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Photographed by Theo Wyss-Flamm (12-4)
This year, the vibe is off at Masterman. I’ve said this for a while, but I couldn't put my finger on why. I wasn't intent on finding the causes or culprit(s) of the imbalance. I just allowed the feeling to exist along with me. Just kidding, I explained my thoughts to anyone who seemed to have an inkling of interest in what I had to say. But recently, I’ve mostly figured it out.
I'm not here to give you all of the answers, mostly because a simple explanation doesn’t exist. I can state facts, and offer theories: There's a new dean. There are new teachers. For weeks, the line to get a bacon-egg-and-cheese was too long to grab breakfast without being late to school. Maybe, like me, you miss seeing Mrs. Parker and Ms. Moore everywhere, somehow managing to do everything all at once. Or perhaps you still aren't used to seeing Mr. Gilken dress like a state senator at a town hall meeting every day. In short: things are different!
And change doesn’t stop within our own marble halls. We are not immune to the changes happening around us and we shouldn’t be. I hope that the situation at the Ben Franklin-SLA complex gives you more than pause. I hope that it makes you angry. I am angry. Even if we complain about the confiscation of glassware or lengthy metal detector lines or the occasional mouse, there are people who cannot return to their schools at all. I wonder what their senior year looks like. I won’t mince words: Safety at school is a right, not a privilege. We are privileged not to face displacement.
I wasn’t expecting any of this. I read something once that said that our commutes home begin to feel shorter, because our brains have already seen the route, and we don't have to take everything in for the first time. I thought that senior year would be like that. I've already made this trip three times before and I was sure that this time would be a cakewalk. But it isn't. I'm not referring to the lie that senior year is the easiest, because I've heard it before and it is not true (and I never bought into it anyways). I didn't think for one second that AP Spanish or Gov or Statistics or Lit would be easy. So no, I'm not complaining about my rich and intellectually stimulating course load. I'm writing about a different extremely first-world problem: things aren’t the way that I told myself they’d be and I didn’t have the chance to feel smug about my predictions for this year so I’m whining about it in Voices.
But I’m only whining to you to underscore the universal truth that no matter how much you were relying on things remaining the same, they are going to change. Sometimes the changes are ever so slight in the grand scheme of your life that you don’t even realize their effects, but they exist. We have to decide whether to fight against the current or roll with the punches for a while. I know that I haven’t quite made my decision yet. But, Masterman, remember: the choice is yours.
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