MY LOVE- HATE RELATIONSHIP School Appreciation Comes With a Price
By Alessio Manti ’08
News Staff Reporter
As a new junior, I will have had the distinct pleasure of only being on this campus for two years and (presumably) will still graduate by the end of my time here. I avoided the awkward developmental stages of freshman year and the likely hatred I’d have of this place if I had been here for three or more years. I’ll still be able to come out with a diploma on the other side. I thank the Higher Powers for that almost every day.
But despite my relatively short time here, I, like most everybody else, have still gotten to the point where I both love and hate Choate. Even between any given two days, I’ll go through huge swings in opinion about this place. One day, I’ll be convinced that I’ll miss it when I’m gone, and then on another I’ll give anything to get as far away as physically possible. On good days, I wouldn’t leave this campus for the world. On bad days, only the consequence of getting expelled keeps me from packing my bags and taking the Amtrak line all the way south.
On days that I love Choate, it’s because I’ve seen the very best in people here. When I first got here, I considered this place to be my savior. I considered Choate a place that could save me from my relationship with my parents, the people I met and the mistakes I had made. Obviously, this campus could never have lived up to my high expectations, but I still appreciate everything Choate has done for me. I love everyone for what they given me, and for the genuine goodness that I know is somewhere inside of them. I love Choate because of what it represents. Essentially, I love Choate because of everything I know it could have been. When I look back on my two years here, I see missed opportunities, huge mistakes, and relationships that could have been but never were. Even if they never came to fruition, I know the fact that they could have says more about this place than any admissions pamphlet or website ever could. Even on the days that I consider this place to be hell, I remember everything it could have been and realize that it’s an amazing campus.
But at the same time, something deep down inside of me absolutely resents this place. Choate, at its core, is its own worst enemy. And it’s not just the obvious repressive constraints of boarding school. Yes, I think that legal adults should be trusted to stay out after 11 p.m., that “coed” rules are a ridiculous way of trying to impose order where order can never be imposed (namely teenage sexual exploration), and that administrators should learn to have a bit of a sense of humor about things. But then again, I signed up for all of that when I got here.
It’s also not that people get too entrenched in the system of life that we’ve created. We go to a boarding school, so by definition we should expect to some extent to be isolated from the rest of the world. The problem is something more profound than all of that.
The issue is that in order for students to receive the full Choate experience, they by definition need to be able to move beyond this place. If you never reach a point where you would give anything to get away, or where you’re simply sick and tired of the excessive demands made on students here, you’ve missed something vital. On some level, it’s a necessary developmental goal here: everyone needs, at one point or another, to want to leave.
I’ve only experienced it for two years, but the sometimes crushing demands of this lifestyle have proved to me that Choate is definitely less than the sum of its parts. And that, simply put, is both the great and horrible thing about being here. In many ways we are all great, dynamic, and interesting people despite of and because of the excessive pressures, sometimes ludicrous rules and totally absurd lifestyle that we experience here. All of that helps us broaden our horizon, experience new things and push ourselves to new limits. But at the same time, it all has the ability to crush our spirits now and again. The days that I love Choate are the days that I see through the superficialities of the community we live in and appreciate people here for who they are rather than what Choate typecasts them as.
So the next time you’re down about Choate, or you feel like you want to get away, remember this: Choate is not about the classes, the homework assignments, the grades, the sit-down lunches, the college decisions, or even the entire lifestyle it creates. Instead, the real beauty of Choate is the people that it brings together, and their ability to transcend all of that while still being relatively good human beings. If you never lose sight of that, you will never stop going back to loving this place.
