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Alumni
Review #6, Class of 1999 |
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| College
Enrolled |
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Yale |
| Home
Town, State (Country) |
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Lowell,MA |
| Years
Attended Boarding School |
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4 |
| Activities
During Boarding School |
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I wrote for and edited several publications. I was editor of Backtracks, a student magazine; an editor of The Courant, the literary magazine; an associate editor of The Philippian, the school newspaper; and a contributor to a couple other magazines. I did some acting, though I was never a serious theater person. And I tried tennis, wrestling, sqash, cross country, and lacrosse. I finally settled on Search and Rescue, a sort of mini Outward Bound program that Andover counts as a sport, and became a group leader, which meant planning camping/rock climbing trips, supervising other participants, and helping people make the most of the program. |
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| 1.) What do you think makes your school unique relative
to other boarding schools?
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| Andover is a lot like a small college. First, because the facilities--academic, athletic, arts--are right up there with what you might see at many liberal arts colleges. Second, because it's fairly large compared to most boarding schools. My graduating class had about 340 people in it, and, though they've shrunken the student body by about 100 students since I graduated, it's still substantially bigger than most similar schools. I considered this a real advantage, because it allowed me to meet a broader range of people than I might have otherwise, and because it really improved the caliber and range of sports and extracurriculars. Nevertheless, it was small enough that I felt like I knew most of the people in my class at least well enough to say hello. Third, because academic life is similar to college in the breadth of courses offered, in its challenges, and in the teaching style. It's a terrific place for a person who's independent enough to make the most of what it offers. |
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| 2.) What was the best thing that happened to you in boarding school? |
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| At Andover I grew up a lot more quickly than I would have had I gone not gone to boarding school. Regulations aside, the school gave students a huge amount of freedom, especially for a 14 or 15 year old. Despite being a day student, I was basically away from home from 14 on, and I consider that a real blessing. I developed much more maturity having to deal with my own schedule, interact with friends and classmates with little parental oversight, and set my own course academically. I also came into early contact with very smart, motivated people, whether they were students or teachers. The level of intelligence was incredible for a high school, and I was challenged academically and personally. It was by no means a perfect experience, but I think Andover allowed me great opportunities to explore. More specifically, I discovered passions for writing and for history. They were nurtured by teachers who saw my interests and encouraged them and deepened by friends who shared them. They carried through college, and they're the motivation behind the job I took after graduating. |
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| 3.) What would you have done differently during your boarding school experience? |
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| I would've looked at more boarding schools when I was applying. Andover was the only one I applied to; if I hadn't gotten in, I probably would have gone to my hometown high school. I had no regrets about going to Andover, but I think I would have taken an approach like I did when applying to colleges, checking out several and applying to the ones I liked. |
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| 4.) What would you never want to change about your school? |
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| The people and the academics. I met a lot of great friends, both other students and some of my teachers. Andover is a real community, and people are, for the most part, genuinely interested in the happiness and advancement of everybody around them. You can alwasys tell that when you run into somebody you went to Andover with, even somebody you weren't close to, on a subway or in a bar or wherever, and you start swapping stories about people you knew and checking into each others lives. As for the academics, the Andover coursebook looked like something that belongs at a small college (especially the English and history courses), and teachers wanted you to learn how to think critically and incisively, rather than just spitting words back at them. |
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| 5.) What things could be improved about your school? |
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| Recently, Andover has started to regulate student life more than it did when I was there. Curfews and room visitation policies, in particular, have been tightened, or so I've heard. This seems partly a result of the danger of lawsuits, something the school can't ignore. However, the unregulated interactions students have with each other are as valuable a part of Andover as classes or sports, and the school needs to preserve a place for students to just do their own thing. Tied to that is the problem of favoritism in enforcing rules. Some house counselors or teachers are more lax than others, others simply like some students and are more forgiving of them, or it seems that some students (especially star athletes or the children of very connected people) just get away with doing things that would've gotten most people in trouble. |
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| 6.) Do you have any final words of wisdom for visiting or incoming students
to your school? |
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| 1. Chicken patties. The best food at Commons, period.
2. Play cluster soccer, unless you have a varsity sport in the fall. There's a lot of fun competition among the clusters.
3. Try to stack a dorm, if you still can. When I was at Andover, there were about five or six small dorms--4 to 6 people--in converted houses. You could get together a group of friends and live together, basically in your own house. I think some of these dorms may have been closed when the school decided to shrink its enrollment, but if they're still there, take advantage of them.
4. In general, keep some perspective. There's no one way to go through Andover and no one reason for being there. People can get too wrapped up in grades or getting into _the_ college. In a few years, you'll value the conversations you had with your friends more than getting the highest grade in History 30. |
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| 1.)
What did you like best about your school’s academics? |
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| The teachers really pushed me, and Andover rewards students who are curious and intelligent--the kind of people who are usually bored out of their minds in middle school. You will be asked to work hard, but there was a decent amount of freedom to discover and pursue your interests. On top of that, most of the instructors genuinely cared about their students. I still keep in touch with a few of them, and I benefitted greatly from interacting with them outside of class. I owe the fact that I started taking writing seriously (I now work for a magazine) to my freshman English teacher, who suggested I try to publish some of my work. Overall, the combination of tough but(usually) interesting work and truly dedicated teachers means that you'll be in great shape for college. I actually felt that my first year at an Ivy League school was easier than my last two years at Andover. |
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| 2.)
What did you like least about the academics in your school? |
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| People can be very hard driving. Depending on your classes, there is often a lot of competition. It wasn't to the point where people undermined each other's work, but I felt like some students would make points in class just to impress the teacher or show up somebody else, rather than to engage in an honest dialog with their classmates. This certainly wasn't the dominant element among students, but it was there, and it could get annoying. There could also be a weird, almost masochistic culture that developed around bragging about who slept the least, who had the toughest finals, who had the most pages to write, etc. |
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| 1.)
What did you like best about your school’s athletics? |
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| Athletics were required, which I think is important--you need to do something besides study, and I discovered new interests because I was forced (as I would have put it at the time) to do something athletic every trimester. Because of Andover's size and resources, there was a huge range of options: varsity, jv, and freshman interscholastic sports, intramural sports, outdoor programs, dance, etc. Almost all had good coaches and plenty of resources from the school. They've built new facilities since I graduated, which should make the situation even better than when I was there. |
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| 2.)
What did you like least about the athletics in your school? |
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| There was not much emphasis on development in sports where the school could count of a large number of already talented incoming students. I tried lacrosse for a year on the jv2 (basically, the freshman) team, and even there I found that my coaches, though concerned about building players' skills, wound up picking a few outstanding players and leaning on them and didn't work as hard with the rest of the team. In sports most people don't play before high school (e.g. wrestling or squash) the situation was much better. |
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What did you like best about your school’s art program? |
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| Andover's support for the arts was incredible. The teachers and the facilities were top notch, and you were encouraged to participate at whatever level you could. The options were numerous. Every trimester had several plays, an art exhibition, tons of vocal and instrumental performances, poetry and fiction readings... I'm probably missing something there. Within reason, the arts were open to everybody. If you couldn't act or play an instrument, you wouldn't be in a show or the jazz band, but if you had some talent and just wanted to dabble, you usually had options. On top of that, some of the students were phenomenal. |
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What did you like least about your school’s art program? |
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| The arts could get very cliquish. Everybody knew who the best musicians, writers, and actors were, and in a lot of cases it was assumed that they had a right to look down on people, reward their friends, and generally be a pain in the rear. There was an odd dichotomy: on one hand, supportiveness and openness, on the other, a sort of snobby competitiveness. If you were going to spend a lot of time in the arts, you had to either be outstanding or develop a thick skin. I don't think this is specifically an Andover problem, though, just a high school one. |
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What did you like most about the extracurricular activities offered
at your school? |
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| There were incredible opportunities. Andover had a weekly newspaper, several magazines, active ethnic and international student groups, a big community service program, a radio station, and a lot of special interest groups. They were also extremely supportive of students who wanted to start something new. "If you aren't interested in what there is, start something" is a cliche, but it really was true. |
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| 2.)
What did you like least about the extracurricular activities offered
at your school? |
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| Extracurriculars, like classes, were extremely demanding. If you wanted to play a leadership role, you had to put in an incredible amount of time. There were several times when my commitments overwhelmed me, and my grades probably suffered as a result. Time management was incredibly important, and if you couldn't learn to handle it, you were in trouble. You almost had to specialize in something to get the most out of extracurricular life at Andover, because there was always somebody who was _only_ doing one or two things and making them into his or her entire life. Some extracurriculars could also be competitive and political, especially when it came to choosing officers. |
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What was the best thing about dorm life in your school? |
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| Well, I was a day student who spent most of my free time at school, hanging out with friends in the dorms. Dorms developed their own communities, their own quirks, which was really terrific most of the time. House counselors were generally very helpful, even to somebody like me, who wasn't a boarder. Andover also has a cluster system that divided the school into smaller, more manageable communities. After four years, I knew almost everyone in my cluster pretty well. Overall, it was a great way to meet people and really get to know them. |
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What did you like least about dorm life? |
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| The regulations were a real pain. You had to be in a dorm by 10 unless you were a senior, when it was 11. Freshman lights out, enforced by prefects, was 11. Visiting rooms of members of the opposite sex involved a complicated permission system that most students simply ignored. Students couldn't have fridges, microwaves, coffeemakers, or TVs (unless you had a medical reason or were a prefect). However, many people found different ways to sneak around those restrictions. Finally, the enforcement of dorm rules was uneven. One dorm was famous for the almost total lack of regulation imposed on hockey players, because the house counselor coached varsity hockey. |
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What was the best thing about your dining arrangements? |
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| There were no sit-down dinners or dress codes, and you could come and go as you pleased. It was four years of all you can eat. Commons had four main dining rooms, all of which developed their own character and group of regulars. Once you got settled, you knew you could walk into "your" dining room and sit down with at least a few friends. The food itself was fairly bland and uninteresting, but it was actually better than what I ate at college. |
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What did you like least about your dining arrangements? |
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| The more problematic side of the four dining rooms was that they engendered a lot of cliquishness. There was lower left (teachers, "nerds," international students), upper left (artsy kids), upper right (big time athletes and the country club set), and lower right (African American students in one third, everyday average people who didn't fit into any of the other groups in the rest). Even within each dining hall, there were tables where everybody lived in a particular dorm or worked on the same shows or played on the same team. However, it's high school. I think that's just what happens. The other problem was that there was no "fourth meal" option. Dinner ended around 7, and after that you were on your own for the rest of the night. |
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| 1.) How welcome did you feel by the other students when you first
arrived at the school? |
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| Orientation was well done, and almost everyone was excited to meet new people. It was done in the clusters, which meant you had a built-in social base to start with. Andover also assigned new students a Blue Key who took them through orientation and was a resource for questions. As freshman, we were assigned a "triad," a group of people with whom we had English, social science, and art or music. Some triads got along better than others, but just about everybody had one or two good friends they met in theirs. |
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| 2.)
Describe the level of diversity and integration of students in your
school: |
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| I don't know what Andover's minority or international student percentages were, but it seemed fairly diverse for a prep school. I actually had more contact in my classes with students from different ethnic backgrounds at Andover than I did in college. And I had more minority or international friends. I think it was because the school was just too small for people of any background to completely self-segregate. At a good-sized university, it's much worse: preppies are friends with preppies, athletes are friends with athletes, blacks are friends with blacks. Economically, Andover was certainly a pretty wealthy place. However, because students could not own cars or work, the differences in lifestyle among students of different economic backgrounds wasn't too great--there were limits, effectively, on how much you could flaunt your wealth if you had it. There was also fairly generous need-based financial aid, and I think the school was concerned with the diversity of its student body. I came from a middle-class family, and I rarely felt like an outsider because of it. |
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| 3.)
Describe typical fun activities you did on a weekend: |
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| I would hang out in the dorms with friends, go to the student lounge, head downtown for coffee, or go to plays or other artistic events. During senior year I wound up spending a lot of my time going off campus to parties or going into the woods to drink. There was a sort of aboveground/underground aspect to weekends. I might go into the woods with some friends, then go to the lounge and play video games or pool. I never felt much peer pressure to drink, but drinking was an aspect of the weekend social scene, especially for juniors and seniors. Perhaps a quarter of the campus drank regularly, but it never dominated social life. This was due, in large part, to the stiff penalties ("two strikes and you're out") associated with any kind of illegal activity. |
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What was the town like? |
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| The school is about a five to ten minute walk from downtown Andover. Students often went downtown to get coffee, shop, or eat, and everyday necessities were always easy to get. There was a little tension between the school and the town. Andover and Andover High kids sometimes got in fights, and around Halloween there were always drive by eggings and things like that. But it was never a huge problem, and I don't think most people felt unwelcome. Andover is also about 45 minutes from Boston by train, so it was easy to go to a bigger city on the weekend if you got permission. |
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| 6:00 AM | Wake up, shower, drive to school breakfast at Commons | | 8:00 AM | AP German | | 9:00 AM | AP Statistics | | 10:00 AM | Conference Period--meet for 15 min. with academic advisor, check email for rest | | 10:30 AM | Art 10 (required intro to art course) | | 11:30 AM | Beginning of long free period. Study, get lunch. | | 1:30 PM | African history | | 2:30 PM | About half an hour free before sports. Hang around with some friends in their dorm. | | 3:00 PM | Cluster soccer. | | 5:30 PM | Dinner | | 6:30 PM | Go to the library and take notes for history paper. | | 8:00 PM | Meet with coeditor about next issues of magazine | | 10:00 PM | Coeditor needs to be back in her dorm; drive home | | 10:30 PM | Study some more. | | 1:00 AM | Go to bed. | |
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| 10:00 AM | Wake up. | | 12:00 AM | Drive to school. | | 12:30 AM | Lunch downtown with friends. | | 2:00 PM | Hang out in friend's dorm. Watch TV in common room, play frisbee. | | 4:00 PM | Study in library. | | 6:00 PM | Dinner at Commons. Hang around in the dining room after the serving line is closed. | | 7:15 PM | Go downtown and rent a movie. Watch in the dorm common room. | | 9:30 PM | Go to lounge. Play pool. Check out dance. Quick beer in woods. Back to lounge. | | 11:00 PM | Back to friend's dorm where you're spendig the night. Watch more TV, mess around. | | 2:00 AM | Bed. | |
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