A four year senior from New York City, David Lighton will be going to Johns Hopkins University to study International Relations. He is a prefect in East Cottage, plays Guitar in the Jazz Band and is the President of the French Club. David also ran Cross Country for all four of his years at Choate.
When your parents are dropping you off freshman year and your mother is sobbing because her little boy is leaving, and you’ve got to use the bathroom, it doesn’t feel good. When it’s January, and it’s five below zero, and you’re hunched over a heaping plate of the dining hall’s pizza meat loaf, it isn’t any better. When you get back a quiz that reads “Fantastic!” at the top, and the F is circled in red pen, it feels even worse. But, at the end of the day, I am elated that I lived through it all. Through four years of blue and gold chaos, from the gentle recklessness of my freshman year to the unwarranted responsibilities of my senior year, I feel like I can say I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen someone get JC’d for stealing ice cream: me. I’ve seen six of my best friends get expelled. I’ve even seen Ryan Stewart naked. (But, then again, who hasn’t?) Somehow, I turned out all right; however, the eloquent, handsome individual who stands before you today has not always been so together.
My freshman year, I arrived at Choate naïve and careless. I did my homework about as often as Ned walks from Mem to the dining hall. I never went to bed on time. I got myself put on probation. Consequently, my grades were lower than Sam Greenfield’s sperm count. All of this landed me five surly teachers, one angry dean, and the most irascible of them all: my dour house adviser, Mr. Stanley, the man who gave me looks in the halls that made feel like I had killed a baby seal. In short, freshman year was a disaster. It got to the point where my mom would call me twice a day to ask if I had done my homework. Two roommates and 21 sunday d’s later, the year was over and I was praying to be invited back. Rather foolishly, the administration agreed to have me back for sophomore year. Somewhere between wreaking havoc in Mem house and being selected as a prefect, I became who I am today. But my experiences from freshman year allow me to retain a healthy respect for the simple pleasures of tomfoolery. Those memories keep me from ever working too hard. They allow me to enjoy myself even if I have six pages due the next day on the Western Marxist theory of political change within the cultural superstructure. They remind me of the virtue in saying, “Screw it!” and not doing my homework at all, a virtue of which I try to remind myself at least once or twice a week.
What I remember most vividly from my freshman year are the prank wars that took place between me and the late, great Alex Ludlum. They had been raging all year long, but at one point, I thought I had bested him. I super-glued all of Ludlum’s school supplies to his desk: the mouse to the mouse pad, the phone to the receiver, the stapler to the desk. I even took the liberty of gluing the darts to his dart board. It was brilliant, but, to my chagrin, I had not won. I returned to my room later that night to discover that he had smeared a hearty dollop of peanut butter in each and every pair of my socks. It’s looking back on times like this that I realize that Choate doesn’t happen on the ball field or in the classroom, but in the dorm. The relationships that I have forged over my four years didn’t blossom running slow intervals in nothing but a jock strap, or whispering in American History to Tonucci that Mr. Velez has a big butt. My best friends have been made discussing the finer points of a Rosa’s sandwich over a long, hot, steamy team shower in the basement of East Cottage. To all of you who live in Mem House now, enjoy your last few days there because odds are against you that you will ever have the distinct pleasure of living with sixty other sweaty, dirty, uncouthe fifteen year-olds again.
The camaraderie of the dorm aside, Choate’s faculty has been instrumental in my success here. None of you should be afraid to take a course from Mr. Cobbett. You might not like walking to the PMAC everyday. You probably won’t get a very good grade. You might not even understand a single word he says, but you will learn more than you would ever want to know about Rousseau’s arcadian view of nature in Romantic landscape painting and the overtones of the Freudian unconscious in early twentieth century figurative expressionism. Plus, you will get fifty minutes a day of a bloody brilliant English accent.
In the end, Choate has been more than I had ever bargained for, but believe me, there are a ton of things I hate about Choate: first period class, sit-down lunches, Ned’s moped, Reflections, Sunday D, and most importantly, Sam Greenfield. My four years have been a messy adventure, and I have loved almost every minute of it. Thank You.
