Would you say coming to Exeter was a valuable experience? If your answer is yes, then we both have a lot of people to thank.
Ahem! First and foremost, thank you. Thank you, the nearly 750 of you who came here, for making this year what it is. Since without the crowd, there would be no performing arts. You were the ones we published this for. You were the ones brave enough to perform in Exeter’s Got Talent, Karaoke Nights and the plays and you were the encouraging audience. You were the ones brave enough to speak about climate change in Assemblies and to speak up during Harkness. You were the ones who made Exeter continue and have its traditions. The ones before us made this a great centennial, and I hope the ones after will say the same thing for us.
But we are not a blossoming narcissus next to a pool, and there is a whole world behind us.
A whole world of working people!
Thanks to all the cheerful custodians and the diligent Campus Safety. Thanks to everyone, staff or from town, who were kind to us. Thanks to all our teachers for their time and effort, and for this academic setting. Thanks to all our dorm advisors who started many of our friendships and kindled our school spirit. Thanks to all the librarians who helped us navigate that huge treasure chest. Thanks to everyone who made the campus what it is now. Thanks to the Fisher Theater for letting us be the last people to ever perform in it and the Davis Center for letting us be the last people to dance in it. Thanks to the summer directors, deans and everyone else of the Exeter family who made these 5 weeks possible for us.
Thanks to all our friends who made this journey a pleasant one for us, who made us find home away from home (a cliché that is probably used in all last issues of The Summer Times), who made us endure the homework, the heat and the homesickness. Thanks to all our families who made it possible for us to come here and meet these incredible people, learn much more about life and our classes than we had initially expected and build our identities.
Thank you, Exeter Summer, for teaching us how to stand on our own feet, to be proud of our roots, to sometimes prefer being alone and in thought, to make and break relationships (and to cram three essays in one day, if we are being honest here). Thank you, Exeter, for teaching us how to talk and to Harkness, to hear and to listen and to look and to see. Thank you for teaching us how to be ourselves and not abandon our identities even away from our comfort zones.
So yes, thank you. We have so much to say and so little time.