在大流行中开辟自己的道路

By Sam ’22, with assistance from Liz Kulze, MHS 英语 Language Teacher & 学生交流协调员

No high school senior expects her long-anticipated graduation festivities and college plans to be interrupted by a global pandemic and a nationwide reckoning with racial injustice. 艾拉·华莱士，20岁, 前校长和皮克特学者, 共享, 然而, 这个充满挑战的时期也带来了意想不到的祝福, including time for deep reflection and opportunities to affect change.

2021年春天，艾拉和22岁的山姆坐了下来, a 视野 intern in the School’s Marketing and Communications Office. She also reflected on how her time at Miss Hall’s helped to prepare her to make the most of her post-graduate experience, 比如有勇气开拓自己的道路, 理解社区的价值, 专注于她能控制的事情, such as using her voice and standing up for issues that matter.

以下是Sam和Ayla谈话的要点:

澳门威利斯网站她现在的工作:

I am a Massachusetts Promise Fellow with AmeriCorps, serving at Enroot in Boston. 我们为移民学生做课后活动, 和很多学英语的学生一起工作, and we practice life skills and help them prepare for college. We also help if they want to go straight into the workforce, and we talk about social issues.

我真的很喜欢和年轻人一起工作. I felt like my support system at Miss Hall’s was really strong, and it's what got me through a lot of tough times in my life, 所以我想成为其他年轻人的榜样. I also had interned at the Berkshire Immigrant Center during my junior year for 视野, 那是一个我真的, 真的很喜欢. 它使我接触到了整个移民世界, and it was something that I knew I wanted to do outside of school. 当我有机会做两件我喜欢的事情时, which are working with young people and working in immigration, 在服务, 我不得不跳上去.

On how the pandemic shaped her post-MHS plans and forced her to forge her own path:

I was originally planning on deferring college for a year, then I decided to take a gap year. 我觉得有一种心态，高中毕业后, 尤其是如果你在预科学校, 像澳门威利斯网站那样的女子预科学校, 是时候去做下一件大事了, 但情况并非总是如此. 您可以创建自己的路径, 因为不是每个人都是一样的, 不是每个人都有相同的目标, and not everyone has the same perspective on how they want their life to go chronologically. Taking a gap-year was what I thought was best for me to navigate this next year, 因为我们很多人都不知道会发生什么. I really wanted to be able to have control over what I was doing.

On how the rise of COVID-19 and the social justice issues of 2020 impacted her senior year:

The start of senior year was an amazing time in my life and my career at Miss Hall’s. 这是我们都期待的事情, so I'm really grateful that we got to have a little bit of that normalcy, 但当COVID来袭时, 我想我们都震惊了, 不知道会发生什么.

我们学到了很多澳门威利斯网站世界和彼此的知识. 我们学会了如何把彼此视为人类. It was a great opportunity to reframe, to think about how we want to move forward as people. 当你大四的时候, all you’re thinking about is college and your Commencement dress and flowers, 所有这些都很有趣，值得思考, 但是对于我的班级, 我们被迫思考更广泛的问题, 很明显, with the death of George Floyd and the state of the country, 不仅仅是身体健康方面, 但是心理健康方面. 在隔离期间, I really appreciated having my classmates and being able to create spaces where we could have conversations about these issues and be vulnerable.

That was also the first time that I saw young people at the forefront of these movements for change. It was amazing to hear and see young people say, “Okay, we're not going to allow this. 这不是我们的未来. 这不会是我们孩子的未来. 够了够了.” It was people my age — and your age — that led this charge and are still leading it, and it's sad that it had to take all of this for it to happen, but I'm really grateful and inspired by the work that young people have been doing during the last nine to twelve months.

澳门威利斯网站联系和社区的重要性, 这是大流行的一大教训, 这是她第一次在澳门威利斯网站家学到的。

Something about Miss Hall’s that I loved from the get-go was that I was friends with seniors my freshman year, 我有一些和我完全不同的朋友, 谁来自世界的相反的地方, 来自完全不同的成长环境, 但这并不重要. 你可以和任何人建立联系, 在这段时间里，我们必须学会如何做到这一点, 而是在澳门威利斯网站家, 作为一个社区, 我们做这项工作已经很长时间了.

On how her experience at Miss Hall’s helped her learn the value of letting go and focusing on what you can control:

There are things that you can control and things that you can't control, 这是我在澳门威利斯网站家学到的另一课. It wasn't necessarily from a lecture or class but more of an experiential thing.

I learned that there are things that we never thought we could control but that we can control by using our voices, 通过研究, 通过参加俱乐部, 我们可以通过这种方式产生真正的影响. 还有一些事情是我们无法控制的. My senior class had no control over the coronavirus and what was happening at the time. Control comes from wanting to know the future and wanting to know everything about what's happening, but that was a time that taught us it's okay not to know everything.

我认为作为一个女性或女性认同者, 你应该在游戏中处于领先地位, 否则别人不会把你当回事. 和, you add intersectionality to that — like being a black female or being a female of color or BIPOC or being a member of the LGBTQIA+ community — and those layers add even more pressure to be perfect and to know everything, 但大流行打破了这一切. 我们必须坦然地说:“我无法控制这一切. 我不知道会发生什么，但没关系. 但, 我能控制的事情, 比如用我的声音, 坚持我认为正确的事情, 捐赠, 或者做一些行动主义或志愿者工作, 这是我能控制的, 这就是我能做的.”

I recently learned that you got the Pickett Scholarship as a junior. 获得奖学金对你来说意味着什么?

My Big Sister my freshman year at Miss Hall’s was Jayme McGuigan ’18. She became School President, and she received the Pickett Scholarship. 我敬仰的另一个人是塞利·“尼基”·阿布鲁. She was also School President, and she also received the Pickett Scholarship. People I really looked up to during my time at Miss Hall’s received this award, 我对他们充满敬畏和尊敬. 对我来说获得这个奖, 那是一个很酷的时刻，因为我记得我在想, “我想成为和杰米一样棒的人. 我想和塞莉一样厉害.” When I received the award, I was like, “Okay, you can be as awesome as you are.” It was a really special moment, and I'm grateful I had that opportunity.

I really respected the character of the people who had received the award. They had superb character and they cared about people and had a love for the School. Just to see yourself grow into those into the things that you admired in your freshman and sophomore years and see yourself become valued for those things is really great.