Letter to the Editor: "Fundatory" Events Changed My Brain Chemistry

Lounging in bed on a tranquil Friday night crunching bags of chips and watching Gossip Girls is all I wished for. I’d also take roaming on Fifth Avenue with the constant flicker of passing pedestrians—anything BUT having a mandatory dorm event, AGAIN!!

Before departing from Shanghai in August, I skimmed countless online reviews of boarding schools, most of the writers pessimistic as they bemoaned the lack of personal space, the stressful academics and vexing social lives. To my surprise, none of those troubles struck me when I arrived at Lawrenceville: in fact, the tight-knit community and abundant activities helped me meet many soul-mates, and the engrossing chats with my new roommate frequently spilled beyond the nighttime hours. 

Fast forward to my interim meeting with my advisor, who asked me to reflect on something worth improving for the rest of the school year. 

“I just feel like…I don’t have a life.” 

My advisor tilted his head, bewildered. 

“What kind of life do you want??”

I rubbed my hands nervously and racked my empty head. Perhaps I expected a different American highschool life: one which was more exhilarating and adventurous.  Lawrenceville makes sure that due dates, club meetings, and athletic events fill every nook and cranny in my schedule. Like a vine entwined around a sturdy tree, I am stuck here: I devote every piece of my time to one thing——Lawrenceville activities. 

Of course, boarding students know what they’re getting into before they come to campus. Our constant interaction with the community—those small, intimate moments we can create with our friends—make the boarding school experience so enriching, and Lawrenceville advertises these benefits. Looking back, I’m grateful for sitting in the Clark Music Center, laughing my head off at Impulse instead of killing my time on Broadway. I’m also glad that I didn’t peel away crisp hundreds in a gaudy Manhattan restaurant, instead improving my Buldak cooking skills with my roommate in the Stephens House’s kitchen. 

Our omnipresent REACH bureaucracy is essential, as boarding schools are committed to ensure their teenagers’ safety in loco parentis. Through creating  reasonable and rigid rules, Lawrenceville hopes to foster a healthy community where the rigor and ritual of learning is underpinned by the values of safety, integrity and trust. In reality, however, these cozy ideals are often subverted as I find myself stressed over strikes for forgetting to update my REACH location or dropping my phone in the phone holder when I first arrived as a new sophomore. The impact of the limiting rules at Lawrenceville on student experience is complex, and the utopian environment Lawrenceville aims to establish through its detailed rules needs to be maintained through clear conversation. The School should more thoroughly introduce the regulations. When the students’ understand the reason behind the rules and occasions when they apply, those limitations would become facilitations—our time as Lawrentians could make us self-disciplined and mold us into better adults. 

So as I walked out of the final class of fall term, ready to pack for Thanksgiving break, I found the “life” I was longing for while scrolling through my camera roll. In those pictures, I saw myself laughing, singing, and cuddling with people who I never once thought I could be friends with—there was laughter from unheard jokes, faces beaming with bright eyes. Rotting on my bed with Gossip Girl and getting lost on Fifth Avenue were no longer ideal ways to spend my weekends; I’d rather decorate the Christmas tree with my fellow Stephenites.