650 Words

Rachael Abernethy graduated from high school in 2012, an experience she describes in glowing terms. In the protected and nurturing environment of the independent school world, she settled into her identity under the watchful eyes of a supportive family, good friends, and trusted teachers. For Rachael, the experience of high school felt like being a valued member in an extended family. And then she went to college -- and that’s what she writes about here. It’s not that things went off the rails or anything. She had a great experience playing soccer and being a Black Studies major at Amherst College. It’s just that she suddenly found that she had to figure out how to deal with the one thing that so many young people dream about: freedom. After graduating from Amherst, Rachael took a fellowship at Northfield Mount Hermon as a member of the UPenn Boarding School Residency Program. Eventually, she picked up a Master’s of Science in education and got herself hired as a full-time faculty...

Isabel Sanchez Hodoyan graduated from high school in 2018. I never had the pleasure of being her teacher, but I have certainly seen plenty of students who have suffered through the syndrome that she describes so clearly below. What should we call it? The Do-More, Be-More Syndrome? The Never Enough Syndrome? Never-Enoughers struggle to find a peaceful space because they are daunted by all of the high-achieving people around them. Seeing these high-flyers soaring and excelling and shining and impressing every person in sight, the Never Enoughers feel hopelessly ordinary and often blame themselves for not doing enough or working hard enough or being amazing enough. Dreamy romantics like Walt Whitman might claim, “I exist as I am, that is enough,” but people affected by the Do-More, Be-More Syndrome feel the opposite: I exist as I am, they say, but it is never, ever enough. Isabel, a freshman at NYU, is majoring in English and Social & Cultural Analysis. She spends about 8...

Scott Schneider graduated in 1993. When I stepped onto the football field as a young and inexperienced coach in the late summer of 1991, he was one of the first students I met. Right away I could see he was different than the other prep school kids. He had an attitude. He talked back. Unlike the Parker lifers, who had developed trusting relationships with their teachers, Scott seemed to be suspicious of authority and not particularly eager to please. You might be able to see a little of this in his football mugshot below. It wasn’t until a little later, when I had him in my English class, that I came to hear Scott’s story -- that he had transferred from a big public school after struggling academically in 9th and 10th grades; that he had gotten with the “wrong crowd” (his words), skipped a lot of school, and found himself in a number of fights. I mention all of this because Scott’s post is about something we all know but sometimes forget: that things don’t always go as planned. Aft...

Remi Mooney graduated from Parker as a lifer in 2015.  Since then, her life has been all about nursing.  A nursing student at San Diego State, she studies furiously, spends hours in labs, and stays actively involved with the Student Nursing Association.  She is also about to publish her first article in the association magazine, Vital Signs , about her perspective as a nursing student on the healthcare experience.  "Being the science and math person that I am," she said, "I never thought I would publish something that wasn't research related." But Remi's road to becoming a nurse was forever changed when her father got sick, and that's what she writes about here.  Fair warning, the story is sad and tragic.  But Remi comes out the other side with some heartening and thoughtful advice -- about dealing with loss, about appreciating what we have, about coping, about moving forward.  "My hope," she said, "is to inform others that life...

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is who wrote this post and what his lousy time in high school was like and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second who really cares about anyone’s experience in high school. A private high school is filled with all kinds of phonies … phonies who suck up to the teachers, phonies who pretend to be extremely intelligent and have intellectual conversations, phonies who keep saying “I’m so busy, look everyone how busy I am,” phonies who are the golden children of the school. Phony bastards. They really are. Who knows enough to give good advice about high school? Nobody. No advice. If anyone does give you advice, it’s sure to be something that annoys the hell out of you. It really does. For instance, someone will tell you enjoy your high school experience. They’ll tell you to not...

Jimmy was in two of my classes, three if you count my interim class that he references below. He graduated in 2015. He was something of the resident intellectual, the guy who seemed to know a little something about everything, whether we were talking about art or literature or politics or Celtic mythology. To this day, I can remember Jimmy dropping some knowledge during class about each of the following topics: color symbolism, the degradation of the rainforest, Freudian psychology and its limitations, geese formation and optimal wind resistance, Beat poetry, the relative differences between jackals and coyotes, and early 20th-century dadaism. When this first started happening in class, I was a little concerned because I didn’t want Jimmy to dominate the discussion. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the other students liked it. They were actually hungry for it. They listened carefully, even asked questions. “But what about the lead goose?” someone asked (we were talkin...