(3/2002) - My name is Dede Miishe Addy. In my southern California schools, there were plenty of honors courses available, and I think many people would have been satisfied with that. But it wasn’t honors courses I was after. I wanted conversations. I wanted involvement with interesting people who had interesting ideas and interesting things to say. I wanted to make discoveries for myself by talking with other people and by thinking hard; I didn’t want to be told what to think or listen to a teacher drone on.

I don’t know exactly what it was about Phillips Exeter that caught my interest, but something did. Exeter … I didn’t know much at the beginning. The words “boot camp” came to mind. I had the idea that it was a place of nerds and geeks; I was afraid there would be nothing to do, no social life. What would we do after class? Sit around and read Hamlet? Everyone would be an Einstein or a Michaelangelo who only stayed in his or her rooms surrounded by books and chemistry sets, or practicing an instrument. I also thought that it was for rich families only.

My first week in the dorm I was in my room when I heard some banging in the hallway. There was Poojah, a girl on my floor, standing there, hair dripping wet, wearing only a towel. There was desperation in her eyes. She’d locked herself out of her room when she went for a shower. I ran down to the faculty member’s apartment and got her a key. We’ve been best friends ever since.

The boarding part of this experience has been a big surprise to me. When you live in a dorm with people, you can’t hide your insecurities and your needs. They all come out sooner or later. I’ve come to appreciate a basic truth about people: everyone needs to feel accepted, to love and be loved. Living in a dorm is the surest and fastest way to see that the labels we apply to each other wash off.

Initiative is the first thing you acquire. If you don’t take charge of your schedule, you’ll never get to do the things you want to do. If you don’t do the work, you won’t enjoy the class. If you don’t clean up your room, you live in it that way. Your teachers, even your friends, let their expectations of you be known and the support they offer is endless. But your own expectations of yourself are even greater. Sometimes I disappoint myself when I don’t try my hardest or ignore my responsibilities, but other times I surprise myself by doing something I didn’t know I could do.

I’ve found that the work is part of what’s exciting about Exeter. When I read a book for class, I know it’s going to be a captivating book and that we’re going to have great conversation about it in class the next day. I want to think about it and be part of the conversation.

Physics is my worst subject, and I love going to physics. We study roller coasters and learn about momentum and centripetal force. It does not come to me readily. I have to work extremely hard just to maintain a B average. Doing “okay” in physics doesn’t phase me because I know I’m going to get better at it. I also know that I gave it 100 percent. I used to go crazy if I got anything less than an A, but I have learned to take things in stride, to attend the process of learning, not just the result.

In my first year I tried so many new things: I acted in a children’s play, I directed my own play, I became a dorm representative to the student council, I cut three minutes off my best three-mile cross country time. I tried indoor track. And I tried crew.

I hadn’t even heard of crew before coming to Exeter. And when I first saw it, it did seem like the ultimate preppy sport, which is not me. Basically, you sit in a narrow boat with seven other rowers and a coxswain and you row. You row and row and row. The coxswain does not row – the coxswain is a small packet of energy that shouts and screams you to victory. Crew is the craziest, most physically and emotionally demanding sport there is. In our last race of the season, my boat knew we were the underdogs. We should have lost but we went ahead and won. We were goddesses. I had never felt so good in my entire life.

Everyone is constantly growing. It’s exciting to watch it happen to yourself but it’s also exciting to see it happening to your friends. Your friend will offer some incredibly profound insight into an issue and you will stare in awe because you didn’t know she or he was so brilliant. You will go to a student concert and hear the person who lives on your floor play a piece of music so beautifully it brings tears to your eyes. You will read a classmate’s story that you think is better than some of the books you have read. I have been in the company of people who are unbelievably inspiring.