Even before the students went off to their first classes of the year, there were teaching moments.

When the 109^th Student Council president, senior Charlotte Preuss, was finished addressing the student body at the opening convocation on Thursday, September 4, everyone knew all about the capybara. When Head of School Jody Soja had finished speaking, everyone knew about the brain science behind kindness. When senior Daniel Gao, a Student Council vice president, stepped away from the podium, his listeners were emboldened to “not just follow the script.” And when Associate Head of School Webb Trenchard had finished speaking, everyone knew that technology can sometimes be brittle, but our bonds can be as strong as the brick and mortar that make up Founders Hall.

New school year. New opportunity. That never changes, but what can change: Who will you be this year?

“Each new school year offers us a moment to reassess who and how we want to be,” Jody said. “This summer, one of my favorite novels was a book titled My Friends by author Frederik Backman. This line from an exchange between characters stood out to me: ‘Don’t be ashamed to be a human being — be proud! Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly. You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be.’ As we engage with our school question this year — ‘What does it mean to be human?’ — this passage speaks to the truth that to be human is to be constantly evolving. How freeing that there is no such thing as a perfect human. Our time on earth will always be about progress, not perfection.”

“Ask yourself,” she continued, “which new vault opens today?”

For freshmen the first vaults are starting to open. For returning students, some vaults yet remain.

When Daniel told the crowd that he had not always made the right decisions or given his best effort all the time, he was the living example of what Jody was talking about: We are constantly evolving. We do not need to be perfect.

“But I can say this,” Daniel said, “I’ve tried not to just follow the script, working to make my path at Loomis unique, unexpected, and personal. To be honest, by adhering to that mindset of challenging commonality, it has shaped my experience here in the best ways. And I encourage every one of you to do the same.” Daniel came to Loomis figuring he would continue taking Spanish but instead tried Arabic, something he knew nothing about, and ended up spending the fall of 2024 studying abroad in Jordan.  

Charlotte, too, eventually chose her own journey. She followed her sister here and figured she needed to be like her and do the same activities that her sister, a soccer captain, had. But Charlotte soon found encouragement from others and her own sports. She joined various clubs and took part in many activities, and here she was now, standing in front of hundreds as a school leader. Try new things, she advised.

By the way, those capybaras she talked about are the largest living rodents and native to South America. She encountered some this summer on a family trip to Argentina.  At one point, she said, Argentinians had no tolerance for the creatures. But they became social media stars and people started thinking differently about them. The story of their reinvention, Charlotte said, is similar to many that have occurred at Loomis. One of those reinventions was Charlotte.

“I’ve always been the same Charlotte, but I needed the support and encouragement of a loving community like Loomis to become who I am today,” Charlotte said. “Similarly, the capybaras didn’t have to change anything about themselves; the cuteness always existed. They just needed someone who cared about them to showcase it to the world. And just like how the capybara was eventually able to find its fan base, I was able to find my people, my closest friends, and the most supportive community at Loomis.”

It sounded a lot like the kindness of which Jody spoke. Kindness is one of the school’s shared community values to be highlighted this year. And while each school year may be different, some things need not change. When the first head of school, Nathaniel Horton Batchelder, spoke at the dedication of Founders Hall in 1916, noted Jody, he spoke of an institution that valued “kindness and care for others.”

Jody reminded the crowd that as we focus on the school theme this year, “please note that as humans we are engineered to be kind.”

Last year at a Chapel Talk a student had explained the brain science behind kindness. In short, kindness makes you feel good because of it triggers neurotransmitters and hormones. Kindness lifts up the giver as well as the receivers.  Kindness, Jody said, “is a choice and an action, full of heart and authentic care. It is the gift that keeps on giving.”  

Webb found out that an artificial intelligence tool also can be a gift that keeps on giving, but what it gives might not measure up.

"I figured that if I came up with some good bullet points," Webb said, "and asked the bot to do its thing, maybe something decent would emerge." He had a little fun with those prompts, too.  

“While far from perfect,” Webb reasoned, “AI does seem to be pretty good at arranging and piecing things together. In other words, if you think of telling a story as a building, and you can provide the building blocks in the form of some bullet points, then AI can effectively organize and link those bullet points. I provide the inputs that are the bricks, and then AI provides the mortar that binds and strengthens them, and then we have a sturdy building.”

What he got back from Chat GPT, however, was “just plain wrong at times” and “detached and impersonal,” he said. Hardly a sturdy building.

Still, he said, technology — whether it is AI or cell phones — “can be of great assistance in our lives.”  He continued, “Let’s be certain that technology isn’t detracting from our connection with each other, from our community, from our humanity.”

And he returned to the building metaphor.

“Think of your Loomis Chaffee experience as a structure, perhaps one of our beautiful Georgian brick buildings like Founders or one of the quad dorms, then think of your classes and homework and teams and clubs and activities — the things that you are formally a part of and that are scheduled — as the building blocks, or bricks, of your Loomis experience.  A building, however, cannot stand by itself with just those bricks. You need something for them to stick together. That something is our community and our ways of being … kindness, holding doors open, being inclusive, friendship, conversation, laughter, shared experiences. … That is the mortar. And mortar doesn’t just hold bricks together; it strengthens them. Let’s be a community that strengthens itself with warmth, laughter, kindness, and connection.”

Off the students went. New year. New possibilities. Some building blocks in place. More mortar to be applied.