Naomi Pollock, Darryl Jacobs, and Katherine Buechner
angular,” explains Maria Eddy Tjeltveit ’77. Divided between two dorms, we rarely even gathered as a group. “We were not a pod of thirteen,” acknowledges Alyce. Yet rituals, like sit-down meals five times a week, bonded us. “Fancy clothes were not important to us,” recalls Lili. But getting dressed for dinner engendered camaraderie. “It was so communal,” says Ellie. Another difference was that the younger girls learned the proverbial ropes alongside the new boys joining their forms. “[That] was a more ‘normal’ experience,” says Lili. Aside from a foreign exchange student, there were no new boys in our class. While the forms below us seemed to have
a coed vibe right from the start, we had been plunked down in the middle of a boys’ school due to the skewed gender balance in the two upper grades. All of these factors contributed to our unique social status. “We got more than our share of attention,” recalls Alyce. In some ways, being surrounded by all those boys was a high school girl’s dream. In other ways, not so much. Whether we liked it or not, we stood out. We were very aware of being watched by our peers as well as by the faculty. At times, this was a burden. At times, this put pressure on us. At times, this was too much of a good thing. Plus, it challenged our integration into our own form.
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