Thesis Title

Esther Mofya

It doesn't feel like it's time to leave, but I never feel that when I like somewhere. What I do feel is that if I stayed another year I would run out of new things to learn. 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. My responsibilities here are to clean the dining room weekly, I've been both a JC clerk and the assistant JC clerk, I'm the Donations Clerk, and I've recently undertaken being the School Meeting chair. All of these except the cleaning are optional. As someone who joined at 14, I noticed that the school does 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 enjoy problem solving, it's so satisfying to get a good problem worked out, so being part of JC is rewarding to me in this way. During my time here I've found 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. Another thing I want to bring is 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 a room of people all at the same time, and that led to people joking around instead of giving a more genuine answer as they might've in a one on one interview setting. But it sparked an interest and made me want to get better, so I did some more around school. 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. Same with making 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. Lastly, I hope to bring the people. The people are like 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 with kids. I'll get them ice cream and let them sit in the front of the car even if they're a bit too short. I guess I'll hang out with their parents too. And I 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. As of revising this in March, I'm making progress.) This is so I'll be able to spend a year volunteering at lots of different places to get a sense of what I want to do/where I want to work. I'm interested in general places like museums, libraries, farms and nature, and specific places like The ARt Cottage, Berkshire Books, The Lindsay Wildlife Experience, and DVS of course. 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, I need to explore as much as possible. I'll reflect on my experience at the end of the year as well as at points throughout. These checkpoints will help me to decide what I wanna keep going with and take more seriously, if I'd need to go to college for it or not, and to find a next step from there. As much as I'd like to do all that and continue at DVS, I've learned my limits with scheduling and I don't think I would be able to properly participate here at the same time. I'm not eager to go but I'm eager to try something new. There will always be more JCs to attend, more hours I could spend in the art room, more movies to watch in the tech room, and more lunches to eat in the grass field, but to do it all for another year wouldn't allow me to grow as much as my new plan would===========================================================Temporary author's note: I may edit the part about the bus to be more relevant closer to April 15th if I have made significant progress.