**Connecting Our Strengths: The Andover Andeavor**
Today, we are extraordinarily excited to set forth “Connecting Our Strengths: The Andover Andeavor.” We believe Andover is not just a school, but an institution of excellence and education with wide sweeping influence and great power. With that power, however, comes a responsibility to pledge to protect and guard centuries of tradition, equality and limitless, unbounded opportunity in multiple areas across many professions and skills. We believe Andover students have a right and privilege to be free: free to discuss and promote discussion on a wide range of issues, unencumbered by their real effects. It is for this reason that we announce our initiative to reintroduce Andover into a new era of freedom, power and opportunity. There is no better time to reevaluate our own strengths and weaknesses and blaze a new path into unexplored horizons of the educational method.
Ponder, for a moment, the importance of emotion, of intelligence, of athleticism. These three pillars guide all that we do here at this school, whether it be on the field, in the class or in the dorm. Ponder, for a moment, the scope and reach of technology. Chart, in your mind, the spread of an idea: it begins as a seed in the mind of an adolescent, grows and grows, and blossoms into an impactful, articulated opinion. The goal of the new, fresh Andover Andeavor is to facilitate and produce such ideas. Through electronics, emotion, intelligence and athleticism, we are eager to share with our students years and years of experience and wisdom.
We here hold ourselves to a standard: one of truth, of harmony, of enthusiasm. Andover has countless tools at its disposal, and with this year’s strategic plan, we hope to open doors for all Phillipians. Specifically, we want to reinvent Andover so we can match the goals of our predecessors in the world of those who will follow us after us. We will do this through communication, focus and organization without the sacrifice of personal liberty.
Above all, the new Andover wants to make the world a better place by scaling through understanding and reaching the independent thought, by pairing with leaders in today’s globalized education industry, by gathering a staff of talented, qualified individuals and by listening to you, those who identify themselves with this school. We strive to become richer in mind and spirit, through groundbreaking, brilliant acts of kindness, virtue and quiet thought. In these ways, the Newer Andover will become the Bluer Andover.
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**Pride and Superiority**
Paul Revere’s famous Phillips Academy seal represents the benchmarks of excellence that the school’s very foundations have been rooted in for the past 200 years. In order to uphold Andover’s academic excellence, the commitment to our founders’ morals must remain both resilient and progressive. Samuel Morse provided the grounds for critical analysis, equality, understanding, kindness and well-being. George Bush also went here.
**Goal: Provide students with the comforting knowledge that they are the best people ever in order to maintain a concerning atmosphere of pride (/arrogance) throughout the school.**
– Suggest mandatory courses focusing on the memorization of notable Andover alumni.
– BlueCards will be replaced with Andover-edition dollar bills with students’ faces printed on the front.
– All School Meeting will now require 6-caliber students to announce their test results.
– Prospective student applications will entail a section on why they are better than everyone else in their hometown.
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**Magnanimity and Omnipotence**
Phillips Academy has ALWAYS firmly believed in the importance of maintaining Magnanimity and Omnipotence. Samuel Phillips himself was the biggest conformist of them all. When he founded the school, his friend George Washington told him that all students should learn to conform as well! In order to have order, the ancient and wise Board of Trustees decided that achieving a balance between Magnanimity and Omnipotence will afford us leaders with just enough power to rule indefinitely. God Save the Board.
**Goal: To have Head of School John Palfrey fully achieve insurgence and take over all the world’s computers.**
– Adding new free-speech zone in the basement of the Evans science building, but in this basement and this basement only.*
– Altering the bell tower to resemble a giant eye of fire.
– The School Motto will be changed to Finis Origine — CONFORM — Pendet.
– A chocolate fountain — of conformity — will be added to Paresky Commons.
_**The Evans Science building was torn down in the early 2000s to make way for Gelb_
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**Time and Alleviation**
Our impressive alumni network includes Olivia Wilde, George W. Bush, and Bill Belichick. These individuals would be homeless, jobless and possibly dead without the valuable gift of Andover’s time management education. We are committed to educating students on critical time management dexterities, allowing them to share more of their Andover-taught preeminence with the rest of the world each day.
**Goal: Prioritize time management skills and implement systems for students to be granted more time, and less anxiety each day.**
– New Monday schedule with classes from 8:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m.
– New Tuesday schedule with classes from 9:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
– Provide prewritten History 310 research papers for sale in Susie’s.
– Change grading scale to 0-4. Getting a 4 will once again be considered a good thing.
– Change math and science grading scales to exclusively Pass/Pass.
