Parents : Life at Lawrenceville

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 5/27/2008 |  5/12/2008 |  5/5/2008

Parent Letter - 5/27/2008

Dear Lawrenceville Parents,

The graduation of the “wonderful” class of 2008 over the weekend and culmination of final exams later this week marks the end of another school year. On behalf of my colleagues, thank you for your support and all your efforts to make this year so positive and productive.

During the Baccalaureate service on Saturday afternoon, I reflected on a passage from The Secret Garden, in honor of the spectacular production of that American childhood classic that the students mounted this fall. The scene I selected involves Mary asking Mr. Craven for “a bit of earth” and receiving his permission and the encouragement to “make it come alive.” My hope is that all the graduating seniors, as well as the returning underformers, will bring the same passion, personal courage, perseverance, and perspective that Mary brought to the garden to their lives. I have cut and pasted my remarks below.

Happy reading and happy summer,

Liz Duffy H’43
The Shelby Cullom Davis ’26 Head Master

p.s. Rory MacQueen gave an outstanding valedictory address at graduation. Click here for a copy.

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One of my favorite books as a child was The Secret Garden. So, I was thrilled when the performing arts department decided that this year’s fall musical would be a production of that childhood classic.

Reading the book as a child, I was enchanted by the mystery of the story—the wild moors, the foreboding Misselthwaite Manor, and, of course, the secret, locked garden. I was also intrigued by the unlikely friendship that develops among the three children: Mary, Dickon and Colin.

Watching your production of the musical this fall, I was most taken by the transformations of the various characters. In the critical scene that Lizi just read, Mary, who takes the risk of showing she cares and asking for what she wants, gets access to the secret garden. At the same time, Mr. Craven, in responding to Mary’s request, begins to re-open his heart to the promise of life and ultimately to his son.

Like Mary as she leaves India at the beginning of The Secret Garden, tomorrow all of you will be leaving the comfort of Lawrenceville and soon starting over in unfamiliar places. You will in many ways be laying down new roots. There are four seeds that I hope you’ll take with you from Lawrenceville as you plant your next gardens: passion, personal courage, perseverance, and perspective.

First, passion. The many speakers who addressed the School this year—Juan Williams, Judge Wilkinson, Kevin Jennings, and Eboo Patel, as well as your classmates’ parents, Susan Seidelman, Jonathan Brett, and Eric Maskin—share a palpable passion for what they do, whether their work is writing legal opinions or creating films, developing economic models or fostering interfaith communities. Indeed, most successful and satisfied people have followed their hearts and found a way to use their unique talents and interests to make a difference in the world. All of us who teach at Lawrenceville feel called to our work and fortunate to have chosen a profession that allows us to be part of, what we hope has been, a transformative period of your lives. May each of you also find a passion to which to devote your life.

As Juan Williams and Kevin Jennings described, you are growing up during a time of tremendous change and persistent inequity, yet incredible opportunity. I hope many of you will embrace Jennings’ challenge “to make a history to be proud of” and Williams’ similar encouragement to “Be the kind of people who put your hands in the muck and mire of life” and “get involved in making history.”

For you to pursue your passions and make history, you will need personal courage. For Mary in The Secret Garden, courage was approaching Mr. Craven to ask for “a bit of earth;” for Judge Wilkinson it was ignoring the advice of his parents and a lucrative law firm offer to pursue a career in teaching and on the bench; for Kevin Jennings it was following the example of his mother and working tirelessly to encourage tolerance and make schools safe places for all students. To me, personal courage is standing up for what you believe is right even in the face of resistance.

But, I don’t need to tell your class what it means to have personal courage, for there are plenty of your classmates sitting in the Chapel this afternoon who have displayed tremendous courage this year: Shamsa and Jaeho’s inspirational recoveries and returns to school; Tabatha, Raven and Sydney’s provocative study of our standards of beauty; Jason, Matt and William’s efforts to strengthen the honor code. In fact, I suspect that each of you here this afternoon could share your own personal examples of courage—trying out for a team you knew you might not make; performing in the Spring Dance Show for the first time; asking a classmate to the prom; taking a course you knew would be a struggle; coping with a family or personal crisis; confronting a classmate or a friend; or coming back after an illness or injury.

Unfortunately, as some of you have learned, personal courage does not always guarantee success, which is why the third seed that I hope you’ll take from Lawrenceville is perseverance. Although the media tends to celebrate genius performances, effortless perfection and lazy stars, in fact, what distinguishes top performers in all fields—athletics, arts, academics, and business—are not usually people’s natural abilities, but rather their determination, their hard work, and their positive attitudes. Think of the dedication, intensity and commitment to improvement that Michael Jordan brought to basketball. Although Jordan was a gifted athlete, he was cut from his high school basketball team. Imagine if he had quit playing basketball after he was cut; what a loss that would have been for the Chicago Bulls, for the NBA and for fans everywhere.

Similar examples of perseverance and effort abound in other fields. The dancing great Fred Astaire was known to work up to 18 hours a day to perfect a routine. He claimed, “The only way I know to get a good show is to practice, sweat, rehearse, and worry.” Similarly, what seems to distinguish world-class musicians, and even music prodigies, from other musicians is not a special music gene, but sustained hours of intense practice over years. Many so-called geniuses, such as inventor Thomas Edison, persevered through countless failures before their famous breakthroughs. It took Edison 1,000 tries to invent the light bulb. “I didn’t fail 1,000 times,” Edison told a reporter after he ultimately succeeded, “The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

Think for a moment about your own experiences here. The most successful students in your class are among the hardest working; the finest athletes are the ones who stayed after practice to shoot free throws, practice their swings, or perfect their shots; and the best musicians found the time, despite Lawrenceville’s busy pace, to practice daily. As you head off to college, remember that the surest way to succeed is to try hard; there is simply no substitute for sustained effort.

Perseverance is also particularly important in overcoming life’s inevitable setbacks. Again, the experience of one of your own classmates provides an excellent illustration. You all know that Peter will compete in the Olympic Swimming Trials this June in the 100 meter freestyle. What you may not all know is that just hours before the 100 meter race, Peter missed qualifying in his strongest event, the 50 meter freestyle, by less than one tenth of a second. Peter could have gotten discouraged and given up after his first race, but instead he channeled that disappointment into a personal best, Olympic trial qualifying time.

In an e-mail celebrating the end of the boys and girls swim teams’ memorable seasons, Coach Jordan shared five mentalities responsible for Peter and his teammates’ success: 1) have no limits, 2) these conditions are perfect for me, 3) I am a machine, 4) I have done the work and I believe in my ability, and 5) you have me to worry about. I trust after your time here that each of you personally understand what many of those tenets mean, though perhaps only the swimmers, long distance runners, and oarsmen among you can fully appreciate the third dictum—I am a machine.

Last, but by no means least, in addition to passion, personal courage and perseverance, I hope you’re leaving Lawrenceville with a broadened perspective—the ability to see beyond yourself and put yourself in the shoes of others. In The Secret Garden, with Martha and Dickon’s help, Mary matured from a self-centered, contrary child into a caring, able friend. While none of you entered Lawrenceville as helpless or spoiled as Mary was when she arrived at Misselthwaite Manor, I expect that each of you has gained a healthy dose of perspective during your time at Lawrenceville, not only around the Harkness tables, but also in the Houses, through your many community service involvements, cross-cultural encounters, and international forays, and in your informal interactions with classmates and friends.

Remember your volunteer work in New Orleans and Trenton; your interactions with the Masai people in Tanzania and your travels to many other regions of the globe; your efforts to build a network of Lawrenceville leaders, to create a more sustainable campus, and to foster better communication through the Lawrenceville Forum; and most important, your discussions—both planned and spontaneous—about what matters to you and why. Think about how those experiences have broadened your understanding of the world, of each other, and of yourself.

In order to thrive in the global world in which you will all live and work, you will need to be able to have honest and open conversations and debates, to interact comfortably with people from backgrounds different from your own, and to harness the wisdom, insights and hard work of many people to achieve lasting solutions to the complex issues that will confront your generation.

As Mary’s experience in The Secret Garden suggests, and I expect your own experiences here confirm, such perspective and empathy will also enormously enrich your lives. Perhaps one of the most empathetic people whom I’ve ever known was my father-in-law, Bob Gutman, who died this past November at age 81. A sociologist who spent most of his career in architecture schools, he was still teaching at Princeton and writing up until the day he died. Hundreds of people attended his memorial service in January to pay tribute to him not only as an intellect, but also as a mentor, a colleague, and a friend. Indeed, what was striking about the many testimonials and remembrances was how everyone valued the same things—Bob’s genuine interest and support, his undivided attention, his legendary capacity to listen well, and his insightful questions—all habits he deployed as often over lunch or a cup of coffee as he did in a classroom or other formal academic setting. I trust that similarly some of your most meaningful and memorable conversations with faculty and friends have happened here in the House after check-in, during a long bus ride to an away game, as you lingered over a meal, or in some other informal setting. Never underestimate the power and importance of friendship and fellowship.

Perhaps the ultimate form of perspective is humility, and to me, the person who best embodied humility—and indeed all four virtues of which I’ve spoken this afternoon—is another Bob, Lawrentian Bob Goheen. A member of Lawrenceville’s Class of 1936 and resident of Hamill House, Goheen led Princeton as its president during a period of enormous societal and university change and then served as the U.S. Ambassador to India. Listen to how his successor, Bill Bowen described President Goheen at his memorial service in April:

First, quiet and understated as he was, Bob believed passionately in [education], in liberal learning, and in the capacity of [education] to change people’s lives, and in some measure, the world in which we live… Second, he was a highly intelligent, clear thinking man who respected evidence… Bob was always ready to be persuaded that this, that or some other policy or option needed to be changed… Bob was also entirely free of any need to defend himself or his prior positions. I don’t think that I have ever met anyone so free of even an iota of ego-mania. He cared about getting it right…, not for proving that he had somehow been right all along. His capacity to be corrected, and to correct himself was one of his great strengths… More generally, no one should make the mistake of reading Bob’s gentleness and humility as implying lack of strength, or heaven forbid, lack of courage… He was without pretense, but never without dignity.

May all of you live up to President Goheen’s fine example and his legacy of responsible leadership.

When you process out of the Chapel this afternoon, you’ll be given bookmarks by the ushers. They are made from natural fibers and embedded with Forget Me Not flower seeds. As you leave Lawrenceville and begin the next chapters in your lives, I hope each of you will, like Mary in The Secret Garden, and Bob Goheen and the many Lawrentians who have graduated before you, claim your own “bit of earth” and with passion, personal courage, perseverance and perspective “make it come alive.” My colleagues and I look forward with anticipation and excitement to watching you sow spectacular gardens bright with color, vibrant with life, and rich and fragrant with unexpected treasures and pleasures. Congratulations and best wishes.