News

Celebrating our Cultures – Together

This morning, we were all greeted in the lobby by students in the Middle Eastern and North African Student Association, who had brought dates, figs, and other treats for the community in celebration and anticipation of Ramadan, which begins next Friday. Last week, students from the Black Student Union hosted a fun, cookout-themed evening event, which was open to the whole community and featured personal testimonials by students and some excellent food. In the same week, the Jewish Students Organization organized a beautiful Tu Bishvat seder – an important moment for sharing and connection. All of this was fresh off some lovely and well attended cultural events through the fall and early winter: a Lunar New Year celebration sponsored by the East Asian Students Association, where the gym was filled with a delicious buffet, games, and good cheer; a school-wide breakfast hosted by the Latin American Student Association; a garba in celebration of Navratri sponsored by the South Asian Students Association. And there is more to come.

In our experience, sharing our cultures, traditions, stories, and identities builds community. It creates space for students to bring out parts of themselves that are important. It promotes belonging, especially when the doors are open wide to all members of the community. Our experience with events like these runs counter to the growing worry in our society that focusing on an individual’s identity is Balkanizing. Our identities are complex, multi-faceted, and central to who we are. When shared, they can bring us together.

I am grateful to the student organizers, their families, Dr. Alvarez, and Ms. Petertam for bringing us together in these moments.

What You Do, Not Where You Go

I was talking with a BUA alumnus who is now well established in his career in the world of finance. We spent some time talking about hiring and the market for talent. At one point, he shared that his firm used to hire almost exclusively from the most highly selective colleges and universities in the country through on-campus recruiting programs. His firm stopped that practice recently. When I asked why, he explained that in part it was because they had been missing out on so many really strong applicants at the top of their classes at colleges outside that rarified set of schools, and that some of those applicants have turned out to be the rising stars at the firm. A look at the wide range of colleges that America’s top CEOs attended seems to confirm our alum’s observation.

Of course the country’s most selective institutions have a lot to offer and can be a great fit for some students. But what makes a college the right fit for a given student has vanishingly little to do with where a school falls on a ranking list and everything to do with how well that community matches the student. What kind of classmates do you learn best with? What kind of setting makes you happy and motivated? What do you want to study, and does the college have a particular strength in that area? Are there professors you would be excited to work with, labs you want to work in, archives you want to explore, clubs you want to join? We are so fortunate to have college counselors who take the time to get to know each student, help them discover what they are looking for, and work with them to identify colleges that could be a great fit.

And if you do find a great fit, it makes it much more likely that you will make the most of the experience. What does that look like? Excelling in rigorous coursework in a field you are passionate about. Refining your interests. Engaging in original research. Founding or leading a campus organization. Making deep connections with one or two professors who become mentors and advocates through graduate school and career. Making friends who will form a powerful network and support system for life. Those are the things that are the best predictors of fulfillment and success after college. After two decades working with high schoolers, I have seen that pattern play out many times over.

For more on this topic, I’d recommend Frank Bruni’s 2015 book “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be” or his accompanying New York Times opinion piece, “How to Survive the College Admissions Madness” as good starting points.

Down the Rabbit Hole

In a recent calculus class I visited, a student asked, “Can you have a function where you can take a first derivative but not a second derivative?” The question was related to the topic the class was discussing, but tangentially (excuse the pun). The teacher smiled, paused, and proceeded to write an example on the board where the proposition was true – taking time to unpack it for the whole class. The teacher had the knowledge to come up with an answer on the spot. He had the experience to know that he could get through the explanation quickly and still cover what was on tap for the day. And, most importantly, he recognized that engaging in that moment would reward that student’s curiosity and send a signal to all of the students about the value of their questions.

We are incredibly fortunate to be at a school with a faculty that has the disposition and content knowledge necessary to confidently and efficiently travel down the rabbit holes that our students open. I saw it recently in a Latin class where a student wondered about the placement of certain words in a sentence and the teacher explained the way long and short vowels may have met a poet’s rhythmic constraints; in a geometry classroom where the teacher engaged with a student who had a theory about the effect of moving from a five-sided to a six-sided star shape; in a music class, when, in response to a student’s question about how Spanish composers differed from their contemporaries, the teacher took the time to demonstrate the subtle differences on the piano and filled in the relevant music theory. I could go on.

Too often, high school is a place where even highly capable, motivated students lose their natural curiosity. That doesn’t have to happen. Curiosity can be – and has to be – nurtured. This is one way to do that.