"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

by Esther :)

4/13/25

This is very bittersweet. I love it here, but if I stayed another year I wouldn't be growing as much as I want to. In the past 3-ish years I've grown a lot. For example, in figuring out a schedule that works for me so I don't run out of energy, learning how the systems here work (school meeting, clerkships, committees, etc.), and navigating social situations like friendships and interacting with a wide age range of people. Also in finding interests like photography, sociology, making crafts like stuffed animals and collages, and rediscovering reading. Even though not all of this was done physically at DVS, I had the time and motivation to do so due to the amount of structure here.

That's something I want to bring with me from DVS, the amount of structure there is. During my time here I've found that the best schedule structure for me is to have several consistent planned events, and to schedule more inconsistent things in that looser time in between. Everything slots together very easily this way. This has been made more apparent over the summers, when I have less consistently planned events, leading to a lot of boredom and empty days. I could also never Phineas and Ferb it with new spontaneous adventures daily for 104 days straight. However fun that sounds hypothetically, I need a balance in the middle.

The main thing that has taught me this is the need to find time for both my responsibilities and my spontaneous plans. My responsibilities at DVS are to be the Donations Clerk and the assistant JC clerk (in the past I've been a JC Clerk), I've recently undertaken being the School Meeting chair, and I clean the dining room weekly for my chore. All of these except the cleaning are optional.

As someone who joined at 14, I noticed that the school tends to rely on older students to take charge of clerk positions, but I never felt like I had to have more on my plate than I wanted. At the start of my time here I had nothing to do with the administrative side of things. I only started going to School Meeting because that's where most people were at that time of day. Then, as I got a bit older, I found myself naturally wanting to be more involved in keeping the school going.

I became Donations Clerk after Sam left the position open, not really knowing what it entailed, but then I got into it and now I've really got it down. I made a form for donors to fill out that gives me the information I need, I look up the pricing of everything, I log it in a spreadsheet, I send out receipts, and I email the bookkeeper a report of everything. It makes me feel sure of myself that I could learn how to do a big kid job for big kid money.

I've gotten the same surety from learning how to run a JC meeting, the main difference being that JC functions as a team. It's not my favorite part when people aren't cooperating the way I'd like, but I'm sure learning to deal with that will prove a useful skill to have and expand on outside of DVS.

Another thing I want to bring is the community playlists, turns out I love sharing and compiling music. I'll definitely be looking out for opportunities to do similar things elsewhere, and I'd also love to visit and do more at DVS. You can listen to the playlists I've made at school here!

The same follows for the interviews. I did my first ones here a few years ago when an online friend and I were wondering if peoples generations affected their views on celebrities. Admittedly it didn't turn out how I wanted. Thinking back, our questions were good, but I asked them to a whole room of people instead of one on one, which led to people joking around with each other instead of giving a more genuine answer. But it sparked an interest and made me want to get better, so I did some more around school about various topics. Then in December 2024 I took a trip to Zambia with my dad for a business conference he was hosting. I interviewed a handful of the guests about their career choices, since that's a very relevant topic to me right now. I was super nervous to approach people at the start (being one of maybe five people under 20) but I got way more confident as I went, and got some great answers to my questions. Now I think being a reporter or journalist could be really interesting.

Recently I even started making a newspaper/zine called "It Was The Best Of Times". My inspiration for it was my mental list called "cute human things". I add to it when I see or hear about something like people getting rained on so their dog can be under the umbrella or the amount of time humans have been writing/painting/carving the message "I was here" for others to find. For a while I've felt like these events should be more widely reported on, so when I started trying to read the news more, which meant finding ways to make the neverending onslaught less overwhelming to deal with, I thought "Hmm.. someone should write news that's about tiny things, is fun to read, and where you walk away actually appreciating humanity. Hmm.. I could do that!" Now I've compiled 3 issues with the amount of contributions from others increasing every time and am greatly enjoying both my role as Editor in Chief and people's positive responses to the paper.

The last thing I hope to bring is the people. The people are the best part, it would be an incredible waste to never see anyone again. Such an interesting group, so fun to hang out with and learn from (I hope it doesn't sound like I'm pandering for votes) all in one community. Community is really important to me, and I'm excited to experience being in this community without being a student.

In 15 years I'll be 33. By then I hope to have a fulfilling social life, a nicely decorated living space, and I wanna have friends who have kids. I really don't want to forget being a kid, but I think it would be really easy to by accident if I never put in effort to talk to any. And I'll hang out with their parents too, they're probably cool.

I also hope to be at LEAST doubly as wise as I am now. I want to know more and be able to apply that knowledge to improving my life. I want to share it too, and be able to give really good advice to people. For almost as long as I can remember I've had a drive to be a little better than my last mistake, a little voice that says "I must continue to grow." Maybe it's ambitious to hope the extreme amounts of growth that happen in childhood will continue into my adulthood, but I kind of enjoy striving for the potentially unrealistic.

More immediately in the future, I'm hoping by the time I present this I'll be able to come to school, or anywhere, by myself on the bus.

• As of writing this in February it makes me anxious to consider
• March Esther here, I've been taking little steps like coming to school on the bus with a parent but we sit in different seats or I walk to the bus stop by myself, and I'm making a lot of progress
• April update, I just rode the bus by myself for the first time! The little steps are working perfectly.

I've always loved libraries, I remember browsing for hours and hauling reusable grocery bags of books to the car with my mom as a kid. I'd love to be a librarian. Librarians are awesome. If I met someone on the street and they told me they were a librarian, I'd trust them dangerously fast.

For museums it's all about the vibes. I'd love to sit in the archives surrounded by wooden filing cabinets taping old photos back together or preparing artifacts to be displayed. But I know I also need to experience places outside of my comfort zone, and I want to explore as much as possible.

I'll reflect on my experience at the end of the year as well as each month throughout with a list of questions I made for myself. During the year these checkpoints will help me keep tabs on how my plan is going: to decide what I wanna keep going with/take more seriously and what to move on from. At the end of the year, I'm hoping they'll help me with the larger decision of finding a next step based on what I want to keep doing or learning long term, and if I'd need to go to college for it or not.

During all this I'd love to be part of the community as an alumnus, but staying as a student isn't a part of my plan for next year. There will always be more JCs I could attend, more hours I could spend in the art room, more movies I could watch in the tech room, and more lunches I could eat in the grass field, but to do it all for another year wouldn't allow me to grow as much as this plan would. I'm not eager to leave, but I am eager to try something new.