My first Phillipian interview happened during Winter Term of my Junior year. I was assigned an alumni spotlight on Anne Northrup ’82 – a PBS documentary filmmaker. As the eager cub reporter, I scribbled a bunch of questions about her movies, her work, and I was primed to ask about all of that. But she didn’t want to talk about that. She wanted to discuss her upbringing, which took her to Indonesia, and her life experiences since Andover. Most of it was interesting; I put it in the article draft I sent in. She told me one thing, though, that didn’t seem terribly relevant and I left out. It’s a great myth, she said, that women can balance careers and motherhood. It wasn’t possible, she told me, and that was why she hadn’t made films in a while. As one might imagine, this seemed somewhat unimportant to a Junior boy writing to an audience of high schoolers. But, in hindsight, interpreting this tidbit in the context of Phillips Academy is terribly important. At Andover, we have to be master jugglers — mixing sports, the arts, clubs and Phillipian (Courant, take umbrage here) — all the while making sure to save the largest chunk of time for academic work: our child, that one ball we can’t drop. But to say that work is definitely the child in this metaphor is dangerous, and, well, patently false. Two Phillipian editors recently compared printing our 64-page Commencement issue to giving birth. And believe me, each issue we put out has developmental struggles of its own. So most Andover students, save for those who do nothing but study and those who don’t study at all, are trying to live Anne Northrup’s myth— not living the life of a stay-at-home mom or a workaholic, but rather the life of Vito Fossella. Or maybe Shawn Kemp. Two children, two families — on just two liters of Diet Coke a day — is an ultimately undesirable experience, one that probably foretells two decades in therapy. But, it gradually appears, inherent in the Andover juggling act is a significant life lesson —that life involves difficult choices — and that neglect of one child, and the subsequent effort to correct that lack of attention only breeds more neglect. Additionally, the choices we make are rendered tremendously difficult by the depth and breadth of Andover’s opportunities. If The Phillipian were only as demanding as the Cypress Bay High School Circuit, I might be a 6.0 student – and Eliphalet Pearson would be turning over in his grave. And countless others, I’m sure, could easily say the same. Instead, this term, Uppers are living a caricature, really. And that’s with a History research paper for which the required work has been sliced nearly to the bone. But before I get to whining (although, for the sake of whining, yes – I have three end-of-term assessments due in the four days preceding publication of this piece), I have a greater question. Andover teaches us that choices are necessary — that we cannot succeed to the best of our ability in any arena without making difficult decisions. Where in our education, though, are we taught how to make the right choice? Maybe this is problematic — but I’m less than six months away from my 18th birthday and I couldn’t tell you whether I’m more likely to wind up a rocket scientist or a rabbi. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but saying that our choices now are just dry runs, just for practice, is ignoring the reality that they will at least somewhat affect our adult lives. Sure, deciding between AB or BC Calculus won’t change whether or not I’m homeless at 30 (though, for precautionary measures, please wire money at your earliest convenience), but that decision will open some doors and close others. Oftentimes we’re not entirely sure of the consequences of our decisions until they appear before our faces. It seems at Andover that the only people who instruct us in the art of decision-making are our college counselors and advisors, and the former is shying away from that status while the latter is part of an undeniably flawed system. How can we learn to make decisions when we only have two years of real opportunity to take electives? And the College Counseling Office, which used to send us where they rendered a perfect fit, now presents us with lists of nearly 30 schools. But instruction in decision-making doesn’t complete the school’s responsibility to us – what of maternity leave? While you might blanch at the suddenly troubling extension of this metaphor, the question persists: how can the school afford us the opportunity to pursue pedagogically sound extracurricular interests without causing harm to our academic records? Unfortunately, to that question, I have no answer — and, to date, neither does Andover nor Anne Northrup. Jack Dickey is a three-year Upper from Guilford, Conn. and News Director of The Phillipian. sdickey@andover.edu
