Clockwise from top left: Arthur Jelin with Steven Anton, Libby Llanso and Edis Levent, Laura Sodano, Albert Zhu, Will Bienstock, Anna Thorndike and Jack Fitzpatrick (senior prefects), Sashni-Cole Matthews, and Diva deLoayza (center)
and tagged out to end the game. To this day I have never laughed so hard; I collapsed to the ground gasping for air, and I think I saw the notoriously calm and collected Allie Banks down there, too. Later, when asked about “the run,” Zhamoyani explained that all he had heard were our excited cries of “Go home!” Of course we meant to continue running to home plate, but unfortunately our teammate decided to take the long way. To be completely honest, if we were going to go down, that was the best possible way to do it. The fourth type of person you will encounter here is the one who shows they care. When I was a toddler, a physics teacher at Groton gave me a tiny blue bench painted with my name
and yellow stars. When I was a middle schooler, practicing in the squash courts and silently idolizing the Groton squash team, that same teacher stopped in regularly to watch me and help with my game. When I was a senior in one of my last matches on that Groton team, at the height of physical exhaustion and on the brink of defeat, his hand was on my shoulder to guide me and spur me back into the fight. I can speak confidently for the Form of 2016 when I say that we have all had those figures. For students, it can be easy to think that adults on campus are removed from our lives. Looking back on five years, the opposite is true: they shape us. Whether by the advisor who gives you a book and a piece of soccer swag every year, the
band leader who shows you how to fall in love with jazz, the admission officer who takes you to one of his basketball games, or the Latin teacher that hugs you after you get dumped by a girl in her dorm, we have all been touched by faculty and staff who care about us. I have only mentioned a handful of the types of relationships created during my time here. For the younger students, the other kinds of connections are for you to find out. I wish you the best as you do so. As for us, the end of our chapter here has arrived. The last words of Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick are as follows: “and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.” As I said before, I’ve seen this tent rise, fill, and fall many times, and
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