Having run cross country last year, I was unsure of what to expect when I decided on JV Tennis for my fall sport. I heard rave reviews about Mr.Carney, the head coach, and the team in general. Since the first day on the court, I knew I had made the right decision to play tennis. […]
Coming Full Circle
After returning to the Golden Trout Camp for the second time in four years, I picked up a horseshoe, just as I had my freshman year. However, instead of grabbing the horseshoe awkwardly while trying to remember the names of the fellow freshmen who I was playing with, this time I grabbed it confidently as […]
And they’re off
I guess it’s official. The group we referred to last spring as the “rising seniors” are now firmly rooted in their official senior shoes. The prefect meetings are becoming routine, the new classes are starting to feel old hat, and, the icing on the cake… The Senior Exhibition process has begun. We started things off […]
Why Camping Matters
“Only at Thacher” is a trademark catchphrase of Thacher students. We often find ourselves in moments that are unique to the Thacher experience. These moments range from Sunday morning trap shooting, collecting a silver dollar off the sandy floor of the gymkhana field, and my personal favorite, camping. By the end of our Thacher career, […]
A New Year
“Welcome to the crucible,” our school chair, senior Owen Driscoll, announced to Juniors at this year’s beginning banquet. We’d all heard it before, “Junior year is so hard!” — “The workload is insane,” but always punctuated with seemingly contradictory phrases like “Its so fun!” and “Definitely the best year!” While these competing sentiments were ones […]
The Camping Experience
Coming from New Jersey, my family and I did not do much camping. In fact, we didn’t do any at all. Upon my arrival at Thacher, my perception of camping changed dramatically. Yes, rivers and lakes do become your showers. Yes, you do use the wilderness as bathroom. No, it does not suck. There is […]
Clear Signal
Stuck in traffic on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, heading to a college friends’ reunion and a god-daughter’s wedding last weekend, I was trying to find something listenable on the radio. NPR crackled into earshot, and I was soon honed in and listening to an interview on Fresh Air whose topic-of-the-moment was OCD behavior in cats. […]
“What are you?”
Day Four of EDTs, and we’re hoofing it down from Pine Mountain Lodge (where there has not been a lodge since the 19th century)–windy and cold, but last night, we were warmed, belly and heart, by hot uber-stuffed quesadillas for supper and rousing campfire singing. Our team of troopers (Julia, Ben, David, Carrie, Faith, Sydney, Michael […]
Be. Here. Now.
At assembly today, Owen, the newly elected School Chair, implored us to stop focusing on how fast time is going by as the year comes to an end, and to instead focus on the moments we have left. A glass half full approach to the melancholy laced sprint we face every spring. He said that […]
Time travel
It was a dizzying, brain-stuffing three days. Every April for the past twenty years, Senior Exhibitions have reminded me how curious Thacher students can be, how passionate, how persuasive. And this year, how much better than I they understand the basics of the Big Bang theory and the complexities of cult recruitment, government surveillance and […]