Sometimes, when I look back at my four years at Hotchkiss, it seems like things haven’t changed much.
Yes, we no longer require distanced conversations and masks, but I still spend hours of my day in the music wing and have decor from Prep year hung up in my room.
But if I really think about it (truly shut my eyes and squint), Hotchkiss has completely changed my life—and who I am. It hasn’t all been perfect (a secret: high school never is), but in these past four years I have had those Pinterest-worthy boarding school moments (VS beach picnics and sunset lake swims), those academically inspiring discoveries (a combined thank you to Dr. Blevins, Dr. Fleishman, and Charlotte Brontë), and those moments of spontaneous laughter that make you drop from your chair and clutch your side. It’s a toss-up between Saturday evenings you never want to end and those spent in your room. Hotchkiss has pushed me, surprised me, and shown me just how many math problems I can do in one night.
It has given me a sense of accomplishment, academic excitement, and a hard-earned sense of appreciation (although it really had to work for that one). Of course, it wasn’t perfect. But perhaps it was never meant to be.
Perhaps the wind was always supposed to howl past the third floor of Buehler, and the snow was always supposed to hit on late-night walks back from the MAC. Maybe winter holidays were meant to be bland, and today weekends never as fun as promised. Maybe post-rave hallway debriefs and spring walks on VS beach were meant to be sprinkled in but savored briefly. Maybe all those moments were simply meant to be idyllic snapshots— the ones that I will hold on to and retell a dozen times— while the rest of my time here was instead meant for resilience and resolution: to shape who I am today.
While I know that I am just one of the thousands of students who walk, and will walk, through those Snack Bar side doors, Hotchkiss has given me so much. And so, while Hotchkiss wasn’t perfect, it was everything it was meant to be—and maybe that’s perfection, after all.
