A conversation with five Brookwood grads
This article is a continuation of a piece examining the experiences of five Brookwood graduates —
now rising college sophomores, fresh from their first year of college.
Do you remember playing name games on the first day of school?
That classic teacher trick for any age group serves two purposes: to help the instructor memorize the names of his or her students on day one — very important — and to encourage the students to begin to form a connection — critical for ongoing class synergyWith that in mind, let me remind you of the names of our story’s protagonists: • J, a rising sophomore at Georgia Tech
• Margaret, a student at the University of Virginia
• Austin, an Honors College Fellow at Samford University
• Hampton, a rising sophomore at the University of St. Andrews in
Scotland
• Christopher, a Johnson Scholar at Washington & Lee University Coming out of her shell was a big accomplishment, she said. “It’s really easy to just fall in with Americans that reaUy already have experienced a lot of things you’ve experienced. It’s a lot harder to make your way in and really get close to others.”
Hampton said she now has friends from France, Ireland, Scotland and other countries — truly rewarding, especially since there had been a built-in extra layer of cultural differences to navigate. Still, “at school, everyone else was new, too,” she said.
“You’re all equalized, trying to find your friends.”
Christopher, a self-described extrovert, said he was “super-excited” to reach out to new friends at Washington & Lee, so he chose to arrive early to train for and go on a hiking trip designed for entering freshmen. “Who’s going to be the person who is my friend for the rest of my life?
There was that excitement for the unknown,” he said. Through his exposure to a wide variety of belief systems and political views at school, Christopher said he’s discovered a new level of maturity in his friendships.“I developed some really close relationships with people from completely different backgrounds,” he said. “I celebrated the differences in them, and they celebrated the differences in me. And we sought to learn from each other through that.”
“There are definitely things that I’ve discounted as being true or thought were false and disagreed with coming into school that now I see from a different perspective,” Christopher continued. “It’s made me desire more to engage with people who are maybe different or maybe quieter.”
J, who pledged a fraternity when he moved to Atlanta to attend Georgia Tech, said he’s felt unmistakable growth through his new friendships.
“I’m a believer that everyone you encounter impacts your life in a different way,” he said. “Iron sharpens iron. One man will sharpen another.”
Similarly, Margaret said that by the end of her freshman year, she realized she’d learned so much more about herself throughout the year “based on just having to interact in a new environment with different kinds of people and situations.”
And for Christopher, his positive experience may have even inspired a new career choice: “I knew as soon as I got to campus because of the amazing experience I had with my peer counselor that I wanted to do that for incoming freshman next year and for the rest of my career in college — and potentially become more interested in counseling as a career.” His training as a peer counselor begins when he returns to school in the fall.
Rediscovering the self
For all five rising college sophomores, there was a similar sense of startingover, with the possibility of reshaping the self and emerging anew.
When you go to college, “It’s up to you to decide who you’re going to be.
You’re the one who sets your identity and defines it,” Austin said. Moving away from home and into a new, unfamiliar world with new, unfamiliar people gives a young college student the chance to “completely throw to the wind the whole foundation of who you have become,” Margaret agreed. “There’s so much freedom in coUege, you can be like, ‘I’m going to be a million different people and do things I’ve never done before.’” That makes college a good place to make mistakes and to learn from them, Christopher said.
“Academically, I learned more outside of the classroom than I did in the classroom. It’s okay to make mistakes and to be distracted for a while, as long as you learn from it,” he said.What’s most important, Margaret said, is “not letting the freedom overtake who you are. Figuring out who you are and being okay with that,” she said.
The more things change, the more they stay the same: here’s where all five of my former students reminded me how truly confident they’ve always been in their own skins — even as high school juniors — and certainly now as college students.
“I’d always been known as a certain way all my life, and I had worked really hard to get that way,” Austin said. “In a new setting with new people, this is where that character is put to the test. I didn’t try to change myself in any ways; I was just more chaltry lenged (to be myself) than I had been previously” I asked J if he felt any inclination to remake himself when he got to Tech, and in true J Anderson form, he joked, “You’re asking me deeper questions than people ask me when I get home. Usually it’s ‘How’re you doing?’ ‘What’s your major?’ Stuff like that.” Then, with his signature efficiency, he echoed Austin’s point: “I wanted to be the same person, because I liked who I was, and I think that’s going to put me in a good place.”
Hampton agreed, adding that her experience at Brookwood School helped her to discover and feel at peace with the adult she was becoming.
“I really ended up coming into my own, and that happened on a larger scale when I went off to university” she said. “But I already had the foundation from Brookwood. I felt like I was comfortable in myself.”
It was when she arrived at St. Andrews that she learned how truly critical it is to always stay true to herself.
“A lot of people I know try to deny themselves and act like someone they’re not,” she said. “We’re not just talking about your taste in music, or your taste in clothes or your favorite color. It’s about your politics. It’s about the state where you come from. It’s about how your family voted in the last election.”
“I realized very quickly that it was not going to be possible for me to deny anything about where I come from. You can just hear it in my voice. You can tell when you meet me,” Hampton said. “This is who I am. Take it or leave it. If you’re trying to play act for the people you call your friends, it’s not ever going to really go anywhere.”
Nadia R. Watts is a career author, journalist and educator. Come back soon to read Part III of this series.
Brookwood School
Located in Thomasville, GA, Brookwood School is a private school for grades JK-12. Students benefit from a challenging academic program, fine and performing arts, competitive athletics, and a wide selection of extracurricular activities.