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. 

Thursday evening I hit the trail to drop in on a Wilderness Orientation group. It was getting dark, but I knew where the group had camped along the Pond Brook Trail in the Sandwich Wilderness. I knew the swimming holes, knew the rerouted section, knew the waterfalls. I jogged up through a tree farm a little after 6:30 pm. The sun had dropped down behind the Sandwich Range, and where the Guinea Pond trail angled left, I hooked a right on the Bennett Street trail to run along Pond Brook in the softening light. The dog stitched back and forth through the pines, and after a mile or two I caught the sound of laughter against the brook. It was Patty Pond and Lori Patriacca’s ‘01 group.

It is a refrain from a song written by my brother, Trent Wagler, and performed by his band The Steel Wheels. The song, based on stories from our grandfather, presents the challenges faced by a young person growing up in the Amish church. The Amish, famous for their buggies, bonnets, baking and furniture are a sect of anabaptists who broke off from the Mennonites in the late 17th century.

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.

Over the course of the last two days, new faculty members have experienced a crash course in life at Proctor as a part of their new faculty orientation. Charged with the impossible task of understanding Proctor’s culture in a few short days, information is shared at a remarkably rate: names, buildings, rules, expectations, best practices, personal experiences. Throughout it all this group has absorbed each tidbit of knowledge with an eagerness and enthusiasm that reminds us that those who step into a community must do so with intentionality.

Roughly 20% of Proctor's students live locally and make the commute to Proctor's campus each day. While these day students  take part in evening study hall and extra help sessions, participate in all campus activities, and have access to all Proctor has to offer, incoming day students often feel apprehension about how they will balance being a day student at a boarding school. This year's Day Student Leaders, Margaret Fair '19 and Henry Bechok '19, share their perspectives and advice below on how to navigate the challenges and take full advantage of the opportunities of being a day student at Proctor.