Over Spring Break, I went to Italy with the Cantata choir and Chamber Orchestra. We spent almost two weeks visiting the great historic sites of the country such as the ruins at Pompeii, Brunelleschi’s Dome in Florence and, of course, the Colosseum in Rome. While in the Eternal City, my friends and I found ourselves with a free afternoon and began to search for a place to eat lunch. However, despite being surrounded by the most authentic Italian food in the world, we raced to the Hard Rock Café. I felt that I should have been ashamed of my crass American cravings. However, as I sat in the restaurant, reading a menu entirely in English for the first time in days, listening to Gang of Four blast from the speakers, watching MTV and eating an honest-to-goodness hamburger, I began to reconsider. Had I been the ideal traveler, I would have immersed myself in the local culture during the entire vacation and avoided anything that was not purely Italian. However, I had been living off pizza, panini and pasta for the past week and a half, traveling in a foreign country where I knew almost nothing of the language and trying as hard as I could to get the “Italian Experience” 24/7. Was there really anything so wrong, I wondered, in seeking a respite from the unfamiliar? The same question can be asked of life at Phillips Academy. We are overwhelmed with the plethora of opportunities that we can pursue, from sports and music to community service and clubs. We constantly strive to ensure that we make the most of our time at this school, and we know that we will lament the things we didn’t do in the years to come. Just look at the words of countless alumni who think back to their Phillips days. They all say, “If I had to do Andover over again, I would take more advantage of the opportunities that the school offers.” Phillips Academy students do recognize how fortunate we are and how many opportunities we are given (perhaps not to the extent that alumni with a broader perspective do, but that is to be expected). Awareness of opportunity and a desire to take advantage leads us to sign up for ten clubs at the Club Rally, participate in orchestra, play interscholastic sports all three terms and sign up for six classes. Often, though, in this never-ending effort to expose ourselves to the unfamiliar, we just get worn out. There’s something to be said for staying in our comfort zones. From my own experience, I’ve come to believe that an experimental attitude toward life should be tempered with recognition and practice of the endeavors at which we excel and in which we feel at home. After all, how can we be expected to perform our best in unfamiliar situations if we don’t take breaks to recharge our batteries in our own arenas? The feeling of missing an opportunity is a painful one, but even more painful is the stress and exhaustion that results from overextending ourselves and refusing to take the time to recuperate from trying encounters with the unknown. Don’t get me wrong – I wholeheartedly encourage branching out into new areas, trying unfamiliar things and taking risks. That’s why I tried wrestling for a few weeks last term. That’s why I’m going on SYA Italy next year. But ventures into the unknown should be chosen deliberately and with the knowledge that there are only so many hours in the day and that it’s equally as important to develop our preexisting passions as it is to start something new. Otherwise, we will wear ourselves out to the point where we no longer have the energy or the desire to take the healthy risk of being the little fish in the big pond. That rainy afternoon in Rome, we finished our meal, paid the check, took a quick photo in the restaurant and stepped back out into the streets. “Woah,” someone commented as a Vespa shot past us. “We’re still in Italy! I had kind of forgotten.” We laughed and started off towards the Pantheon. Tired though we were, I noticed a new sense of enthusiasm and a fresh energy in the group as we resumed our sight seeing. I could be wrong, but I think it was from getting that little taste of the familiar– something we could all use a bit more of at Phillips Academy.
