Graphic by Chandler Littleford/The Choate News
Where I come from, boarding school is an unconventional choice. Only two people left my school after the eighth grade: a girl who went to Thacher, and I. After considering boarding schools in eighth grade, I chose to attend a local high school for two years before finally deciding on Choate. So, how did I — a girl born and raised in Northern California — end up across the country, away from my family and lifelong friends, in an environment completely different from what I had ever known?
My path to Choate was far from straightforward. For a long time, I vacillated between staying in San Francisco or going to boarding school. I was only sure that, were I to attend boarding school, I would go to Choate. What, then, set Choate apart from other schools?
In hindsight, it is nearly unbelievable that my first impression of Choate was positive. My tour happened on one of those dreary winter days — cold, rainy, ground covered by ice. My mom had driven us the two hours from Boston to reach a campus that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Moreover, I was an all-too-young eighth grader with no clue of what to expect; boarding school was, at that point, a concept wholly foreign to me.
I still don’t know what exactly it was that set Choate apart from other schools. I suppose that I liked all that I had seen on the tour — the atmosphere, the people, the campus. I could envision myself at Choate, perhaps a varsity player on an athletic team or a member of the SRP. But, as I was completing my application two years after that visit, I barely remembered those things. What I did recall, however, was an inexplicably good feeling — the intangible sense that if I came to Choate, I would find something new.
I came to Choate not knowing what to expect, just knowing that I wanted to follow the feeling, the atmosphere that I got from being on campus. Now that I am a student here, I’ve noticed Choate’s shortcomings — flaws in the administration, rules, system. My peers do too. Admittedly, life at Choate is not perfect.
Yet, whether we notice it or not, we are all getting something out of our time at Choate. We all chose Choate to fulfill some part of our life. Everybody was drawn to Choate for a reason; for me, it was the unexplainable feeling that I got during my tour. For others, it may have been the academic rigor, the breadth of extracurriculars, or the intensity of athletics. Whether or not the reality of Choate turned out exactly as we expected is beside the point. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t take steps to better our lives at Choate. Rather, we should remain mindful of the school’s benefits and take steps to maximize those aspects. The areas that the school lacks in should not remain as inadequacies — they should be areas of improvement.
It is so easy to adopt the mindset that the school against the students, that the system is out to get us. When I feel myself submitting to that train of thought, I try to remind myself of what brought me to Choate in the first place — What drew me away from San Francisco? Why did I come? What was that indescribable, special feeling I had when I first arrived?
Something drew each and every one of us here. I think that we would do well to remember that.
