I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about leaving this wildlife preserve and moving somewhere else. What can I say? I’m a senior, and if you try to tell me that there are seniors who aren’t thinking about these things, regardless of whether they’re looking forward to or dreading them, I won’t believe it.
As I sat at my family’s Easter dinner this past Sunday, I looked out the window to see a deer making its way through the woods behind our house. Deer sightings in that particular wooded area are certainly less common than they are up here, but it made me realize that while some of the quirkier aspects of life at Fairfield will seldom be found anywhere else, we will find much of what is good and interesting no matter where we go.
Leaving Fairfield is a lot like leaving home (again). When we arrived at school we became part of a big family that tried to mold us into a well-rounded and responsible individuals, and in spite of all our best attempts to rebel, well-rounded and responsible is pretty much how most of us have turned out.
Hopefully most of us outgrew our teen angst as we matured into twenty-somethings while at college, but four years anywhere equals four years of complaining about any number of things. We’ve bemoaned our lack of school spirit and been discouraged by the cancellation of athletic programs and various traditions, but when we look back on our time here, those will be the things we will joke about and our best memories will consist of the moments that really mattered.
As much as we like to complain, Fairfield’s atmosphere is one that attempts to nurture the whole person, or at the very least, make each person aware that life is everywhere, from the streets of Fairfield to the sidewalks of Bridgeport, from the very young to the very old, and that we all have the ability to choose to be part of it.
When leaving home, you take a set of keys with you so that you can get back in whenever you need to. Though that might not be the case in a literal sense, we should take keys with us when we leave Fairfield, too. The keys we’ve gotten from Fairfield, such as compassion, a sense of community and an uncanny knack for knowing when turkeys are nearby, won’t actually open doors, but they will open hearts and opportunities (well, maybe not that last one).
I like to think that as we leave we’ll take with us both the family values we have learned here and a little of the rebellious nature that makes the ordinary more interesting. In the perhaps too-cliched words of Thomas Wolfe, you can’t go home again. On the other hand, I tend to think that when you have a solid foundation, you eventually learn that it is possible to take that home with you.
Look around you, Class of 2006: Life is everywhere, and when we use what Fairfield has given us to make a difference in the life of another, only then will we realize that although we may leave what has been our home, home truly is wherever we are.
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