They say that sense is a powerful tool in evoking memory – you smell your grandmother’s perfume and are immediately transported back to age 8.  You taste a fresh strawberry and think of summer. As someone new to Ojai, and somewhat prone to melodrama, I’ve been thinking recently about the sights, sounds and smells that will one day remind me of my time here. Certainly the sweet, citrus smell of the orange blossoms will be an Ojai trigger forever.  But as I lay in bed the other morning, procrastinating and not quite wanting to get up yet, I heard something that made me smile. The slow clank, clank of a teenage girl in cowboy boots walking towards the barns in the early morning. And rather than think “one day I’ll remember this,” instead I thought – I recognize this! I know this sound. A sound I’ve never heard before in my life is now as common to me as the smell of my percolating coffee pot.  It was a good moment, and then and there I decided to stop focusing on what I’ll think of someday down the road, but what I know and appreciate now. Ahh, welcome to Thacher…It’s working already.

I’ve never really liked (or understood, for that matter) football. It monopolized the TV in my house every Sunday from September to February, not to mention Monday nights. And don’t get me started on sports radio – my dad and I had dinner with Eddie Andleman on the WEEI Sports Huddle every weeknight. But am I a Pats fan? Absolutely. Love them, hate them, be baffled by them, but the New England Patriots are to my family what Sunday dinners and rides to grandma’s house are to other people – a tradition. From the days when Doug Flutie was still sending up Hail Marys from the heights at Boston College to “The Tuna” calling plays and making enemies, we are a Patriots family.

For those of you with short memories, that might sound like an easy road, rooting for a championship dynasty. Let me assure you this was not my childhood experience. Cheering for the Pats could be painful, but we did it together – as a family. So imagine my surprise to find myself here in Ojai for the 2012 Superbowl – far, far from my brother’s cocktail sauce and my dad’s jinx-reversing anthem “we’re dead!” – wondering how I could possibly enjoy the game on a sunny afternoon in California instead of a freezing night in Massachusetts? It turns out you don’t need the New England cold, the standard snacks or even the same old faces. You just need a big TV, new friends and lots of red, white and blue. This time might not have turned out the way we wanted, but we’re New Englanders – we are patient and we have faith. And hey, pitchers and catchers report in 12 days.

The week before winter break was a little crazy for everyone around here. My advisees were busily finishing assignments, rehearsing for the big concert, traveling for soccer games and of course packing for the three week hiatus, among about a million other things. In the admission office we were full steam ahead too – not just with a jam-packed interview schedule, but with two annual off campus events. Within the span of a few days my colleagues and I traveled both to LA and San Francisco with teams of current Thacher kids to “wave the flag” so to speak and introduce Thacher to families who might not have visited yet, or who wanted the chance to learn a little more. It was great meeting so many fantastic future toads, but the best part for me came over Jamaican food at Larry’s Restaurant in Inglewood as I listened to my ever eloquent and downright lovable advisee Mahogany speak to the crowd in attendance. Like the all the kids in the room that day, she applied to us through the A Better Chance program, and three years ago attended the very same event she was now helping to make happen. I caught her mother’s proud eyes as Mahogany’s humor and honesty won over the room each time she spoke, and was so grateful to be there to see it.

My new desk is enormous. Seriously, I feel like a banker when I sit there, which might be a good thing as the new director of financial aid. It’s different from the one in my old office in several ways, but up until about a month ago, the major way was that it was so neat and sparse. No stacks of paper, no hair ties tucked under the keyboard. Now, in the midst of mid-November, I find myself looking down at a sea of sticky notes and file folders. Spreadsheets, thank you notes, receipts from airline tickets.

Now that I’m in the groove, my desk is back to the controlled chaos state that makes me most comfortable. As it’s just as I’m noticing this that my boss, admission director Bill McMahon, walks down the hall and stops outside my door. He’s wearing his black Patagonia jacket (it’s gotten chilly in Ojai lately) and carrying a bag full of papers. And he’s saying…wait, what’s he saying? He’s saying “have a great time in Boston and enjoy Thanksgiving!” Huh? Well that can’t be right. I just got here.

Three months can’t possibly have passed so quickly that not only did I not notice my desk filling up, but missed the calendar pages flying by? True, I’m exaggerating my actual shock, but it was really something to stop for a minute and realize how fast the time as gone.  I feel like I was just here for my own interview, and now we’re a third of the way through the school year. I’ve already met with over 40 great kids applying to Thacher and have traveled to Massachusetts and Florida (my colleagues really have me beat though – they’ve been in Asia, Saudi Arabia, New York, Chicago and Houston just to name a few places!). Time is flying, and I find myself grateful for this amazing new job, wonderful kids and colleagues, and the beautiful Ojai valley. Oh yeah, and a desk I recognize as my own.

I would safely put money on the fact that Thacher is the only school in the country where “new faculty orientation” takes place at 10,000 feet. When I was interviewing for my job in the admission office I heard about the amazing outdoor program with its week-long camping trips that are so central to the student experience at Thacher, but didn’t quite grasp how those would fit into my own life.

With my high school days long behind me, it never occurred to me that being oriented to the school would literally involve orienteering – among other tasks where my skill set is seriously lacking! I mean, I love the outdoors and was excited to go on the trips with the kids, but with other adults – strangers? For several days? I was barely adjusted to leaving my home time zone (much less ready to immerse myself in the High Sierra) when I showed up, backpack pitifully stuffed, for the ride to Golden Trout (whatever that was).

Of course “ride” implies something very different from the hours long trek through the desert I was about to go on.  In my provincial mind, a camping trip could never mean traveling more than 2 hours – 3 tops. When I peeled myself out of the backseat of the van and staggered into the scorching heat more than 5 hours later, I felt like I had just landed on the moon. And when I looked up at those mountains, so close they seemed fake, I knew I was far, far from home. Yet somehow, as my new colleagues and I exchanged tired, curious looks, I knew I might just be exactly where I needed to be.