BULLETIN | WINTER 2016 25
I loved Choate unequivocally. The love affair began before I even enrolled, because my mother, Diane Charney, taught French there for many years before moving on to Yale. I was raised visiting the school and imagining what it might be like to study there. As a child, I would attend the annual spring musical, and looked up to the immensely talented grown-up-looking students who performed in it, and greeted my mother so enthusiastically after the show. I remember the scent of the carpets at Ruutz-Rees and the Arts Center: weighty, pendulous, a bit of mold and damp, but an over-arching warmth, like the inside of a cathedral filled with congregants. I came to Choate knowing full well its history, and loving that about it. I knew of the famous alumni who had attended, of its appearance in a long list of great novels, which marks its place in the cultural oxygen of America (I was gleeful when I found that Holden Caulfield had been kicked out, in The Catcher in the Rye). Part of what I loved was the fact that I knew that, studying there, I was a part of something far greater than any of its component parts. A school with so many illustrious graduates elevates all who attend it, and inspires in them the hope and optimism
There was an air of limitless possibility floating through the lamp-lit nights along the paths that smelled of warm grass, and the dust and wood chips of the stage beneath the chapel, and the waxy gloss of the polished wooden floor in the dining hall, watched over by that moose head that always received some inappropriate form of decoration. I spent a semester living in Paris through Choate’s Summer Abroad program, far from parents and feeling that, if I could live there on my own, then I could do just about anything. I learned the joy of studying and interacting with teachers who were always there for you, more friend than lecturer. I audited additional classes, just to try to engage with as many of the faculty as possible – I recall my confused adviser, when I said that I wanted to take two English majors, Mr. McCatty’s “Journeys and Quests” and Mr. Loeb’s “British Literature,” at once. Above all, I idolized the students one year above me – they seemed so much more mature and cool, but rarely did I find someone who was unfriendly. The environment was so hospitable it seemed a utopia, then and now. Those who might have been dismissed as nerds elsewhere were admired here, and there was a sense of welcome for all. We were all in this amazing place to-
As I hugged the tree on the night before graduation, I knew that I would never be prouder of having graduated from any other institution. that, decades hence, they too might be included in lists of its admirable alumni. It certainly made me want to be a better student, and a more successful graduate. When I was assigned JFK’s former dorm room in East Cottage my sixth form year, that feeling only solidified. As I hugged the tree on the night before graduation, I knew that I would never be prouder of having graduated from any other institution. The closest I came was when I studied at University of Cambridge, in England, but that was its own, rather different brand of magic – and I was already an adult then. My college, Colby, was fine but, to be honest, it was a bit of a letdown: Choate had a far more diverse student body, full of quirky, wonderful, eccentric, ingenious students from around the world – the sort of people I wanted to be friends with, who made me feel special, who were the future leaders of whatever field might be fortunate enough to have them choose it. I was fairly smart and a decent B-plus or A-minus student, but I was surrounded by kids of another breed, future laureates in teenage bodies. Choate was the place where they all gathered, from Greenwich to Portland to Seoul to Reykjavik, only to spread out once more, to the universities of the world. This was a unique chance to be with 800 marvelous souls, all the more remarkable because we were so young yet so thick with personality, full of potential, but still underdeveloped.
gether, a Hogwarts without fake magic but the real kind. I strove to be a better student but, more than that, a more interesting person, through my admiration for my fellow students who were impossibly interesting and advanced for their years. Part of the aura that surrounded them was the fact that we were from all over the world, and that we were far from home (I was only 17 minutes away from mine, but it was just far enough to feel the thrill of independence), that we could do our own thing without parental interference. And so whatever came naturally to smart, imaginative, kind kids who found the world a labyrinth of wonders was multiplied by the echo chamber of the equally inspired peers around them, undampened by even the most obliging form of parenting, unchecked by prejudice or bullying (neither of which I ever saw occur during my time), and spurred by the motivation to do the place proud and, therefore, hope to become part of its legacy. All of this was packed into the tearful farewell hug of the mother-tree at the heart of the campus. Sentimental, sure. But when the sentiments are pride, humility, inspiration, and gratitude, then let the tears flow. Noah Charney is a professor of art history and an internationally bestselling author. His new book The Art of Forgery: The Minds, Motives, and Methods of the Master Forgers is reviewed on page 60.