how to navigate a dining hall, and there I was interacting pleasantly with adults I’d never met before. While most of the time it just felt like school, NMH has been secretly maturing me from day one.

We’re doing a great thing in completing this rite of passage today. And we haven’t done it alone. As you mill about after you cross the stage, find your parents; find the person who interviewed you; find an IT person; find your college counselor; find a librarian; find your teachers; find a trustee; thank them. They did it for us and we owe them.

You don’t have to look back at your years, however many that you’ve spent here as the best of your life. But you absolutely should look back on your NMH career as a start, an initiator, a building experience, because it’s true, and it’s true for all of us. Let this time we have spent together be a foundation from which to spring and let all that we have learned here stay with us and help to guide us. I’m pretty nervous for what comes next; moving on, going out into the world and being an adult. But once I get there, I’m sure I’m going to come to appreciate NMH more and more as the place where I grew to be able to tackle those challenges. This is my foundation. May it be the same with you. Thank you.