Every high school student practices the traditional ritual of icebreakers at least once in their life. While they might seem trivial, those precarious moments at the start of each school year can make one feel that their one-sentence answer defines their identity, and in a way, it does. The icebreakers are asked to give each student an opportunity to introduce themselves, and for Andover students, that means to make an impression. The most common one is some variation of “What is your favorite hobby?” or “What do you like to do in your spare time?” As you can imagine, Andover students have a field day with that one. Some draw up a college essay worthy answer, and others attempt to be more subtle but with just as much overthinking. While I’ve been a victim of it myself, at the start of my first year at Andover this year, I stuck to “I like to read.” It seemed modest, but it was also true. At that time, I read a lot…like all the time—I even wrote my application essay about how much I like to read. Usually, the follow-up question to my saying this is “What type of books do you like to read?” to which I can answer with, “Everything.” However, this all changed once I arrived in Andover. Suddenly, I had too much homework and too many commitments to read. When I did have spare time, I simply had no brainpower to read and turned to less complex options like sleeping, scrolling, or watching shows and movies. The more I asked my friends, the more they seemed to agree. There was no time for creative hobbies. For so long, teenagers have defined themselves by the activities they partake in. What happens when those activities are deemed sacrificial to the structure of the rigorous schedule of an Andover student’s life? At the time, “I like to read” seemed like the obvious answer. Now, describing myself feels dishonest.
When I arrived at Andover to move in, my mom took me to the Andover Bookstore, a gem downtown and part of what made me fall in love with our campus on my tour day. She gifted me with several books, including some I had brought with me, and I knew I had enough to last me through Family Weekend. However, I didn’t read a single page. As academic and social engagements ramped up, I ended up exhausted by the time I returned to the dorm. As someone who had never been able to nap before, I suddenly relied on them to survive the week. One thing I’ve learned is that social structures tend to shape individual behavior, and nowhere else is that more obvious. Clearly, the high-pressure environment of Andover caused this separation from my favorite hobby.
Soon, I realized this was a collective pattern. My roommate and I created a book club after we bonded over not having read much all year, despite being avid readers. I told my house counselor about my concerns with reading, and she ominously replied: “You’re not the only one.” I even realized that though I love writing, I never write for myself anymore. I haven’t performed at all, when dance and vocal recitals and musical theatre productions had been an integral part of my life at home. I yearned for this person I once was, but now can’t recognize in the mirror. I’ve learned that Andover, although it prides itself on diversity and equity, has its own version of hierarchy. Certain aspects of identity are valued, like achievement, leadership, and academic or athletic excellence, and others are quietly pushed aside, like unstructured creativity. Slowly, our hobbies are becoming sacrificial offerings to our schedules.
Now, we see students attached to their dorms and activities that, in excess, can lead to procrastination of both schoolwork and creative pursuits. However, our bodies need to utilize our free time in this way to recover from our hectic lives. We’ve adapted to the demands of our high-pressure environment, to prioritize rest over exploration, and understandably so. This, however, raises the question: if our hobbies are what make us unique, who do we become when they disappear?
My concern is that our community will become a boring mass of uniformity, like some of those suburban neighborhoods where each house is built simply following the blueprint of the one built before. The diversity of interests our school prides itself on will disappear because the pursuit of varied interests decreases. Instead of being defined as readers, artists, and musicians, we’ve moved to chasing the co-president of whichever club and first chair of whichever music ensemble. Our identities have shifted towards performance, productivity, and outcome, away from passion, to the point that doing something “for fun” doesn’t exist anymore.
When hobbies disappear, we lose more than activities. We risk our creativity, our curiosity, and parts of our identity that existed before academic burdens shaped us. If I were asked again, “What do you like to do in your spare time?”, I wouldn’t quite know what to say. The answer seems more complex, not because I’ve stopped loving reading, writing, and performing, but because my environment leaves little space for them. If icebreakers are supposed to reveal our identities, then maybe the silence that will follow them is more indicative of our school’s culture than any answer ever could be.
