For Proctor folks, coming out of the winter months and into spring can be the toughest time of the year. The months of January and February tend to be some of the darkest around because of the way the light recedes from dorm rooms and classrooms, making the nights seem excruciatingly longer. Mercifully, with half of the school on snow, getting out into the natural world gives everyone the shot of energy they need to thrive in a climate that seems to be getting more and more mercurial with every passing year.
With the prospect of more daylight and the hopes of seeing green grass on the horizon, we begin to shake off our own hibernation from the winter and prepare to fully engage ourselves, once again, as we fully embrace the longer days and shorter nights of spring.
Coming into this new light, we spend the first week of the term in Project Period, a mood-lifting time that gives us the boost that we need. What we have to look forward to is what this new season brings, which is underscored by this past week of fully immersive experiences of Project Period, relishing the human connection that feels like a hard reset into what we want from our lives in spring.
As the days get warmer and the darkness recedes, students begin to double down on the final nine weeks of the year. Our students returning from off-campus programs probably get the fleeting nature of their time at Proctor the most. Many students returning from Ocean Classroom, Mountain Classroom, Proctor-en-Segovia, Costa Rica, and European Classroom felt their time race by with their classmates and teachers. I would hazard to guess that they look at this initial time back as a reconnection and recommitment to why they came to Proctor in the first place. They feel the specialness of the human connection that is their peers, and many of them talk about how close they are to the friends they made while they were on their various programs. They have made dinner and strong memories together as they saw the light of a different region or country in the world.
Similarly, for those coaches and athletes preparing for their spring sport, the possibilities of a bright season looms large. Every team is a Cinderella team at this point as they prepare to make a long run into the teeth of what feels like the shortest of all of the seasons. This past week, I have heard some of the older athletes mention the specialness of working with some of the younger athletes that they have not had a lot of time with outside of winter practices and the spring trips they made. They, too, are just beginning to make lasting memories together by starting to put in the hours and hours of focused practice to come closer to the results they want and expect from themselves.
And, let’s not forget that we at Proctor don’t always have the time that our peer schools have with a particular spring sport or endeavor because we encourage choice. We want students to choose to go on a particular off-campus program or even senior project, which might take them away from a sport that they have played their whole lives. Unlike college athletes, we don’t “lock” kids into committing to a team for the entirety of their Proctor careers because we believe in the expansion of identity by encouraging them to make sophisticated and discerning choices. We do hard things like deciding to be more of who we are by exploring new things. This helps to infuse a different kind of energy into the school as we get farther and farther away from this period of melting snow. The expansion of who a person is has always been the hallmark of a Proctor education. We value growth in all of its guises.
Finally, we move firmly into this season of rebirth and regeneration by shifting classes, schedules, and even room assignments around because our model not only demands that we shuffle the deck, but all of that movement helps us to appreciate the larger Proctor experience as opposed to doing things the way that we have always done them. In terms of starting a-new each trimester, we are nimble at making fast friends and new connections with people we may have seen most of our careers at Proctor. We also value the creativity that comes about every three months because it allows us to shift our assumptions about the “other,” which helps us to do the same thing about ourselves as well. Whether it is working alongside a new-ish peer in Project Period or traveling together with a group of students to a far away place together, we insist upon the act of self-creation and rejuvenation that rebounds each spring.
Our strength as a community is in this striving to understand ourselves better after the deep hibernation that comes out of the greytones of the winter months. We know that our time at Proctor races faster than we can blink an eye. Perhaps it is what they say about parenthood that can also be said about our time at Proctor, which we note especially going from winter to spring–that is the days are long but the years are short.
Let’s celebrate every single minute of our days and our years.
Brian W. Thomas, Proctor Academy Head of School
Curated Reading:
I take my inspiration from poetry and have been steeping myself in the wonder that is Mary Oliver’s “Spring.” Read it: HERE. Listen to it on the “Close Reads Podcast”: HERE.
