Through A Whole New Light

“Who cares?” This is a phrase that is heard more than often around the Senior School building. It is apparently a general teenage attitude – not caring. But you would think being a senior and attending your final year of school, especially boarding school, would make you care more than others. Unfortunately, by the general trend, being a senior makes you care less than the average teenager!

The class of 2011, Luminescence, has organized a Fundraising Committee that is trying to get their classmates to raise money to donate to Woodstock. It is a Woodstock tradition for the senior class to donate money or infrastructure to the school but they have never had a Fundraising Committee. The goal of the committee is to get 100% participation from ever member of our class so that one of our major donors can do their part and help us out. However, at the moment, getting full participation seems to be a difficult feat to overcome because several of our fellow classmates “don’t care”. When the Fundraising Committee went around for donation pledges, they were posed with the question, “We’re leaving anyway so what’s the point of donating?”

In my eyes, there are very few flaws a person will find in a Woodstock student. But then that’s just my perspective as a Woodstock student! One of the major flaws I see in my peers is their carefree, “someone else will do it” attitude. There have been several occasions when Woodstock students have failed to do something simply because they didn’t care. Take sports for example. People wonder why Woodstock has not been winning many Inter-School competitions in the recent years considering they were the sports stars of the hillside community a couple years back. The answer is simple. Nobody cares anymore. Although it is a sad state of affairs, it is also quite true.

The last day of New Student Orientation, when it was time for our parents to leave and time for our “long” Woodstock journeys to begin, I was sitting with all my friends, all new students, and talking about how this semester was going to feel like it lasted a year and a half. When the old students came back from their vacations the next day, we were awe-struck to hear them say how glad they were to be back at school. We were even more shell-shocked when they told us that halfway through the semester, it would feel like time was slipping away like sand through our fingers and everything would pass in the blink of an eye.

I now know why the old students were so glad to be back at school and I better understand what they meant by “time slipping away.” It feels like it was only five weeks ago that I was crying about having to leave my parents and spend my time in boarding school. A couple days ago, we heard that Dr. Laurenson, our principal, is leaving at the end of the year. Maybe it is because of my time in Australia but I feel like Dr. Laurenson has been at Woodstock only for a year, when really he has been with us three years!

At the end of my first year at Woodstock, my friends and I found it hard to believe that we had passed almost nine months in this place. All our Yearbook messages contained the phrase, “we made it through the first year!” Although at the time it felt like we had spent much more than nine months at Woodstock, now it feels like we spent barely two months. It is now almost the end of October and most of my classmates and I still cannot believe that we are seniors and have been for the past three months. Time is now flying by in one big blur and before we know it it will be time for us to graduate and the four, five and eight years each of us has spent here will feel more like four, five and eight weeks.

There are still those 2, 3 days at the beginning of the semester when everything stagnates and nothing seems to be moving forward. Maybe it is the workload or the immense amounts of fun we have but after those first 3 days things start moving at the speed of a Japanese bullet train and before you know it, it’s the end of the semester. We are back from Activity Week and there is only roughly 6 weeks of school left. After that, we have 4 months before we leave this place forever and although that seems like a long time now, it will be gone before we know it.

Baltasar Gracián, a Spanish prose writer, once said, “Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.” To some extent, this seems to be the perfect description for friendship in a Woodstock senior’s life. In my four years at Woodstock, friendship has always been a matter of treading on thin ice. You always have to be careful of what you say, where you say it, because all Woodstock students have come to learn, news travels fast through the winds of Woodstock.

From childhood experience, it is my opinion that living in your friends’ pockets day and night can lead to fights. In Woodstock, since we literally do live in each other’s pockets day and night, it’s no surprise that we get on each other’s nerves. This seems to be happening more this year; it’s been about two months since the beginning of the semester and I can’t count on my fingers the number of fights, misunderstanding, blow-ups my friends and I have had so far! I wonder if it’s the fear that after nine months we’re never going to see each other that’s bubbling up and turning into fights or it’s just that we’re sick of being around each other. That concept is a little confusing because I’ve always heard that the friends you make in High School are the ones you hang on to for years to come. Then how is it logically possible that we would get sick of each other?

At Woodstock, some friendships bloom and wither in the blink of an eye but then there are those friendships that keep it together for practically centuries! From what I’ve noticed, senior year is when old friendships are rekindled and the past is, literally, put behind us. I’ve mentioned it before, but for most people, this year is all about making memories and I suppose that’s the reason people just want to forget all the bad things that might have happened and have a good time. But then, there are still those who hold grudges from three and four years ago and I guess their time of enlightenment is still on its way!

Needles to say, Woodstock for me has always been a place full of memories – both good and bad. And my friends at Woodstock have always been a part of those good and bad memories. There are countless late nights and study halls that have become memorable thanks to my friends and whatever said and done, my Woodstock friends will be the clichéd high school friends that I will keep in touch with forever.

Nestled in the Himalayas and surrounded by trees, wherever you look in Woodstock, all you see is green. For some people, even being surrounded by this beautiful landscape, fully appreciating it always takes some time.

 It is the same for Woodstock students. It is always in our last year of school that we realize just how important this place really is to us and how lucky we are to be here and be a part of it all. All of a sudden, there is a last minute scramble to make the most of Woodstock, make memories to remember decades from now, and most importantly, stop the complaining! No longer do you hear people complaining about the walk up to school, the food, the rooms. Students begin to realize that the complaining that first used to be considered a necessity is now only a hobby for a time of boredom.

There is also this sense of panic, for lack of a better word, that makes us notice things about Woodstock we never noticed before. Suddenly, we begin noticing all the things alumni and ex-students have done for Woodstock, the unique time capsules hidden all over campus, and how everything seems to revolve around the seniors. One thing that stands out the most for us all is the desperate attempt of past seniors to leave their presence somewhere on campus – be it in the form of a class name scratched into the cement on the way to Char Dukan or memories and dates written on the walls of Cozy Corner

Whether its the nostalgia seniors are already beginning to feel or the stories they have heard, the final year at Woodstock creates a new kind of appreciation in Woodstock students. Although we have always had a hidden respect for our school and its surroundings, we now begin to express this respect more. One of my friends, phrasing it perfectly, said she now appreciates “the people, the feeling of being at home, the environment” much more than she did before. She didn't fail to mention that after days and days of pouring rain, she's not even sick of it yet because of the knowledge that this is our last monsoon in Woodstock.

If you speak to any of the Woodstock alumni they will all tell you to make the most of your time at Woodstock before its too late. Last year's graduating class, Rokodimus 2010, swore that they would not cry on graduation, but when it finally came time to leave their second home, each and everyone of them was in tears. Although it takes 3, 4 and even 7 years for people to realize how special this place is, it is not till their senior year that they finally see the importance and appreciate it all. Maybe it's the fear of leaving our small community to go into the big bad world or maybe it's the nostalgia that will follow after all the memorable places are left behind.

All said and done, how much ever time we may spend complaining about the food, and the dorm parents, and the rules, in the end, we learn to appreciate this place, remember the immense amounts of fun it has provided us and makes us want to stay on forever.