Happy Birthday to Us: Choaties Seek Perfection Even When It Comes to Birthday Celebrations
By Sam Pape ‘08
News Associate Editor
The majority of Choate students strive for perfection with everything they do, and it is no surprise that many plan birthday parties for themselves or their friends with the same fervor and determination usually reserved for Calculus problem sets. The perfect birthday bash can turn even the most mundane of weekends (History extra help and Saturday D, anyone?) into a chance to escape off campus or provide a short reprieve from the oppressive regime known as campus life. Whether intimate or inclusive, birthday parties at Choate give a preponderance of students reason to eat out and plaster poster-size prints of their friends in comical and sometimes compromising positions all over campus.
Student’s birthdays constitute some of the best days spent on campus. One student commented, “My birthday is my favorite day of the year. On what other day would you have hundreds of students wishing you well, cake in your dorm, awkward pictures of yourself all over the school, and your name in the Daily Notice?” The little details that often accompany a student’s birthday, like the requisite sign, may seem insignificant but indeed do provide Choaties with much needed positive reinforcement. Noted one student, “Sometimes I feel like I am not getting a lot of encouragement on campus, so birthday signs, while embarrassing at times, let me know that my friends do care.”
Students also reaffirm their faith in their friends through the actual party. Many Choaties go the old-fashioned route with dinner at standbys Half Moon and Michael’s, both of which serve as frequent destinations for birthday parties. Some students go the more intimate route, ordering in food and holding smaller parties in the confines of dorm common rooms.
Others prefer slightly over the top bashes, like the one Lily Ackerman ’08 held for her seventeenth birthday in January. Ackerman celebrated by taking eight of her closest friends out to dinner at the Union League Café in New Haven via limo. “Even though it’s hard for boarding students to have actual parties, the small dinner was just as good.” Choaties tired of Wallingford can take refuge in the cultural meccas of nearby New Haven and New York City. “A change of scenery and some good food are all it takes to make a Choate birthday good,” explained one student.
Alternative eating options include Brix, serving ethereal Italian food in Cheshire, and the wealth of ethnic restaurants that populate the crowded streets of New Haven. In New York, Choaties have held birthday parties at exclusive, celebrity infested haunts like Butter, which serves mediocre New American food, and Nobu, arguably the best sushi chain in the world. One student who recently held their party in New York at steakhouse BLT Prime articulated, “New York has so much more to offer than Wallingford or New Haven combined. Provided that transportation isn’t an issue, it’s fairly easy to grab some friends and head into the city for shopping and dinner and be back by check in.
Despite all the options available to orchestrate the perfect birthday, complications abound with transportation and of course, school rules. One Choatie carped about the endless rules that detract from student birthdays on and off campus, saying “Well, there’s signout, which can get complicated if you are leaving campus with friends, and if you are on campus, you need dorm guest permission for overnights, Plus, lighting anything in the dorms is against the rules, so birthday cake must go without candles!” Problems with transportation are decidedly more complex than those inherent with abiding by school rules. According to many around campus, travel by limo is both an entertaining and stylish way of getting around on a birthday, but problems arise when said limos attempt to navigate the narrow streets of Wallingford or worse, New York City’s clogged avenues. Having a day student friend is a valuable asset when seeking transportation around or off campus. One day student who preferred to remain anonymous for obvious reasons said, “All my boarder friends ever ask me to do is drive them around and get them food. I’ve had to cram seven kids into a car that only seats five while en route to a birthday dinner, and it was not fun.”
Though many opportunities exist on and off campus to have the “perfect birthday,” not all students agree that Choate birthdays represent the ideal celebrations. One student lamented, “Birthdays at Choate suck. You are away from friends and family back home, plus all that really happens is that you get a couple hundred ‘Happy Birthdays’ and the entire school sees a number of embarrassing pictures they probably shouldn’t have seen.” Some may take cynical positions on the Choate birthday party, but most agree that it is a time for food, friends, and of course, limo rides.
