The arrival
of spring coincides with lots of people in our community making decisions about
schools. For Berwick, we are currently doing our best to convince our first
choice applicants to choose the Hilltop over their other educational options.
For our seniors, many are finally starting to have choices to make about where
they might head for college next year. All of it makes me reflect on how one
makes a good choice about schooling in these kinds of exciting, but inevitably
ambiguous, situations. I can’t help but remember the story of one of my
teammates in college, who chose to go to Amherst over another school in the
league purely based on the fact that he could bring a car to campus in his
first year. He had a high school girlfriend. While the girlfriend was no longer
in the picture by Thanksgiving, Josh went on to be the leading rusher in
Amherst College history, was a fine campus leader, and is now one of the most
successful financial professionals I know. Good thing we had liberal parking
rules for freshmen.
In my case,
I had the transformative chance to choose a private school as a sixth grader.
My parents had never heard of independent school in their own childhoods, but
my older sister had gone to one the previous year based on concerns that she had
asked to hang out on the benches of downtown Needham one time too many with her
neighborhood Middle School friends. I only applied to two independent schools and
was fortunate to have to make a choice in the end. One was a single sex option
that was widely regarded as the most prestigious in my area. Virtually no one
said no to this school. The other was the co-ed school where my older sister
attended against her own will. My best friend in the world had also been
admitted to the all male option and committed to going instantly. He
subsequently flourished there and ended up at Harvard for his undergraduate
days. For some reason, I went against the grain and chose the co-ed option
where my sister was going. While I do remember some elements of the culture there
feeling more comfortable to me in the admission process, mostly I remember
being a Middle School boy. I thought six
years of Middle and High School with only boys seemed needlessly dreary. The
decision turned out ok in the end – I met my wife at my new school in ninth
grade and the rest, shall we say, is history.
None of
this is to suggest that these decisions don’t matter, but I would say that in
hindsight it is often hard to imagine having taken a different course. In the
end, I believe that it is a feeling
more than a well crafted pros and cons list that ultimately sways people on
these things. Can I see myself here?
Would this place make me happy? Do I want to hang out with these people? In
a world of incredible marketing and recruitment efforts from all sorts of
schools, it certainly is important to remember to “buy the car rather than the
salesman,” so to speak. But one simply cannot over-emphasize the relational aspect
of the decision. How one feels in a
place really does matter. School choices might best be guided by some answer to
the question: where could I be my best
self? The answer to that kind of question is nuanced. More importantly…it
is emotional.
To all of
you who are making such decisions these days, I would simply say trust your
gut. School is what you make of it, but it is the people at that school who will inspire you to become your best
self.
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