what's it like to attend
Phillips Exeter Academy
a journey through boarding school, a story of growth, a promise to myself
PART IV
the line in between
Me when I finally graduated from P.E.A. with a Classics Diploma. Can you see the relief in my face?
When I asked Sahith if he wished he had the “prep” or freshmen experience at Exeter, my brother gave a short, direct and curt, “No.”
“Why?” I asked, a little thrown off by the surety in his voice.
“I don’t think I could have lasted four years going there. There’s too much going on.”
And after hearing his response, I was no longer surprised, rather felt a sense of familiarity come over me as I recollected when some of my best friends who came in as new lowers during my time at the school also expressed similar sentiments. My brother’s response echoed those of so many other students. Four years at that school was too much. Being thirteen or fourteen years old for a first year at Exeter was too young.
I couldn’t say I was shocked at his response, but I did feel a sense of despondency wash over me as I began to think about all the young students I myself witnessed whose spirit slowly faded from their faces until their excitement and enthusiasm morphed into something more somber by their lower and upper year. And I also felt a sense of defensiveness. Something about experiencing that school from start to finish felt personally accomplishing for me. And prep year was when I made some of my best memories, forged some of my closest friendships, and discovered so much of the real world. But was it crucial in gaining the same amount out of the institution as I did, or would three years have been enough? More than enough?
I then asked him if he’d ever send his kids to Exeter, to which I received another definitive no. And when I prodded for more, he responded with a simple statement of “it’s not worth it.”
“Really? Hasn’t Exeter shaped you in some way?” I pushed.
He replied, slightly inquisitively, “It’s definitely an experience that changes you a lot and makes you more mature,” but then definitively asserted, “but I don’t think it’s necessary.”
I wonder if he’ll change his mind a few years down the road. Because while it’s been nearly twelve years since my sister attended Exeter, she still credits much of her growth to the academy and does desire to send her children there if they were interested. “Some of the first words that come to my mind when I think about Exeter are transformation, rigor, and independence,” she told me.
“Nothing negative at all?”
“No, not at all. When you look back at a whole stage of life, that spanned over four different years, it never feels negative entirely. There were just some moments that were worse than others.”
“So you wouldn’t consider Exeter to be difficult?” I questioned, a little surprised by her casual tone.
“No, Exeter wasn’t hard. There were just certain terms or classes in which I struggled. And I was never depressed there, I was just growing up and tackling the different challenges that came with adolescence.”
Her response threw me off guard. I was expecting my sister to affirm my own experiences and my own feelings associated with attending such a rigorous institution. But her sentiment seemed to differ from both mine and my brother’s. Because while my brother seemed to express a certain level of resentment, my sister’s reaction suggested that she stood at the opposite end of the spectrum. She stood purely on the side of gratitude. Yet, I am caught somewhere in the middle, relating to many of my brother’s experiences of hardship, while resonating with my sister’s testament to growth. For me, attending this institution was filled with so many firsts, memories that are unique and unforgettable, but not all of them were favorable. Because while Exeter provided me with so many resources and opportunities to engage in new activities, meet different types of people from all kinds of places, and have so much independence at such a young age, it was also where I first experienced the growing pains of hardship, loss, emotional conflict, and loneliness. While Exeter led me to discover so much more about the world than I would have ever been able to had I attended school in Louisiana, it was also where I experienced my first of many Fs on an exam, my first of many Cs on a paper, and my first of many feelings of being a failure. And while Exeter was where I first learned to embrace my identity as a South Indian-American, finding long-lasting friends who appreciated my culture and peers who valued my diversity, it was also where I first tasted grief as one of my own took her life because she wasn’t given the same benefit of the doubt, because her diversity in thought was neither embraced nor respected, but was instead deemed controversial and labeled “radical.” So can I simply feel one way or another toward that school?
Yet, what’s interesting about this dichotomy is the factor of time. While my sister, the eldest of us three, has gone through two rounds of transition since her first year at Exeter, starting and finishing two more phases in her life as she fulfilled her time at college and is at the brink of completing her four years in medical school, I am only on the verge of completing my first, and my brother, still chugging through his last month of senior year, has yet to taste life after Exeter. So, could the difference in our thoughts simply be due to our age? Our time spent outside of the Academy halls and campus environment? The distance of our Exeter-filled memories from our present day reality? Four years from now I wonder if, like my sister, I, too, will look back at my time at the institution and simply reminisce on the good moments, writing off the hard parts as a part of adolescence. I wonder if I too will attribute the challenges I faced as a part of growing up, not a flaw of the institution for attempting to churn out miniature elitist adults with single-tracked minds to be the best of the best no matter the cost instead of educated young students looking toward a future filled with opportunity and excitement.
In college I often found myself reminiscing with my friends about our time in high school and how different we were—how different life was—just a few years ago. It was entertaining to hear their stories, their version, which was ultimately the more normal version, of a high school experience, with classrooms full of individual chairs and desks facing the front, where a teacher presumably lectured the subject material, chalk or expo marker in hand, where students had hallways with lockers and free periods to sit in a classroom together and “study,” where friends got to meet other friends’ parents and go to other friends’ houses on the weekends, where kids didn’t need permission slips to get into someone’s car to go to the mall or movies, where students weren’t required to be in their dorm by 8 pm every night as a freshman or sophomore, 9 pm as a junior, or 10 pm as a senior, and where friends could actually see each other in the summers because they more than likely lived near each other. I was always proud of having attended Phillips Exeter Academy, especially when someone knew the name. I felt validated. Like the eliteness and prestige of the institution compensated for its rigor and restrictiveness. In a way it truly did. But I can’t deny that I also felt envious of the norm, the classic high school experience, the regularity that I felt like I had missed out on. And the stark contrast between my experience and theirs’ led me to believe that our understanding of academic intensity differed as well.
I used to get defensive whenever those around me attempted to reminisce about their high school memories and the intensity of their academic experiences, as if it wasn’t possible for non-boarding school students to endure forms of institutional strife in non-Exeter environments. I was never quick to express it, but inwardly I’d always want to shout, “you don’t even know how bad it can get.” When I graduated Exeter, my emotions were not ones of accomplishment, rather of relief. I felt proud not because I excelled but because I survived. Now that I’m on the verge of completing another significant chapter in life, one arguably filled with much more personal stress, growth, and accomplishment, the fact that I had such thoughts after graduating Exeter feels quite comical and a tad dramatic. But at the time they felt warranted, mostly, I think, because of my age. At the time, Exeter and all of its academic, social, political, and institutional pressures, was all I really knew in terms of struggle. And at that age, learning about the functioning of the real world faraway from the safe haven of my home and the comfort of my family and best friends, seemed like a lot to cope with. In fact, it was. Exeter was uniquely difficult, but not because of the academics or the social demands of fitting in, rather it was that sense of being alone, of feeling trapped, unable to run away into the confines of your room while you smelled the comfort of your mom’s cooking on the dinner table, knowing she’d be running up the steps to check on you any moment, unable to hear the reassuring presence of your brother next door as he loudly played video games with his friends online, unable to have your sister walk across the connected bathroom and sit on your bed as she caressed your hair while you sobbed into her lap, unable to call in sick one day if you needed some space, unable to escape, unable to just sit and breathe.
At least that’s what it felt like for me.
But Exeter was not the last of my battle with loneliness. I was reintroduced to this feeling of suffocation on numerous occasions in college. But I felt it easier to reach out to my friends for help or seek out other methods of comfort. I felt it easier to ask my professors for excused absences or extensions on my papers. I can’t tell if that ease has come with growing up enough to prioritize my well-being, a decreased sense of pressure concerning the relevance of my grades to my future, or simply because I had been in these positions before and I was tired of sinking under the pressure.
When I first experienced true academic pressure in college, I fell back into the shadows. I grew discouraged, accepted mediocrity, and admitted defeat. I became reminded of all the times I struggled in high school, all the people who told me I wasn’t smart enough, knowledgeable enough, good enough. Who made me feel that I simply wasn’t enough. I internalized the criticism and I adhered to it. Yet, at the same time the very mindset I developed around academics at Exeter eventually allowed me to see past the grades while in college and delve more deeply into the knowledge itself, prompting me to refuse wasting time on things I was not interested in and instead focus on my passion. The discouragement I endured in high school pushed me to develop a “no nonsense” attitude in college, sparking a determination in me that I never even knew I had. So while Exeter may have been my first real exposure to some sense of challenge and hardship, it was the last of my constant failure to rebuild the shattered pieces of my confidence, because the version of myself that took form in college found a way to pick up those pieces and make them stick. In college, I found a way to not only surpass my own expectations, but to strive for more. I found a way to recognize that any sense of insecurity or loneliness I felt was temporary. So maybe my sister is right. Maybe the hardships I felt like I’d endured at Exeter were not really struggles. Maybe instead they are simply the faded memories of navigating adolescence.
Yet, what I know with certainty is that without the stage of Exeter looming in my past, I would not be the person I am today, neither would my sister and neither would my brother. Exeter set the foundation of our growth. And personally, Exeter set the foundation for me to move beyond the shadows, while leaving many of those emotions of feeling incompetent and unqualified behind, letting them dissipate into distant memories. Exeter was crucial to my growth, and is therefore a necessary chapter to my life. But I am also coming to recognize that while growing up can be challenging, stressful, and at times even painful, growth itself is a privilege, and life seems to teeter somewhere in between. Some people are fortunate enough to find that line and keep their balance, others are pushed over the edge. I am simply one of the luckier ones.
