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Sometimes I can't control myself. My laugh, for instance. I don't even try to make it that loud. It just happens -- I'm standing in the auditorium, someone's performing the final scene of Hamlet or something, the audience is weeping silently, when I remember something funny and all of a sudden my gigantic laugh is booming off the walls. Back in middle school this laugh used to land me in detention. My teachers would actually keep me after school for "causing a ruckus in the hall."
"I was just laughing," I would mumble into my little plastic desk.
"Mary Cate-you need to learn to control yourself," my teacher said, her lips tight.
I tried -- I really did. When I finally graduated from the fluorescently-lit hallways of public school to Deerfield, I swore I would be quieter. "This is a serious place," I said to myself, "so really -- control yourself." I strained not to slurp my soup at sit-down or cackle at polite jokes. And it worked for a little while. It worked so well that Ms. Buron, my freshman English teacher, even had to urge me to speak up in class. In retrospect she probably regretted this after I actually yelled at Devin Wilmot for interrupting me. But for the most part I was stunned by Deerfield -- this place where people knew when to put their napkins in their laps, where boys knew how to tie ties -- where teachers turned to you in class and asked you what you thought. I'll admit it -- it scared me. I was that meek freshman with the frizzy red hair and the awkward clothing choices who didn't know if she wanted to speak up in class. I thought it might be easier to stay quiet.
But Deerfield had other plans for me. There is something different about this place, an almost-constant hum of voices-teachers, peers, coaches, headmaster-that ask us to express, experiment, shout out. For me, that voice is epitomized by Mr. Dancer standing on the stage as he leads us all in the school song, shouting "Louder...LOUDER!" That call for volume, for assurance in our own selves, resonates. And it starts the first day.
Ms. Buron's English class, for instance. Day one of classes she handed out a sheet of guidelines for the year, and typed at the bottom in capital letters was the following: READ, READ, READ. WRITE, WRITE, WRITE. SPEAK, SPEAK, SPEAK. Sounds easy enough -- but any freshman who has ever crawled through the swamp that is The Odyssey, or any junior who has ever scrawled out a term paper, page by detailed page, or any senior who has shared an intimate meditation with his or her class, knows that reading, writing, and speaking are uphill battles, ones we wage every day. Sometimes we're shaky -- we're not sure what to say, or some passage in a book leaves us dizzy -- but Ms. Buron's capital letters were something both certain and steady. Keep trying, they said. Keep speaking. Don't stop. "You can be wrong," as Ms. McConnell said to my class one day, "but at least be definite about it."
It's never easy-it wasn't until junior year that I think I finally got the message. One day I was hanging hesitantly in the doorway of Mr. Palmer's classroom. Classes had just let out, and he was writing on the board, trying to ignore my whining. "I would just prefer it if you don't publish my pieces," I said, fidgeting. The piece in question was a story all about family secrets, and my heart thumped just thinking about my relatives reading it in Little Brown House. Mr. Palmer kept writing but raised an eyebrow. "I just don't want to offend anyone," I added hastily. At that he turned to me and shook his head. "You're going to have to deal with this, you know," he said, "if you want to be a writer." Later that week he wrote a single word in response to one of my worried journal entries: Go. I did publish that family piece, and more. It seemed I couldn't stop writing -- a storm of words rushed out of me, written and yelled and sang and called across the Quad. After all, I'd been hearing it since my freshman year, even when I didn't realize it: Go, my teammates urged me when I would get the ball (and promptly kick it out of bounds), Go, said my friends as they cheered me on and challenged me, Go, said my teachers as they handed me some tough assignment, Go, said Deerfield, putting me on a bus to New York, a plane to South Africa, even to Nicaragua.
Now, of course -- Deerfield wouldn't want us to rush out into the world mindlessly. It wouldn't want us to be reckless -- or feckless, for that matter. After all, what are Mr. Widmer's vocabulary lessons but a gentle reminder to treasure each of our words, to stay aware of what we say and do. For those of you in the audience who have not been lucky enough to sit in on a school meeting led by Mr. Widmer -- he often perches on the edge of the stage, looks over the top of his glasses at us and encourages us not to be timid in our linguistic explorations. "I've been hearing a lot of the f-word recently," he said once. "And if you really want to swear, I suggest using some of those classic phrases like 'oh heavens,' or 'gracious me,' or if you're really upset -- 'for cryin' out loud.'" It is what we say and how we say it that matters. Deerfield doesn't just encourage us to increase the volume -- it offers those pools of contemplation, or quiet, even of awed respect. It is how we go that matters. Because even if you haven't noticed it, we are going already. We have turned our eyes from these hills and are already rushing toward a world aching for our arrival, anxious to see what we will share with it.
And in the moments when we fall silent, as Mr. Driskill so eloquently reminded us at Baccalaureate, we will hear some music that will keep us going, that will renew our voice. I remember a moment this spring in Cambridge, England, with my Deerfield English class. It was after our farewell dinner with the university professors -- a supper full of lingering, delightful stories, all of us drugged by our joy and adventures. We had tumbled out of the stone building, through the gates onto the starlit cobblestone street, and I had fallen a block behind until the only sight of my classmates was the comforting flashes of their matching scarves, and the only sound my heels clicking on the stones. The stars were wheeling, and the university air felt like something I had been waiting to breathe my whole life. I had gone, and this had been waiting for me -- a place that send my head reeling and heart skipping just by waking up. And now we are all going again -- and we will find that Deerfield had prepared us to go, carefully and confidently.
We have been taught by Rhodes scholars who care what we think, we have read books we are free to write in, where we can jot down our own ideas about Socrates and Shakespeare -- and there's something sacred in such a gift, one that has taught us to think deeply, to read closely, to question. It's a gift not to be ignored, or wasted, but used to the fullest extent. Now I want you to listen to what Deerfield has been saying to us: Go. Go out into that big world and don't stop, don't squeeze yourself small or keep yourself quiet. You have learned to think and read critically, so now speak powerfully. Speak the truth that no one else will speak, speak your own ideas without fear. Go, and share yourselves.
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