community life

trevor h. paul english faculty, dorm parent, and coach

When alumni I know come back to campus, whether they’ve been away for a few months or a few years, I’m always struck by what they remember the most. It’s people, of course, but the activities are often not the big ones: theater, sports, or graduation. They remember the weekends.

I’ve been at Hebron Academy since the fall of 2013, and since I stepped foot on campus I have been trying to find ways to make the downtime fun for students and faculty. We call the program that aims to offer new and exciting experiences Community Life, and it earns that name by being the thing that gives Hebron its special, often impossible to pinpoint, feel.

So what do weekends actually look like? We aim to accommodate everything students want, and offer some things that they maybe don’t realize they want until they do them. Of course, being in the woods of Maine, every person eventually needs a trip to the mall or the store to shop or just feel that busy pace of semi-urban life. But it is the woods and rivers and mountains that make Maine so dynamic.

We send students to Coos Canyon to cliff jump in the spring. We go apple-picking and for hayrides in the fall. We hike and snowshoe on trails near and far. And when you just don’t want to go off campus at all? That’s fine! Build a gingerbread house in the dining hall, or take part in a big video game tournament, or latch onto a faculty member with a passion for something artistic or creative and spend some time trying it out with them. The Community Life program has worked best when our staff come to morning meetings and are fired up to do something with the students. If you see an adult, a role model, excited about something it really doesn’t matter if you know what it is or have done it before, you want to try it too.

But for me, of course, it’s always the big events that I get the most excited about. Every October I spend 48-72 hours prepping a massive haunted house somewhere on campus in which the faculty act as haunters. We have lip sync competitions and the new tradition of Hebron’s own Winter Games, with activities for every person of every kind. Those big moments, the ones we really drum up excitement for weeks or even months in advance; those are the things I hear about from alums new and old.

...since I stepped foot on campus I have been trying to find ways to make the downtime fun for students and faculty. We call the program that aims to offer new and exciting experiences Community Life, and it earns that name by being the thing that gives Hebron its special, often impossible to pinpoint, feel.

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They always come back and remember the people who helped them get their education and grow into adults, but they laugh and smile about the weekends. You hear more “remember when” comments about that than anything else. So that is why I keep trying to up the ante for Community Life each year. I want more students to come back and tell me what weekend stuck with them, and made their Hebron experience meaningful and unique. n