The MilTon PaPer Faculty Issue
MAY 5, 2017
MILTON’S INDEPENDENT WEEKLY STUDENT NEWSPAPER
Farewell, East of Eden By CAROLINE SABIN John Steinbeck’s East of Eden has been the Class IV English department summer reading since as long as anyone around here can remember. I read it when I was a rising freshman in 1982. The department chair before Mr. Chung says that it was already the summer reading when he arrived. The previous department chair, who might have been able to tell me when the English department first decided to assign it, is dead. But East of Eden is the Class IV English department summer reading no more. We’re moving on, and it’s probably about time. This move is tough for me, though, so I thought I’d take a minute to pay homage to a Milton mainstay and ruminate for a bit about tradition, rites of passage, and change. You all read East of Eden; what did you think? I’ve always enjoyed my students’ enthusiastic response to it. Some of them complained about the length, about the slow start, about the confusing cast of characters, but the discussions were always spirited. After all, there’s something for everyone: violence, romance, jealousy, ambition, blackmail, the glory of California and Model-T’s and refrigerated train cars, the horrors of prostitution and abandonment and suicide. Everyone had his favorite character: The saints loved Samuel, the scholars loved Lee, the scoundrels loved Cal, and the really honest ones could admit that they loved Cathy. After the rollicking opening discussions, however, we came to my favorite part: Why the title East of Eden? Some students knew the Adam and Eve story; a smaller number knew the Cain and Abel story; no
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Inside This Issue BRYAN PRICE
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SARAH WOOTEN
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TODD GOODMAN
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SCIENCE FICTION
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VOL. 34, NO. 21
I See You, But Too Much? By LISA BAKER To pass Pritzker at night is to wonder at the glow of lab tables and Smartboards, the white lab coats and goggles neatly hung, the textbooks and spider plants bathed in the honeyed light of energy-efficient dimmers. You don’t have to look closely to catch the on-duty science faculty populating their faculty room, prepping the week’s lessons -- or tending to something more personal: laughing out-loud, scratching an itch, making a phone call home. Through the glass of this house, a passerby can see everything. I remember when Milton caught the wave of the architectural design shift happening on college campuses. No longer would elite educational spaces exist down dark hallways or inside ivory towers. Rather, they would bask in natural light, the classroom now an open-air, Google-esque, creative workspace, fluid and boundaryless, interdisciplinary and collaborative -- a space to be seen and shared. Good form is married to function, and architects knew that the educational world was opening its doors, transparency the new pedagogical fashion.
Nearly a decade since the opening of Pritzker, we at Milton still travel down this road toward transparency, the uttered motto of our recent teaching and learning efforts: “I see you.” Many of you this year have witnessed our “educational rounds,” a schedule of roving professional observation, where we move through each others’ open classrooms, in twenty minute increments, to see each other at work. And ultimately, the goal of this visibility is metaphoric: to see each other at work is to better know ourselves as a collective of educators. To see you, our students, is to better know you as individual learners -- each of you with a unique learning style, and each of you with a unique story that you carry with you into our classrooms. Seeing you, the theory goes, promotes teacher-student connection and investment, and as a result, learning with more impact. The suggestion, though, that transparent physical space breeds connective learning seems problematic to me. Recently, I’ve identified a pattern of behavior among my students that contradicts this correlation.
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I Went To Harvard. And I Regret It. By MARK HEATH Yes, you’re right. As provocative as this “click bait” of a title is, and as mind-awakening as I hope this article may be, my argument relies on a fundamental truth. I had the revered opportunity to attend - and graduate from Harvard. So yes, the only reason I can say that I regret going to Harvard is because… well, I went there. And you’re right in thinking that this article is written post-graduation, when I have presumably experienced the benefits of the H-bomb as a young professional. All of these are true. And yet, I will ask you to practice both/and thinking to consider that it is directly because of my experience that I make this argument. I decided to go to Harvard because I assumed that it would essentially guarantee a successful life. And in my short tenure at Milton, I would say this is a fairly commonplace assumption about Harvard and its peer institutions.
Throughout my four-year experience, however, I encountered a hyper-competitive environment that actually hindered the process of reaching my personal potential for success. In essence, I didn’t feel Harvard (both as an institution and as the myriad people who defined its culture) cared about me and I grew to internalize the same ambivalence about myself and the institution. Rather, my experiences told me Harvard cared about parts of me. In fact, it seemed like the only thing anyone cared about, and the way in which people defined themselves, was by their achievements. I remember sitting in a circle my first night, cringing through the preplanned and inevitably awkward icebreaker activities. Two truths and a lie; classic. “I’ve traveled to every continent.” “I’ve designed a stem cell treatment that targets and eradicates tumor cells.” “I founded a new religion.” One of those is a lie?
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The MilTon PaPer The 34th Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief Managing Editor Editor at Large Opinion Manager News Managers Senior Editors A&E Editor Rachel Handler Opinion Editor Gabrielle Fernandopulle
Malcolm McCann and Eli Burnes Letitia Chan Cheyenne Porcher Mateen Tabatabaei Marshall Sloane and Henry Westerman
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Layout Editor Jack Daley Photo Editor Caroline Massey
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Cartoonist Lilly Le
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Abby Walker Alexandra Millard Allison Reed Elina Thadhani Ellie Lachenauer Evita Thadhani Lyndsey Mugford Jack Sloane Juliana Viola Sarah Alkhafaji Will Torous Jimmy Delano Brendan Hegarty
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Editorial
What Makes Milton Milton? What is Milton? What makes Milton, Milton? Is it the harkness table? Is it the glass, brick, or brutalist buildings? Is it the well groomed athletic fields which funnel money away from education and to the overly emphasized secondary pursuit of athletics? Is it Flik dining hall? Is it the supernatural number of teeth showcased by Mr. Ruiz’s smile? Our board believes all of these factors (besides Mr. Ruiz’s teeth) are secondary to what really makes Milton, Milton: the people. On a weekly basis, The Milton Paper celebrates the students of our school. We feature athletes in the “Mustang of the Week” column. We showcase artists in the “Artist of the Week” section. Every article written by students and edited by students is a testament to the creative, critical thinking of our student body, as well as students’ independence and responsibility. As students, our successes and our failures both reflect on Milton as a whole, and Milton’s high reputation is due to the fact that luckily, our successes far outnumber our failures. It almost goes without saying that we students give the school its identity. It also goes without saying that the faculty is integral to Milton. It is not we students who create Milton’s high quality of education, but our dedicated, passionate teachers. We are fortunate to take advantage of the education and resources at our disposal. Admittedly, we as a board are prone to frequently complaining about the administration, but, to their credit, they bear the heavy responsibility of hiring Milton’s teachers and maintaining the quality of education we hold dear, and, in this realm, we are satisfied. Is the corporatization of the school, and the measures apparently geared towards pleasing donors rather than students problematic? Absolutely, and we will continue to stay vocal on the issues in management we perceive. Still, this issue of The Milton Paper is dedicated to recognizing all that is right about our faculty. Milton, by means of its dedicated and bright faculty, provides a rich liberal arts education, unparalleled by even the most renowned colleges and universities. The interactive, engaging classroom model which teachers masterfully foster is conducive to obtaining a wealth of multidisciplinary knowledge. But the learning does not have to, and indeed should not, end in the classroom. This issue serves as avenue for students to listen to and learn from teachers to a capacity not usually experienced in the classroom. The articles written by our faculty cover a range of topics, from personal experiences outside of Milton, to bits of school history we usually forget to appreciate, to opinions about Milton trends, both negative and positive. These serve as a reminder that there is far more to learn from our teachers than what’s covered on the syllabus, and the vitality of our relationship with our teachers—a classic, well-advertised Milton perk—is in our hands. •
OpiniOn
Bryan Price “¡Déjame, por favor!” I protested, as the security officer lifted me by my shirt and shoved me against the wall. Having been awakened a moment earlier by the door being thrust open, I was surprised (and impressed) with the level of “Spanish” indignation I was able to summon in that instant. Especially because I presumed myself to be guilty. The preceding forty-eight hours were considerably more enjoyable, as I eagerly consumed the pageantry and frivolity of Fiesta de San Fermin, the weeklong party headlined each morning at 8:00 by the infamous encierro de toros (Running of the Bulls). I was in Spain having concluded a summer abroad program coordinated through my college. After a few days wandering around Portugal, I realized I had time to get up to Pamplona for about 24 hours of revelry. The overnight train ride from Madrid was festive, and offered an opportunity to meet a variety of fellow revelers. Upon arriving in Pamplona on July 6, I pledged along with several of my new-found friends to keep an eye on one another. Those well intended pacts evaporated somewhat predictably as we each wandered joyously around, soaking up the palpable buzz that permeated the town. With my mother’s voice in my head, I thought to attempt to secure a bed for later that evening, a somewhat silly notion in a town soon to be overrun with tourists, at least some of whom surely planned ahead. Undaunted, I used my then-decent Spanish to negotiate with a woman for a room in her home. At some point that night, I learned that others had struck similar deals -- for the same room (maybe the same bed)! I then initiated my first Spanish argument with my “landlord.” I don’t recall clearly how that ended, but I believe I was able to reclaim some of the money I had paid her. I opted instead to just spend the night wandering the bustling streets. At one point, I grabbed a bit of rest on a park bench. As the 8 o’clock hour neared, I and many others made our way to the famed corridor through which the bulls would run. I was very tempted to run, or attempt to run, but I knew I needed to leave town that evening, was at this point not with anyone that knew me, and thought perhaps it might be a bit smarter to spectate. This quest resulted in my second less-than-successful negotiation. Not necessarily the tallest person around, I very much wanted to get myself in a position where I would not only feel the bulls -an invigorating sensation that evokes a chill even today -- but see them too. I climbed atop a fence lining the route, only to be told by a police officer that I needed a press pass to be there. I decided instead to climb up and try to hold on to the underneath of a
balcony that lined the route. (Folks crowd every available square foot of space). Admittedly a desperate, and perhaps somewhat stupid plan, I didn’t much care, as it would allow me to see the main event. Queue my next run-in with a Spanish woman not moved by my apparently less-than-obvious charm. I was dismissed from the balcony, dropping down to the street just in time to be swept along by the police as they made one final pass, clearing the route for the run. At this point, I was pretty frustrated, fearing that I would be left to hear but not see the bulls and their “escorts.” I was somehow able to climb back on a fence from which I watched with joy and shot as many pictures as I could with my 35mm Instamatic camera. It was simply awesome, as was the ensuing spectacle that occurs in the bullring at the end of the route, as people, many likely deprived of their sobriety, senses or both, chase bulls around the ring. The day offered a series of moments, each connecting happy people with one another, their collective energy impossible to resist. Alas, I had a flight to catch the following day in Madrid, and needed to bid farewell to Pamplona that evening. I reluctantly made my way to the train station, only to discover that travellers checks and a credit card were of no use to me. The only way to purchase a train ticket was with pesetas, and I was short. A variety of thoughts surfaced, most less than noble; in the end I decided to get on the train and figure things out from there. I found myself a spot to stand in the car inhabited by folks with Eurail passes. It was another overnight train ride (less than 4 hours for that same trip today!), and I was totally spent. At one point I fell asleep standing and woke up as I was tipping over. I needed to sleep, but I also needed to find a way to evade the conductor. My solution was to hole up in a bathroom. It was pretty foul, and the odor was so bad, it perhaps aided in inducing a state of slumber. The occasional knock would rouse me enough to mumble “ocupado” or “lo siento, estoy enfermo.” Hours passed, and then the door flew open and the man picked me up, pushed me out of the bathroom and against the opposite wall. I was certain I would end up tossed out on the side of the tracks. Amazingly, someone on the train had been robbed, and I was able to explain that I was not their guy. I kindly declined their offer to walk me back to my nonexistent seat. If ever you find yourself in Spain in early July, treat yourself to the magic of San Fermin. And bring enough money to buy your train ticket. •
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East of Eden CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 one knew those stories in any detail. And so we read them, and as we did, one student would raise her head, and another would gasp, and another would softly say, “Oh.” The characters’ names all begin with A and C! Cathy and Charles both have scars on their foreheads! So many brothers! So many gifts! You mean, Adam is God? I could feel the trembling around the table as students realized they were entering the world of Capital-L Literature. You think I’m making that up, but I’m not. And I’m also not lying when I say that those days are why I teach English. I need those days; I call on them when I’m waking students up in English Workshop. Am I going to get those days with another book? I worry that I won’t. That’s silly, of course. It’s illogical to claim that only one book could ever work as Class IV summer reading. But, you know, we’ve been trying to come up with a replacement for two years, and we haven’t found one yet. Seriously. We know that we’re not going to assign East of Eden this summer, but we haven’t figured out what we are going to assign. (Email me if you have suggestions.) Why are we struggling? Is it the book we’re holding on to so tight? Or the tradition? If you delivered a Class IV Talk, you heard me say that Milton is an old school, but we have very few traditions. Class IV Talks is one; signing the SGA book is another (although boys have only recently been included); Chapel, the Veterans’ Day flagpole ceremony, some dorm traditions (although the girls’ dorms seemed to lose theirs when they moved from East to West Campus); are there any others? Reading East of Eden might qualify; I’m teaching students now whose moms and dads read it, too. Lots of traditions have been lost: Goodwin Room assemblies, singing from the Milton hymnal, afternoon tea in the girls’ dorms, senior sherries in the boys’ dorms. I get queasy thinking about snipping another tie to the past. But why? Who cares? Why does it feel important to keep doing what the people before us have done? Maybe it’s because traditions set a tone and communicate values. East of Eden, all 602 pages of it, says to incoming freshmen, “You’re in the big leagues now. We chose you because you can do real work. So here we go.” Continuing to ask our incoming freshmen to read East of Eden, all 602 pages of it, says that we think they still can do it, despite their growing up in a culture that no longer reads. But East of Eden sets another tone, too, and maybe that’s why it should retire. Lee is the only non-white character in the book; he’s a beautiful character, I think, but he reinforces Asian stereotypes rather than undoing them.
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I See You, But Too Much? CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 When a class begins, almost invariably, someone will reach back to swing the door shut. This move typically occurs as we launch the “real” conversation, after the chitchat of classroom business, a clear signal that the work now begins. And certainly this door-shutting occurs when the conversation tips into something more sensitive -- the workshopping of a memoir, even the debriefing of a speaker or cultural trend. The shift in dynamic is subtle, but I have felt it again and again. The students relax and lean in, ready to go now that they’ve reclaimed a private space, of sorts, from the public hallway -- now that they’ve shut the door on transparency. I’ll admit that it’s hard, even foolish, to find fault with efforts for transparency. Proof abounds to confirm that shedding light can result in more free and open people. After all, transparency has advanced every social justice movement in our country’s history, exposing long-hidden inequalities and abuses of power. In the span of your high school careers, posted cell phone videos capturing human rights violations -- transparency gone viral -have inspired protests, forced behavioral shifts, and resulted in policy change. Think about body cams adopted by police forces (transparency driving more transparency). Think about heightened awareness of rape on college campuses. Think about calls for schools to install all-gender bathrooms. Over and over again, transparency has driven positive social change. And of course, just this year, our own call for transparency
has uncovered past sex abuses here at Milton. In fact, most of us would agree that transparency, in so many contexts, promotes safety, including the safety of you. It is no coincidence that the term “safe space” -- language that totally blurs the physical and the emotional, so much so that “space” identifies an emotional state rather than a physical location -- has come into fashion during this same era. But I can’t help but notice an irony when I walk past all-glass Pritzker: no “safe space.” Along with this century’s architectural shift has come the horrific reality of school shootings -- and the new requirement of lockdown drills. In my own beautiful, glass classroom at the top of our glass student center, I also have no “safe space.” To lockdown with my students, we must file into the classroom next door, one in which a solid wall obstructs visibility and creates cover. At a time in the school’s history when we are most committed to seeing each other, we are also the most exposed and, by extension, endangered. This irony haunts me and provokes me to wonder if we in the educational world have driven headlong toward transparency, without adequately assessing its literal and metaphoric risks. In fact, seeing my students has convinced me that they have precious few private spaces in the world -- places to hide from view. Hustled by adults from one social commitment to another, from class to club to rehearsal to field, their time is cluttered with interactivity. Their
classes are hives of group-work, students process-driven to exhaustion. At home, when finally alone, they find themselves drawn into technology’s required social interactions, its invasion of private space, its illusion of privacy. My daughter stumbles in from her ninth grade day, craving “alone time” in her room, only to hear the ding of the group-text or math-chat signalling her to return to interaction. And yet, we know that healthy human development requires a good deal of privacy, time apart to engage in the process of becoming: a closed door, a place to reflect, to trial different selves without committing to any one of them, to practice making mistakes without fear of judgement. Amidst this culture of over-exposure, I wonder, should spaces of learning work instead to create refuge? Instead of wide-open, transparent space, should a small classroom of twelve students and one teacher, with the shared focus of intellectual and creative development, approximate rare privacy -function as a room of one’s own? Further, is private space the key to connected, relational teaching and learning, to the possibility of seeing each other? Most of us have witnessed the subtle or not-sosubtle shift in our classes when a visitor is present: the exchange among the students now slightly more performative. Parents’ Day is the most obvious example of this. A colleague of mine remarked on how she always loved the moment after the departure
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I Need the Tooth Fairy By MARTHA SLOCUM I need the Tooth Fairy. Sure, I have all my adult teeth, and none are exiting my mouth any time soon. But nonetheless, I need her. You see, I have a slightly different looming issue that needs to be addressed, to be assuaged, quite frankly, to be crushed. Upon some investigation I have learned that the Tooth Fairy came from very superstitious origins. It was once believed that children should burn or bury their teeth here on earth in order that the children not be tormented in the afterlife. Others believed a child’s tooth brought good luck in battle and would pay children for the protective qualities of their teeth. Over the years, these beliefs manifested themselves into a being, in the form of the Tooth Fairy, who comes to take teeth from children in exchange for a little cash or trinket. Otherwise hesitant children are more willing to give up a prized item from their mouths, which somehow has come
loose through no fault of their own, if they are on the receiving end of a potential windfall. Well, I am tormented and need some protection too. The thing is, the last of my beloved offspring is leaving for college. Oh it is nothing new to parents all over the world. It’s just this time it’s happening to me. It’s personal. I catch myself thinking of my life come September. No one to yank out of bed on school days with a pleasant scream from the bottom of the stairs, to drive countless places at the spur of the moment, to give sage advice to on personal issues such as dating and the use of alcohol and drugs. And I am sure that many of you are saying, “Um, and the downside is….?” Well the downside is….I will have no one to cuddle with on the couch while watching an Agatha Christie show about some short portly Belgian who solves mysteries, no one to gaze upon as they radiantly dance across a dusty stage, no one to chat with about some fascinating fact from their day. Its cruel really,
just barbaric. Something needs to be done immediately, if not in the next four months. Class I students, you Seniors, it’s your turn now. Don’t get me wrong. I recognize you have undertaken workloads this year that would fell seasoned hedge fund executives, but you have one last assignment. Just as we invented the Tooth Fairy to ease your loss, you must now return that obvious lifesaver with something that will take away our sadness. Parents across the globe will soon be saying goodbye to a life they have known for at least 18 years and hello to a new, unknown, and perhaps fretful existence. We need a Being that could ease us through this horrific transition and protect us from the impending emptiness, the gloom, the despair. Your Tooth Fairy took away a small portion of your mouth; this Being will be responsible for a large portion of our hearts. And if by any chance this Being could leave, say $60,000 under our pillows, we would be more than grateful. •
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Sarah Wooten My advisees are graduating this year. Sigh... Despite some ups and downs, I will most certainly be blubbering at graduation, right along with some of their parents. You see, while you (students) may not realize it, we (adults) grow pretty attached to you. We see you at your best and at your worst and, likewise, you see us at our best and at our worst. I know this may come as a surprise, but we’re human too. So as graduation day approaches, we start thinking about your time at Milton and how much you’ve matured (hopefully). As an alum of Milton, I also find myself reflecting on my time as a student. I’d like to share a few moments from my time at Milton that stand out to me. Preface: My advisees often tell me I am too cheerful and optimistic, but there was a time when I really didn’t think I would make it out of Milton. Here are some of those moments: First, when I came to Milton I wanted to try everything, be everyone’s friend and really put myself out there. So I did. Two weeks into school, I went to the Forbes’ open house during dorm hop. I started off on the main floor with a few friends, and then we ventured to the basement together. The basement was more than we could handle, so we scattered pretty quickly. I wandered up some stairs, down some stairs, around a corner and suddenly had no idea where I had come from. I kept thinking I would bump into someone I knew, but time kept passing and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the dorm! I meandered down the hallway trying to look cool and as if I was just checking things out on my own. ‘Cause, you know, I was independent and confident like that… Each second felt like a minute, and each minute felt like an hour. How could I be lost in Forbes?! How embarrassing! Luckily, a friend came around a corner saying it was time to go to our dorm, Robbins House. I ran after her pretending I’d known where I was and how to get out the whole time. Crisis number one averted. Second, there was a clear social hierarchy when I was a student at Milton. There was a group of girls called the “DSG’s” and a group of day student boys who were pretty preppy and who, for some reason, were never tagged as “DSB’s”. During recess, in an effort to bridge the social gap between the “BG’s” (Black Girls) and the day student boys, I went over to a guy who was in my English class and said, “I like your pink pants.” I thought that was a pretty good conversation starter – opening with a compliment is always the way to go, right? Well, he and all the people around him went silent. He looked at me deadpan and said, “They aren’t pink. They’re Nantucket red.” I wanted to crawl under a rock. I’d blown it.
Third, during my sophomore year I had a really stressful winter and ended up getting mono. When my mom came to pick me up and take me home, I overheard her talking to the Banderob’s (they retired just last year). I heard Mrs. Banderob ask my mom, “Now, do you think Sarah got mono from one of the Wolcott boys? Is she dating someone in Wolcott? I know there have been a few cases of mono in that dorm recently.” I could barely stand from exhaustion caused by mono and overhearing this conversation took my last bit of strength. I just sat down on the stairs and closed my eyes, wanting to disappear. Fourth, one day during study hall, Ms. Klein-Ash came into my room for some reason. I can’t recall now if she was there to talk to me or my roommate, Rachel. Whatever the conversation, it led her to ask where something I had was located in my room. Wait. Let me back up for a second. During that time at Milton, shortening words was very “in.” It felt to me as though abbreviating as many words in a sentence as possible made one seem smarter, and therefore, much cooler. So, when Ms. Klein-Ash asked where the thing was that she needed, I quickly responded using my new abbreviated vernacular, “Oh, it’s right there on top of the dick.” There was silence. Luckily for me, Ms. Klein-Ash has a great sense of humor, and she gave me a second to realize what I said, and to correct myself, “OH MY GOD! The dictionary, I mean the dictionary!” I yelped. So you see, my time at Milton was filled with embarrassing moments. Moments I never thought I would live down. Moments when I imagined nothing could possibly get worse. I’ve had a lot more embarrassing moments since high school. One of which was when I came back to work at Milton and was sitting in Ms. Flewelling’s office with two students. We were getting ready to interview a candidate. Ms. Flew has a big yoga ball that you can sit on and I, being young and hip, and liking yoga balls, decided I would sit on it. So I plopped down and the ball promptly bounced right out from under me. I fell hard on the floor. The two students were gracious and tried not to laugh, but honestly, laughing was the only thing to do. So why share these humiliating stories with you all? Well, in a world where there are truly terrible things happening, and where we individually and collectively will need to push and carry ourselves through challenging situations, there are also seriously hilarious moments. If you can’t learn to laugh at yourself, or look back years later and laugh, then you’re in for an even rougher ride than normal. My advisees tell me I’m too cheerful and optimistic, but when you have lived through
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I See You, But Too Much? CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 of a classroom interloper; back together again, the class could revel in honest debrief. Here, after dozens of classroom hours spent together, in the company of ourselves alone, we begin to see each other, not because we mine each other for information, but rather because we have come to know each others’ quirks and habits -- where he sits, how she gestures. Together, we have contemplated, privately and in conversation, the many worlds, textual and real, that we enter together over the course of a year. On occasion, when the moment feels right, we have ventured something of ourselves to the group -- a personal story or truth, perhaps one that inches us forward into the “light.” The process of seeing each other happens slowly and over time, if at all, and not because we have designed it, willed it, or institutionally prioritized it, but because, I suspect, we have shared a private space. The contrarian in me wonders, too, if our own well-intentioned charge to see all of our students is yet more evidence of the impulse of this generation of adults to over-parent, to over-protect, to keep children controlled through constant oversight. Growing up, most of the teachers in my life didn’t really feel the need to see me, a kind of benign neglect very much in fashion in education of the 1970s and 80s. They weren’t unkind, and in the class periods I spent with them, I felt valued and encouraged. But I knew I was one of many in their charge, and I didn’t presume to deserve any more visibility than my classmates. Left alone, I made my way just fine, hammering out an identity through trial and error, in my favorite private spaces: the great, backyard pine tree, the lower branch of which I’d reach from atop the Peter Pan set that my theater-director father had brought home after a set strike; and then older, Mount Tom, a local ski-hill that I summited on a regular basis when life at school felt too daunting. Through high school, I had a penchant to escape by myself on long bike rides, where I told no adult my destination or return time. Does our well-meaning, protective instinct to see you quietly erode your journey toward independence at best, and, at worst, nurture in you a quiet narcissism: your own story more precious than another’s? Then, my most alarmist, dystopic self wonders if a normalized state of transparency develops in us an ever-present, baseline self-consciousness? We can’t hide. In Pritzker, how does a student pick his nose, a teacher nurse her baby? The Milton Paper recently pointed out to me the dozens of cameras now installed around our campus. Soon, without
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Harvard Regret CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 The 2010 admitted class was record-breaking (at the time). According to the Harvard Crimson, Harvard had, for the first time, surpassed 30,000 undergraduate applicants, and their acceptance was an all-time low of 6.9% (Zauzmer, 2010). Naturally, then, we were all admitted for some reason - the crimson envelope said we had done enough to guarantee this coveted successful life. When I arrived on campus, it was as if I needed to prove this, to convince myself and those around me that I was indeed worthy of such a desired reward. I soon found, that not only did these achievements define our past, but their continued accumulation would dictate our future. Rather than a celebration of diverse experiences and perspectives, my experience in classes and extracurricular activities became a new competition; a race to the top to be the best of the best. That is not to say that everyone spent all their time studying. In fact, Harvard’s diversity could even be found in how people chose to spend their time. And yet, as I moved through my experiences, I saw and heard my friends and peers making decisions based on maximizing utility. Maybe that meant studying, but perhaps it meant attending a visiting lecturer, networking at an alumni event, or getting a meal with a professor. There were many times, however, when the implicit message received was that time spent furthering one’s own career achievements and accolades were prioritized over any sense of community. The community, then, became one defined by its individuality. “Not only did I accomplish a, b, and c before coming, but I will make sure nothing gets in the way of accomplishing x, y, and z for my career.” By no means should this be interpreted as normative - I do not intend to put a value judgement on how people spend their time or what they value. Rather, as someone who felt so much less certain about what I had done to deserve admission and what I wanted to do in life, I experienced this self-focused mentality as hyper-competitive and hypo-nurturing. I remember times I made dinner plans with friends, only to walk into the dining hall greeted by a text with an excuse for their late cancel. I remember spending months rehearsing for a play only to see friends arriving halfway through, if at all. I found the same to be true for many of my professors. Harvard’s prestige and resources are of course alluring for any scholar, with an abundance of opportunity to explore the unknown and propose new theories and research. And while technically, their job description also includes teaching undergraduates, I felt my professors valued the former much more than the latter. Things
like 7am office hours suggested that my time was a task to complete, better to get out of the way via the path of least resistance. Or writing my own letter of recommendation for the professor to sign because they know my name but not my work. Their primary focus was research; many of them teach what they do because they are so passionate about new theory and public policies. But in order to do this, in order to become the thought leader that Harvard “guarantees,” they had to teach me. I had internalized these interactions in quite an unhealthy way. It was as if I was being told my humanity was replaced by the value I could offer you. And if that was no value, then I guess there’d be no reason to connect. For a number of different reasons, this internalization was demoralizing and adversely affected my mental health. For one, I was coming to Harvard from a one-stoplight town completely devoid of diversity and individuality. So I truly did not understand my own value since I had never been forced to consider my strengths and areas for growth. The initial shock of being the largest fish in the smallest pond, to the smallest fish in a larger pond was only exacerbated by these interpersonal experiences. Compounded on top was my journey coming out and experiencing a similar dehumanization from my parents. School used to be something I never had to think about, and now I had so many other things to think about first, it became the last thing I thought about. My grades dropped dramatically in my first semester, and the only quantifiable way I had ever determined my academic value was now in question. I began to retreat from social environments because I had been told (whether explicitly or implicitly) that I wasn’t desired. My social and academic confidence collapsed. I struggled in networking situations to once again prove I was worthy of the next prestigious step, because I truly didn’t believe I was. Even to this day, I regret my status as an alum. Never before did I consider myself elite, and now almost every space I enter is, primarily because I feel the need to keep competing. After all, Harvard graduates have been and continue to be defined by our accomplishments. My Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections post their most recently published article in the Nature journal and tag themselves in photos with the first family and rainbow colors projected on the front of the White House. They start their own homeless shelters and are awarded Forbes Magazine 30 under 30. And I conform to the trend; teaching at Milton is teaching at the Harvard of high schools. Milton becomes a way to justify my aversion and inability to pursue membership in the 1% as an educator, while still maintaining eliteness - once you get there you have to stay. Every time I receive an envelope soliciting alumni donations, it is accompanied by an imaginary voice, mocking:
“Donate to prove your success.” So the cycle continues: if it isn’t elite, it isn’t maximizing utility, and isn’t worth the time. Do I regret going to Harvard? Yes. Do I regret what I did when I was there? No. I met amazing people who, even if I contributed nothing, absolutely changed my understanding of the world and opened my eyes to incredibly nuanced perspectives. I had experiences and traveled places I would have never gone before. I learned about myself and about the value of introspection and mental health professionals. And I would even say I became successful once I redefined and pivoted “success” against the cultural norm. But it certainly was not guaranteed - like I assumed - because Harvard is Harvard. I’m not sure if my experience is relatable. Maybe nobody else felt this way at Harvard. Maybe none of you reading this who will attend a similar institution will experience this. And so my message is not “Don’t go to Harvard.” But rather, don’t let the allure, the name, or the expectations blind you from what you need to succeed in whichever way you need to succeed. Hindsight is 20-20, but if I could go back to 18-year-old Mr. Heath I would ask him one question: “What do you need to be your best, most complete self?” Who knows what my answer would have been back then, but in my final years at college and even my first years at Milton, this question has helped me determine which professional and personal spaces more appropriately fostered my success. For me, successful outcomes require collaborative, balanced, and supported conditions. I know I need to be working with people, collaborating through everyone’s individual strengths to a collective goal, whether that be in planning my social awareness classes or performing in a musical. I know I need to find balance, fulfilling all my many quirks and outlets, whether that be in breaking up work with reruns of The Office, or finding time to get off campus. And I know I need environments that encourage risk-taking and support true “mega-blunders,” whether that be in trying a completely new lesson plan or learning a new lift at the gym. These conditions may change overtime, or they may be mine for life. But I have only been able to fully support myself once I reflected on all of my life experiences - the good, the bad, and the ugly - to synthesize my own conditions for and definition of success. When deciding what college to attend, I didn’t have these answers and I didn’t ask these questions. Rather, I generalized, I assumed, and I oversimplified. If Harvard was “the best” then it was the best for me. That one reason was good enough for 18-yearold Mr. Heath. At this point, I just wish I was more thoughtful, not for an improved post-college outcome, but for a more successful during-college process. •
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The Saturday Course Enters Year 40 By KRISTAN BURKE & ELIZABETH MULREADY Inspired Lower School principal Elizabeth “Betty” Greenleaf Buck returned from a conference in 1978 with a vision: to harness the physical and intellectual resources of Milton Academy to benefit surrounding communities and families. The Saturday Course was born. A flagship program for Milton Academy’s commitment to authentic engagement between independent and private schools, The Saturday Course has continued to grow since its establishment. Today, 1,000 students who show academic promise participate in the program. A typical Saturday Course student body represents 100 different schools in the greater Boston area. This year, we enrolled a record 305 fourth grade students in our winter session! In five sessions of six Saturday mornings each, the program offers students the
Sarah Wooten CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 as many painful and difficult moments as I have, when you’ve felt embarrassed or totally humiliated, and somehow life still managed to go on, you, hopefully, start to see the positive side of life. Not everything is funny and not everything will work out, but for Milton students it usually does. So instead of focusing on the embarrassment, humiliation, heartache, or pain I choose to focus on the upside. I didn’t become a social outcast because of any of the things I mentioned above. I am not still trapped in
East of Eden CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 And Abra and Cathy give us two choices for femininity: the Madonna or the whore. (Perhaps I can trace all my hang-ups to the fact that I met those two women when I was 14.) And then there’s the super-weird “circus” at Kate’s brothel that somehow involves a big group of people and a pony stallion?! I laugh at myself: I’ve rejected novel after novel in our search for a replacement, claiming they’re too coarse for freshmen, but I’ve embraced
opportunity to study traditional and non-traditional topics. Courses include robotics, law, theatre, animation, engineering, cartooning, debate, woodworking, oceanography, and forensic science. In collaboration with the Academy’s Community Engagement team, Upper School students assist for community service hours. Several members of the Milton Academy faculty teach courses. We are working with internationally recognized scientist Lakshya Kaura to produce a book, Learning Science Begins with Why. Publication is scheduled for mid-2017 for distribution to Saturday Course students and our public school liaisons. Here’s what parents have said about the program: “The fostering and example by adults that creativity and intellectual pursuit can be a fun and congenial endeavor was an important ‘take away’ for my child.” “My son enjoyed the comradeship and spirit of working with his classmates. He is
Forbes House. I did become friends with the kid with the Nantucket red pants. I had a really meaningful, albeit awkward, conversation with my mom on the ride home about dating (or not dating, in my case) and about school stress. Ms. Klein-Ash was still excited to have me come back to work at Milton, and didn’t even seem to remember the mishap with the dic…tionary. And I will never again sit on the yoga ball in Ms. Flew’s office. Milton, like the rest of the world, is not an easy place, but it is certainly a fun(ny) one if you’re open to seeing it that way. •
one that describes a kind of sex I don’t understand but am pretty sure I don’t approve of. Hmmm. This tradition, like many traditions, has a dark side. OK. We’ll read something new. However, we’ll insist on a worthy successor, a book that will continue to start Class IV with power, beauty, and grace. That part of the tradition we won’t let go. I hate this time of year. I usually have to say goodbye to someone I love: an extra-special senior, a retiring faculty member who makes me laugh or whom I lean on on tough days. This year I have to say goodbye to a book; if I look a little weepy, now you know why. •
a jokester so he likes how the staff keeps it light.” “It is difficult for the parent of a gifted child to find engaging and appropriate academic activities that challenge them. My son had such an amazing experience in both courses. I knew we were onto something after the first class when he asked if this was what it was like to attend Milton Academy. If so, he wanted to go there!” Here are the responses from students when asked if they would like to return to The Saturday Course: “Yes. Who wouldn’t?” “It would be an honor.” “I would love to return. I would go for my whole life if I could!” We’d just like to say, “Thanks, Betty, for being a visionary!” •
Larry Pollans Self Portrait, 1995
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Treemendous
From a Campus Corner:
The Oldberg Memorial Pipe Organ in Apthorp Chapel By LOUISE MUNDINGER There are three keyboards (one for the feet). The keyboards for the hands have 56 notes while the keyboard for the feet has 32. There are almost 2,000 pipes (well, 1,952 if you must know). The smallest pipes are slimmer than a pencil. The largest pipe is eight feet long and is located in the middle of the case at the back of the organ loft. There are five parts to the pipe organ, including a console with the keyboards, and a pipe case at the back of the loft with the largest pipes. Overhanging the balcony are three pipe cases. The cases on the left and right are the pipes played by the feet. On one side the notes move in whole notes starting on C. On the other side, the notes move in whole notes starting on C#. What happens when the notes move from side to side is that the ear perceives a depth of sound providing a kind of gravitas. In the middle of the balcony the colorful sounds of the smallest division of the organ provide a playful balance to the larger divisions. The organ was built by Casavant Frères, Limitée, of St. Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada. Designed in the tradition of a French instrument of the classic period, the stops have French names throughout the organ. The cost of building and maintaining the instrument was made possible by a generous gift from Dr. Eric Oldberg of Chicago Illinois. How does a pipe organ make sounds? There is a keyboard console, which is connected to the pipes. The pipes sound when pressurized air passes through them. Some of the pipes make sound by splitting a column of air (like a flute), while others have a brass reed, which vibrates the same way a clarinet reed vibrates. There are sliders over the wind chests, which stop the air from entering the pipes. When the organist moves the slider by pulling a “stop,” the air passes through the selected pipes and makes sound. The organ was dedicated in 1971 and is
the second instrument to occupy the space. The first instrument, also by Casavant, was housed at the back of the loft when the chapel was built in 1921. There were no pipes at the front of the loft. If you see old pictures of the organ loft you can see students standing where a pipe case now hangs. A plaque at the top of the stairs tells of the first organist of the chapel who was involved in the planning and acquisition of the first organ but unfortunately died shortly before the chapel was dedicated. When the original organ turned 50, Mr. Howard Abell, a longtime member of the music department, wanted to get a new organ. At that time, in the late 1960s, much was happening in the world of pipe organs. The orchestral sounds of the old instruments were deemed “dull.” Musicians began to clamor for brighter sounds. Organists started to read old treatises about how organs were played in the 18th century and worked to imitate that style of playing. That uproar in the musical world reached Milton Academy and Mr. Abell was able to convince the Board of Trustees to look for a new pipe organ with brighter sounds to replace the old organ, which, after fifty years, needed significant repairs. Dr. Oldberg, a Milton parent, gave the gift, which financed the new instrument that made its first public sounds in 1971. Those bright sounds of the new organ are now approaching the half-century mark. Dr. Oldberg, however, left enough money to maintain the new organ and keep it in good repair. The gift that turned air into sounds has been heard by thousands of Milton Academy students and alums in chapel services, weddings, and funerals. Some of the sounds are there to console while others shake the rafters. The Oldberg Memorial organ, with its three keyboards and 1,952 pipes, has been an active player in events large and small, happy and sad in Apthorp Chapel since 1971 and will continue to do so for years to come. •
I See You, But Too Much? CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 realizing it perhaps, we might never let down our guard; fearing being seen, we learn to maneuver to defend ourselves, to cover our asses from inevitable accusation. We have all witnessed the self-distortions that accompany self-consciousness. In this era of selfies, Instagram and Snapchat -- a surveillance state that we have
By TODD GOODMAN Last week on our way to Forbes for breakfast, my daughter ran up the ramp and stopped in her tracks. “That tree makes me so happy,” she said, staring at the pink blossoms gently falling off, joining the others already on the ground. That tree, in fact, was one that my son noticed a day or two later, that a colleague photographed one morning, and that a student shared for an assignment in Man and the Natural World. With each interaction, I thought about what impact this single tree had on each individual. What joy. I wondered how much time that tree had left on campus. I could turn 90 degrees to my right to see the dirt circles in the quad where two trees once stood. I do not know exactly why they were removed; maybe they had died. I wondered how much their death was a result of old age and how much it connected to the fact that a spout from the sprinkler tore through the bark with a stream powerful enough to knock the wind out of someone. I could look across the quad by Straus and remember another tree that was one of the first to bloom on campus but was no longer. I could walk one hundred yards to the front of Wolcott where what I considered the prettiest tree on campus stood: a majestic Japanese Maple that lit up the yard each fall with its leaves bright red. For a week or two, it stood in all its glory. But now, its aura has diminished. While the color of the leaves still peaks in October, the tree is not the same. Walking from Forbes, one would not notice the crime. Go far enough, and you will see what looks like a half a stalk of broccoli. Its amputated limbs provide a faint reminder of its previous form to those who remember. Early in my career, I worked at a school in Florida that was literally constructed around the natural elements: a curved walkway surrounding a tree, a notched roofline yielding to a branch. Rather than blasting its way through the environment, the founder chose to build its life around it. We, too, have that choice. As the weather continues to improve, my kids, and many others, will climb and play on the tree that stands just off of Chapel Hill Lane. It’s low enough where young kids can access the limbs and large enough to entertain older students as well. When I took my class to see it one autumn afternoon, several of the students just had to climb in. What is it about climbing trees that brings people back to the happy days of childhood? •
installed to watch ourselves -- we discover that a pose must always be at-the-ready, and the self is never just a single-hit, but rather a thing to record and post, to re-play until viral. We act to be seen, and we act because we are seen. Is my cocked-hip, hand-on-waist, close-mouthed smile my “natural” self, we might ask ourselves, or a pose trained for the eye of the ever-present camera? Of course, self-consciousness, in healthy dose, can save us from the worst parts of ourselves, but as steady diet, it can
shift us away from ourselves’ freer, uninhibited versions. I’ve just had cause to unearth some poetry written in my class a decade ago by one of the most uninhibited Milton graduates that I have had the great pleasure to teach, a kid named Noah. Now, he’s an adult and a lawyer, living in Israel and clerking for the Supreme Court there. He’s in the process of applying to a writer’s residency to
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Your Noise and Mine By MALINDA POLK I need silence. Often, I wake up early because I find a freedom of thought and focus that the hum of to-do lists and daily life constricts. While many of the noises in my day are pleasant -- a great question, good conversation, familiar footsteps coming down a hallway, laughter, the coffee maker -- some are not. My good days have more pleasant noise than unpleasant noise. My best days balance noise with silence. Lately, I have been thinking about the role of silence in learning, specifically at the Harkness table. Last week, my Craft of Nonfictions class wrote “This I Believe” radio essays to read during our final class. I expected to laugh, nod my head at flashes of thoughtfulness, wish them well, and grade interpretive sentences until the arrival of my IV’s. Only a fool expects to do more the final week of senior spring, right? I cried. In writing these students had been generous with themselves, and in listening they were generous to each other. They taught me. Pleasant noise, indeed. I asked Katie if I could share her essay because she taught me something about listening and silence and because sharing her essay creates an opportunity for me to say thank you. I love learning from my students; most teachers I know do. Our students and advisees teach us all the time. I make noise about evidence, schedule disruptions, Megablunders, voice, structure, books in the library, Schoology, and titles -- a lot of noise about Schoology and titles. Even when we manage to share silence, my gratitude may be hard to hear. Thank you.
This I Believe By KATIE FRIIS I believe in listening. But I’ve always been criticized for not being more of a talker. In 4th grade, my teacher sat me down at her desk and told me that if I didn’t speak up more in class, people would think I was dumb. In 6th grade, my teacher told me that I had a lot of good thoughts, but it was selfish not to share them in class. In 8th grade, my teacher told my parents, who told me, that I didn’t raise my hand to answer questions because I was afraid of being wrong. By 10th grade, I wasn’t surprised when my advisor looked over the comments from my teachers and told me that if I wanted them to write me good college recommendations, I would need to speak up more in class. My teachers, my parents, and my advisors all saw my quietness as a problem that needed to be fixed. They told me to mark tallies on my paper to keep track of how many times I had spoken, or to write out what I wanted to say before I said it, so I could just read it right off the page. It seemed pretty clear that they believed talking was more important than listening, and if I wanted to make it in this world, I would have to learn to speak. The problem was, their advice, though really more threats, made my mind stressed about talking. When I was in class, I was more preoccupied with how many times I had spoken or how many more times I needed to speak than by the material we were learning. In class discussions, I listened, but it was a different kind of listening. I listened for something that I could respond to. I listened to look for a place where I could speak. My listening was catered towards myself and my own speaking, not towards the words themselves or the person they were coming from. Before I was born, my grandfather went two years without saying a single word. In Buddhism, it is a tradition to take a vow of silence. Buddha is seen as a manifestation of silence, and silence is seen as the source of life and the cure to all diseases. My grandfather grew up in noise. He was dirt poor on a small farm in Korea with 12 siblings during war and political chaos. He found peace in monasteries and became a monk. In his two years of silence and meditation, he learned how to escape the noise. I have always considered my grandfather to be the wisest person I know. He listens to listen. He does not talk unless he has something to say. He does not try to fill any silences. He embraces them. With so many different people in this world and so many different perspectives, I believe you need to listen, not for a place for you to talk or a point to argue, but rather for the words themselves. You learn more from listening than from talking. This, I believe.
I See You, But Too Much? CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8 finish a book of poetry. As a senior, Noah wrote a pantoum, an interlocking poetic form (architectural design of the writing world), about a narrator “being halfway down the block at dusk.” The poem’s first stanza is an anthem to the private space of unrestricted thought: “I let my mind graze./
Listening to city streets’ whispered phrase/ As cars blow, like leaves,/ I let my mind wander for days.” That senior spring, he put the poem to music, performing it at a Beatnik. The song caught fire among the senior class, and at Baccalaureate that year, the seniors crooned along as he played it for a last time. I still teach Noah’s pantoum to my creative writers, because it’s an excellent example of the form. Yet, I like it even more
now, a decade later, for the unexpected nostalgia it summons in me, for its celebration of a privacy that is now so hard-won. At the end of the day, I’ll fight for more transparency rather than less. But as I walk down the block at dusk past Pritzker and gaze into that glowing orb, suddenly tugged forward zombie-like toward the nearly irresistible mandate to see, I must catch myself. When we can’t see everything, I suspect, the real teaching and learning begins. •
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Science FictiOn
The Darkness of Light By HEATHER ZIMMER Wednesday, February 1, 2016 500 nanometers. The conversion was complete, at least in her building. She glared up at the new lights in the dorm hallway until their own glare forced her to lean against the wall until the afterimages faded. As they did, she bitterly entertained the idea of smashing a few of the hateful bulbs, but the gratifying crinkle and pop of the glass wouldn’t outweigh the hassle of finding a new job, not to mention a new place to live. Vision clearing, she started packing up the little spectrometer and its optical fiber, cursing quietly when one of the students bounded out of his room into the hall and momentarily froze when he saw her. She had tried to find a spot where she could check the wavelength of these new bulbs without being seen by the students who were, in theory, studying. Trying to divert her from the scolding he anticipated, he exclaimed loudly over the little spectrometer. As this drew the rest of the students on the hall out of their rooms, she figured she might as well make the best of it and teach them a little chemistry. She gamely unpacked the equipment again and showed them how to read the monitor screen while pointing the fiber optic cable at the light. They ran off to their rooms to test their lights as she called after them to test their computer and phone screens as well. Smiling a bit at their eagerness, she slid down the wall to sit and wait for them to return, hopefully ready to hear her warning -- and hopefully with her spectrometer. Wednesday, February 1, 2034 “No roughhousing in the dorm, damn it!” “I am getting too old for this shit,” she wearily thought, yelling after the rambunctious sophomores who barreled down the stairs, pushing each other into the walls as they ran past her to the common room at 12:45 am on Wednesday night. Too tired to chase after the students who ran to the elevator with a sheet cake she just knew wasn’t sugar free, she bleakly pondered how large a dose of melatonin she should take tonight. She wasn’t supposed to be taking as much as she was, but it was that or not sleep. Stupid to be addicted to a hormone, one her body was supposed to be making on its own. The FDA, even when it still existed, didn’t regulate melatonin because it was naturally occurring, so no one really knew how much was safe to take or how long it was safe to take it. It had originally been used by travelers to defeat jet lag; she pictured them sitting in airline VIP lounges, reading the newspaper in the soft
glow of a stylish lamp, pills at their elbow to take when their flight was called so they could fall asleep easily on the plane and land rested without the hangover of sedatives. It was illegal to have those wonderful incandescent bulbs now, the warm glow she remembered with such fondness. And they were warm, too -- which of course was the problem. Too much energy lost to heat, they were replaced first by the hellish green flicker of fluorescent bulbs and then completely obliterated by LEDs. LEDs gave a pure bright light with no flicker, a miniscule energy usage and they lasted for decades, so the only responsible thing to do was to replace every light bulb on campus with them. Facilities heralded their installation in classrooms, dorms, and in all the outdoor lighting -- the expensive bulbs were even handed out for free to students to use in their desk lamps. For someone who taught her students to use spectrometers to measure light, she had taken an embarrassingly long time to make the connection. Way back in 2016, just before the wave of LEDs crashed onto campus, one of her students had done a research project comparing the spectra given off by computer and phone screens with that of the new LED bulbs. She remembered sitting in the blacked out physics lab, staring at the screen with growing alarm while the student walked her through the analysis. The spectra were the same. Melatonin was on the run. Adults had been harping at kids for years not to use screens before bed. Research showed that the light emitted by the screens was the same frequency that in sunlight kept the body from making melatonin, a hormone that made you sleepy. Since much of dorm parent life was telling kids to go to sleep, students accepted this as quite possibly true but still an unsubtle attempt to run their lives. When students used their screens because they weren’t sleepy, she explained that the screen was keeping them from getting sleepy and suggested they read a book. Sometimes she even helped them angle their desk lamps so they could read in comfort under the covers. The memory made her cringe. When she finally realized what should have been obvious -- that the LEDs in the light bulbs were the same LEDs in the screens -- she warned the students that the desk lamps were to be avoided just as much as the screens. They indulged her and turned the lamps away from their faces while they worked, at least when she was around to see them. When they returned in the fall, though, she noticed students working at their desks
with their lamps pointed at their faces as if they were hoping to get a tan while they studied. When she rushed in to adjust the lamps they stopped her, explaining excitedly that by shining the light in their faces they got full suppression of melatonin -she had freed them from the need to sleep! She laughed, amused by the converts’ zeal, but became alarmed when this had spread throughout the dorm as a ‘healthy’ alternative to caffeine, one that didn’t leave a headache when it wore off. Attempts to reason with students were countered with articles about using light to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder and jet lag, with a pointed look at her diet soda. Pleas to recognize that not being sleepy didn’t mean that the body didn’t need sleep were tuned out completely. The screens were winning. As fads go, this was a bad one. Word of the ‘light trick’ spread, and concerns about long term effects were waved aside. Some ambitious parents went so far as to install LED light screens tuned to that magic melatonin-suppressing wavelength where they would shine on the face of their children while they worked at their desks. Between 2017 to 2024 the average number of hours slept by students fell to less than 4 and the growing effects were painfully obvious: students were crankier, struggled to stay focused in class, and became alarmingly impulsive. The number of students with depression and anxiety shot so high the health center had to move back onto the main campus. This was also helpful with the disproportionate number of students who caught colds and the flu each year -- the automatic sanitizer lights that were installed in the doorway of each entrance to school and dorm buildings helped but didn’t improve students’ actual immune systems. Dramatic increases in the consumption of carbs in an attempt to self-medicate emotional distress forced the dining halls to move to a system by which students were allotted a certain number of calories in each type of food, with limits set based on their physical activity, and for dorm students, their weight. Regardless, student BMI soared and diabetes became rampant, and as a result participation in athletics became rare, particularly when the incidence of heart disease began to creep up as well. Dorms had to install extra soundproofing due to the earsplitting snoring and gasping that were the hallmarks of sleep apnea, which itself contributed to all of the problems above in a feedback loop that never ended. The health center pleaded with students to show some restraint and to go to sleep at a reasonable hour.
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Science FictiOn
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The Darkness of Light CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10 Instead, in 2025, the school caved. Studies had shown for years that teenagers needed more sleep, and their circadian cycles needed that sleep much later in the 24-hour cycle than adults did. Parental pressure on the school to work with rather than against the naturally different sleep needs of their students eventually became overwhelming; the start of the school day was shifted from 8 to 8:30, then to 9:50, shattering any pretense of normal family life for day students, parents and faculty. With the new later start, the academic day now ended at 5. Of course, it might as well be 3:30 given how regularly athletes had to be dismissed early to avoid rush hour traffic on the way to games. The school had to build three new dorms to accommodate all the parents who opted to board rather than pick up their kids at 10 on a weeknight. Study hall started at 9 now and went until 11, with lights out at 12:30 for freshmen and 1 am for those sophomores who just ran by. On the weekend, it was more like 3 am. Time to put the sophomores to bed. One of the students had just gotten his diagnosis, so he probably needed help testing his blood sugar -- maybe she could get one of the other students on the hall to help him, or have the proctor test his along with the student? She had to talk with the student down the hall who kept taking off his CPAP mask at night as the insurance had already called the school to say if we couldn’t make him wear it, he would be sent home. And after last week’s dinner fiasco she needed to supervise weigh-in to keep them from putting a foot on the scale when the other students were on just to see them lose dessert privileges for the week. Boys. She rolled over to the elevator and pushed the button. She rested her head against the cool metal of the elevator door and thought how lucky she was to have landed in a dorm with an elevator all those years ago. The schedule change was made for the students’ sake, but only ritual concerns had been murmured for the health of the faculty at the time, and those were easily assuaged by gifts of chocolate covered espresso beans at Christmas. As adults aged, their circadian cycle shifted in reverse to that of teenagers so they actually need to go to bed earlier because they woke up at dawn each day. At 60, her body was screaming that she should have been asleep hours ago. She decided to take 100 milligrams of melatonin tonight. The lasting effects of the drug, whatever they were, had to be better than breaking down crying in class like her colleague had yesterday. That was almost as embarrassing as the now-common struggle she had to recall words when she spoke. Sleep would be wonderful…blissful….
Amused, she realized that she was thinking about sleep the way she used to think about chocolate. She didn’t get much of either any more. The elevator arrived and she entered, thumbing the button for the third floor while prepping herself mentally for battle. She would try to scare the students into going to sleep but most somehow failed to appreciate her particular experience in this area. Academically overwhelmed in college, she had slept alternating nights for most of her time as a student, studying straight through on her ‘on’ nights. It paid off in better grades -- good enough to keep her in school -- and she continued for years after graduation as she tried to establish her career. Sure she put on weight during college -- didn’t everyone?- but little did she know her blood sugar was already on the rise at that point. She doubtless would have fought the CPAP mask -- she was single, for god’s sake! -when it was offered to her. The illusion of immortality was intelligence-proof, she concluded. As the elevator doors opened she flinched at the bright light and pushed forward, yelling instructions to turn off their screens, brush their teeth, check their blood sugar, record their weight, don’t put tap water in the CPAP machine…regular Wednesday night noise in what was now a 45 minute going-to-bed routine. A student cramming cake into his mouth with frosting all over his shirt tried to duck behind a door -- she whipped out her glucometer to check him before sending him to the house head for a scolding and an insulin shot. Laughter floated from the bathroom where students were jostling around the scale, trying to fool the bio-imprint scan in hopes of messing with someone’s calorie allocation for the next day. Another student brought her his broken CPAP air tube, snapped where he and his roommate had been using it as a slingshot, and she went to work with the electrical tape she always carried for this reason. “At least there aren’t as many complaints about snoring roommates anymore,” she thought as she handed the patched tube back to him. As she rolled down the hall, she could see bright light spilling out of the rooms, visible even in the glare of the well-lit hall. A student stepped out of his room into her path, glanced down and then reversed quickly; a newly diagnosed diabetic, he was profoundly uncomfortable being confronted by his future in her form. Watching the door shut behind him, she leaned against the arm of the wheelchair, following his gaze to the gap between the end of her legs and the foot rests of the wheelchair. She hadn’t known she was diabetic for a number of years, but when her blood sugar shot up, it didn’t
take long for the damage to her nerves to be done. Certainly less time than it took for her to learn how to keep the sugar down. The doctors said her metabolism was so out of line that it just couldn’t learn how to behave, even with the normal treatments. When she tentatively told them about her sleeping habits in college, they nodded and confirmed that yes, that was almost certainly a ‘major contributor’. So, although many of those with diabetes were wrongly treated as though the condition was their fault… in this case, it was. 20 years ago she would have said it was worth it, but 20 years ago she had both feet. Story Notes: This story is not intended to be rebuke against the installation of LED lights throughout campus; environmental concerns dictate using the most efficient bulbs we can and LEDs are far and away the best available. The school has made a large investment in reducing our environmental footprint by shifting to LEDs, and I support that. Information about the effects of sleep deprivation and the role that melatonin-suppressing light frequencies play in it are accurate with perhaps a bit of acceleration of the timeline of disease development. Personal aspects of the story through current time are also accurate as written. healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/ matters/consequences/sleep-and-diseaserisk provide a list and explanation of the most common health risks in chronic sleep deprivation. Both the increased tendency to drug dependency and immune dysfunction make all too much sense. www.clevelandclinicwellness.com/Features/Pages/Melatonin.aspx and www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/melatonin/ safety/hrb-20059770 talk about melatonin usage. Interesting how two of the most respected medical clinics in the country disagree so much. www.energystar.gov/products/lighting_ fans/light_bulbs/learn_about_led_bulbs gives basic info about LED lights and energy.gov/energysaver/how-energy-efficient-light-bulbs-compare-traditional-incandescents talks about the economics of LED lights. Read the second soon, it may not be available for long. http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side and https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/q-a-why-is-blue-light-before-bedtimebad-for-sleep/ talk about melatonin and how it is affected by blue light in particular. •
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Farewell Milton. (humor writers went on strike)
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