This summer Sellers Hall has been filled with the cheerful sounds of group tours, online interviews, and the annual moving of my office furniture.

I’ve always moved furniture around. It started as a child when I would push my bed from one side of my room to the other periodically because I liked seeing different things when I woke up in the morning. When I started cohabitating with others, this became more of a challenge (note to self: apparently not every roommate appreciates having their bed moved, nor does every spouse enjoy being tasked with moving bookcases up and down flights of stairs for seemingly no reason). This summer, I moved my office desk back to the same spot it occupied two years ago. The furniture doesn’t have to necessarily be in a new place (there’s only so much room to begin with), but it must be moved.

Why do I move things? Because I like change. I find it invigorating to try something new. Some might take this to mean that I like change simply for change’s sake, indicating a tendency to chase squirrels, and being distracted by what’s shiny rather than what’s time-tested. However, I prefer to view this proclivity as one reflective of the desire to view things from different perspectives. I like learning new things, whether it’s from an interviewee about their experience on their basketball team or the fact that I have a perfect view of our Loomis softball field from my desk’s new (old) vantage point. In the words of Marie Kondo, it sparks my joy.

This love of change is also why my favorite day of the year is the first day of school. The first day of school is one that perennially crackles with the kinetic energy of possibility. I would guess that there are not many places left where so many people across such a wide range of life’s ages and stages experience a beginning like we do in schools every year. Whether it’s the most senior member of the faculty or the newest ninth grader, everyone starts the school year on a day that signifies a communal change for all. Granted, not everyone is as excited as I am at our opening convocation each year — I can’t blame the senior applying to college or the sophomore worrying about making varsity for feeling differently about the first day of school — but I have yet to meet an educator who isn’t happy to meet their students on the first day.

As a parent, though, I’ve had mixed feelings about the first day of school for my own children. I admit an inauspicious history in this regard; one daughter’s first day of kindergarten will be forever remembered as the time mom forgot to pin the required information card to her shirt before getting on the bus, rendering her unnamed and therefore unknown upon arrival (the fact she knew her own name and that of her teacher did not make up for the trauma of the unpinned index card). It’s always been a time of happiness, worry, excitement, and anxiety for both parents and children, even for change lovers like me. During Loomis’ new student orientation, I empathize with the range of parental emotion exhibited not just by those who are traveling across the world and not seeing their children again for many months but also those who live nearby and will see them in a matter of hours. The dropping off of a child at school can often be less about their physical absence from home and more about the emotional processing of a new life stage. This is something new. It’s new for those leaving their children at boarding school for the first time, but it’s also new every time a student returns to campus. It’s a new year: new room, new classes, new teachers, new peers. Schools change every fall; we grow our new skin. Maybe this is why I pause sometimes when asked to describe our community; it’s because it’s always changing. That’s also one of the likely reasons why I have spent over three decades working in schools. Furniture moving types (squirrel chasers?) love seeing new faces in the dining hall, and in Admissions, our job is to change the composition of the school each year with those new faces. This job is a good fit for people like me.

Admittedly, change is not always easily embraced, however. Last fall, after dropping our youngest at college for her first year, I sat a few days later in our opening convocation at Loomis for the first time in eight years without a child in the audience I could surreptitiously spy on. Genuine admission: this was not a welcome transition. Similarly, I have a friend whose first child is leaving for college this month, a transition which is equally challenging. And yet, lamenting what is no longer the same can, at times, lead one to miss the wonderful moments that a new normal brings. If we learned anything during the pandemic, it was to appreciate things that we often take for granted — people being the most important of them. Listening to my girls sing in the car at the top of their lungs on a recent summer night before my youngest left for her second year in college made my heart surge not in sadness for our not being together all the time, but in happiness for the moments when we are. Those times are fewer and farther between the older they get, but the quality of them is ten times greater than when we all lived together 24/7.

So, I empathize with parents who are readying their children for a new year at Loomis Chaffee. It’s not easy. The family dynamic will change, whether near or far. In my experience, it will change for the better — and not just because if they’re a boarder, it means you don’t have to give them rides everywhere. (Whoo-hoo!) We appreciate them because we miss them — even day students, because they spend a lot more time on the Island with their friends than they ever anticipated. And they appreciate home — they appreciate us — in a way they might not have previously. The time spent together will be cherished not just by you but also by them. Regardless of whether you’re in the physical presence of your child each day or not, the new school year will bring a metaphorical moving of the furniture, bringing into their lives new people and experiences that will impact their lives in unexpected and transformational ways. All of us in schools are blessed to be in a community where every year brings an opportunity to see something differently and learn something new.  

So, on that note, since I’ve already moved my desk, I’m off to get my academic year planner set for the first day of school. Happy New Year!