For the 48th consecutive year, Proctor Academy has kicked off the school year with a five day hiking and backpacking trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. As is the theme of so much we do at Proctor, small groups work best as eight students and two faculty allow for relationships to develop that are simply not possible in a larger setting. Tech free, shower free, and with no shortage of challenges, Wilderness Orientation pushes even the most confident of new student outside his or her comfort zone. 

Today started with a teary goodbye for my daughter’s first day of kindergarten and ended with a hug and pride-filled smile of a little five year old who knew she had encountered a really hard thing, and conquered it. As our new students said goodbye to parents yesterday afternoon and embarked on Wilderness Orientation (a five-day, tech free, small group hiking and camping adventure in the White Mountains), there were plenty of looks of uncertainty on the faces of both parents and students; looks not too dissimilar from the tear stained gaze my five year old had on her face this morning. Entrusting your child to a school, especially a boarding school whose first responsibility with your most precious possession is a five day camping trip, is an incredibly hard thing. And our message to all those new parents at home right now is we are proud of you!

As a reader, and also one who enjoys the writing process, I think about flow. For me, the way a piece of fiction or an essay moves forward is like watching a dance come together. Well conceived, well written pieces flow, movements sync together, and you feel yourself a part of something bigger, something powerful, something instructive. To create a piece of writing with flow is not a haphazard process. It requires time, patience, and an openness to craft, not unlike what is required of any quality endeavor. When you step into this Proctor community at the end of this week or next week, you become a part of a school and a mission that has been moving forward since 1848. The “flow” of this school has taken over 150 years to create, hundreds of faculty and staff have contributed to it, thousands of students have benefitted from it, but if we think of this as a piece of writing, the essay is still being crafted.

Celebrating the life of one of our dearest colleagues alongside well over 1,000 alumni, neighbors, family and friends on Sunday afternoon. Being welcomed by an incredible breakfast from PAPA this morning. Sitting through insurance presentations. Hearing about faculty Summer Enrichment Program opportunities. Wrestling with difficult conversations as a faculty. Enjoying a most outstanding spread prepared by our dining services team at tonight’s welcome back dinner. We’ve given every emotion in our repertoire a workout over the past 36 hours.

August is upon us and that means the start of the school year is just around the corner! For boarding school students, normal start of year jitters are sometimes amplified by the unknown of living with a roommate for the first time. As we prepare to welcome 125 new students to campus, the vast majority of whom will be boarding students, we asked a few of our dorm leaders their thoughts on sharing their space with their roommate and the lessons they’ve learned from living away from home at boarding school.  

Incoming students will soon receive their dorm assignments and roommate pairings for the 2018-2019 school year. As we begin to gear up for the year ahead, we feature this week's faculty/staff profile on Kyle Tremblay is a Learning Specialist and also serves as Residential Life Coordinator for Proctor's Student Life Team. Her work organizing Dorm Leader program, Big Sister and Big Brother programs, and roommate mediation has been invaluable as Proctor continues to strengthen its residential life program. Read about her Proctor experience below!

I boarded the Roseway on Thursday morning at 6:30 am with trepidation. I had signed up for the day sail from Portsmouth to Boston on a glorious hot, still, calm July day in Andover. But this morning was fogged in, rain and thundershowers were predicted and big swells were inevitable. We sign up for things, sometimes, with a romantic notion of what they will be—an AP class that will impress our parents and colleges, a summer service trip that will be fulfilling and profound, an off-campus program that will challenge and inspire. And then when we get to the class, or the airport, or the dock, our feelings sink—why did we ever think this was a good idea?

“Grief is the price we pay for love, and when you feel the weight of the grief we are all feeling right now, you recognize just how much love lived in the one you are grieving.” These words were shared by Proctor’s counselor, Kara Kidder, during an informal gathering for faculty and staff Tuesday morning in the wake of longtime forestry faculty member Dave Pilla’s sudden passing. Just as Proctor’s Maintenance Department approaches the tireless clean up of downed trees from Tuesday night’s microburst that ripped through campus, the path to healing for our community will take time.