Lawrenceville's Busiest Bees

Home to some of the world’s most studious students, fervent athletes, and dedicated club leaders, Lawrenceville has some busy bees. Even after class ends, if you take a stroll around campus, you know what to expect: actors rushing in and out of KAC humming tunes from Into the Woods, football players striding across the field, runners sweating on the treadmill in Loucks as they peruse one final set of chemistry flashcards, The Lawrence board editing articles to be published on Friday… who’s the busiest of us all? 

Perhaps it’s Kinsley Du ’26, who is a member of the Periwig Council, Tour Guide Council, L10 Executive Board, The Lit board, Ropes Course Instructor, Impulse comedy troupe, and the Philharmonic orchestra, all at the same time. “I came to school two weeks early, first for ropes course instructors, then for the musical,” said Du. A great portion of his time is spent on the School's fall musical production, Into the Woods. As Du puts it, “Not only do we have to go to rehearsals to take notes, we also have a lot of tech meetings to determine who'll be on the musical tech crew, along with all of the technical things that will happen backstage during the show.” He expects the upcoming tech rehearsals to be even more complicated.

Maybe the varsity football players are the busiest bees, rushing about from game to game. Player Archer Wang ’26 described that “a lot of [his] time is devoted to football, with two to three hours per day spent on practice, lifting weights and learning from films of our past games.” On game days, players spend more than 10 hours from pre-game preparations to post-game reflections. “We would usually take a team walk before the game,” said Wang, “to get us hyped and hearten us by recalling all the time we committed to this sport.”

Students are alarmed at the mere mention of Honors Chemistry—described by many as the hardest science course at Lawrenceville. Beginning with foundational topics such as the structure of an atom, the difficulty of the course extends toward in-depth study of thermodynamics and electrochemistry. Victoria Slavov ’26 agrees that “Honors Chemistry is definitely one of the more difficult courses I am taking this year,” as the long labs which require exact operation and the challenging tests can be daunting. “I put in between one and two hours a night on chemistry homework,” said Slavov, and “on days where I know I have a lot of chemistry work, I try my best to do all my other homework before study hall so I can focus only on Honors Chemistry.”

The busiest bees could, of course, be The Lawrence board and its writers, as they spend a great amount of time creating articles and polishing the paper. Angel Xin ’26, who writes for The Lawrence nearly every week, noted that “it is definitely challenging to write an additional article on top of all the essays I have for homework.” Jenny Zhao ’25, Features Editor, shares that “we typically spend an upwards of six hours in the office every week on top of the time we take to edit articles on our own.”  

 As Lawrentians search for the equilibrium between extracurriculars and the rigorous academic curriculum, they slowly develop their own methods of time-management. Du shared that he takes “five to 10 minutes every morning to think about [his] schedule for the day.” He also emphasizes the importance of communication and understanding: “I was honestly super bad at time management before I came here—my parents basically took care of my entire schedule for each day. But time management is all about taking that first step with thinking forwards to the future and utilizing the resources around you.” 

Even Honors Chemistry doesn’t seem so daunting as students progress into the school year equipped with better time management skills. “It is definitely manageable, [by taking] good notes in class and frequently going to consultation,” said Slavov. 

“We have no time for goofing around,” joked Wang, “we have to be extremely focused both on the field and in the classrooms.” Despite the stress we might feel from juggling many balls at the same time, Lawrentians share in the excitement for the rewarding experience of all life’s business.