Freedom in a Box
Your brain likes boundaries, despite what it may tell you
A year after graduating from college, I returned to the great state of Maine to work at a residential boarding school as a teaching fellow. Maine Coast Semester (MCS) at Chewonki is a “semester school” — a model with which I was unfamiliar prior to my time at Bates. The “Semester Schools Network” is made up of 8 independent schools, all of which host a cohort of high school juniors from across the United States for a semester-long, experiential and place-based educational program.
MCS is nestled on a 400-acre peninsula on the coast of midcoast Maine, made up of rocky inter-tidal zones, boreal forests and a horse-powered organic farm (swooooon, see below). At the beginning of the semester, students hand in their phones for the duration of the 4 month term and move into a cabin of 6 or so of their peers, all of whom are strangers to them at the time. Students and faculty alike are immersed in the school’s Quaker-inspired programming — meeting each morning at 6:55am around the Quad’s pine trees for Morning Gather, heading off to perform chores, convening once again at 8am for Morning Meeting at Campfire Circle.
I promise I’m not earning enrollment commission, although my fervent desire to support MCS is thinly-veiled — I’m including all of these details to help you visualize this sparkly, collaborative place. One where the faculty is tasked with quickly and effectively building comfort with and trust in the adults of the community, semester after semester. Upon students’ arrival each term, faculty members spend the first few days helping students acclimate to their new environment, and internalize the program’s guiding principles and rules. These 42 students, may I remind you, are coming from myriad host institutions, each of which possesses its own unique culture and code of ethics, so it’s truly a formidable endeavor to clearly establish a new, cohesive ethos and get them all equally bought-in. But when it works, godDAMN, does it work. And it’s seriously magic.
My first year at MCS, the Dean of Academics, Pete, explained to faculty a concept he referred to as “freedom in a box.” Students, he expressed, may push up against the rules and boundaries set by faculty, but in reality they thrive in these conditions, and actually subconsciously desire firm, consistent parameters — though they would certainly deny it, if asked. It’s their job to butt up against these perceived restrictions and cast doubt on their necessity, but that shouldn’t inform our enforcement of them. One semester during his presentation of the school’s code of behavioral conduct, “The Great Expectations” (one of many MCS terms inspired by 19th century writers), Pete made the well-intentioned mistake of sharing this term with students. This blunder became a source of distrust among the student body, who felt that the slogan directly challenged faculty’s assertion that we inherently trusted them.
As a young educator in my first year of teaching, I often found myself occupied with similar doubts; I was skeptical of my older faculty’s ability to relate to our students, and felt the need to advocate on their behalf, convinced of my unique capacity to understand them given my proximity in age. But in preparation for our second year, my mentor Sarah had fellows read a phenomenal book titled, Relating to Adolescents: Educators in a Teenage World by Susan Eva Porter. My heavily-annotated copy is regrettably in storage on the other side of the country, so I’ll have to wait to make a blog post dedicated to its valuable teachings. But it was after reading this book that I truly understood the importance of boundaries.
Since arriving at this epiphany, I have become far more aware of and grateful for guard rails in all aspects of my life. For instance, if I know I have to write a blog post, my first instinct is to search for a completely empty afternoon with nothing else on the calendar. But I know that boundaries actually help me feel creative freedom, so I instead will look for a 3-hour block of time that butts up against a meeting or appointment for me to sit down and write. I know it seems contradictory, but parameters beget freedom. Without them I feel floaty, unmoored.
As someone with ADHD, this is especially true. My clinical experience taught me that people with attentive disorders generally thrive in the presence of time limits; because self-discipline can be such a challenge, it helps to have it imposed upon us. I write a meannnn essay on the eve of a deadline, so even if I’m given a month to write it, I’ll wait until the last minute to produce my best work. This is why they say “busy people get stuff done,” an adage that my friend Amelia reminded me of recently as I bemoaned my struggle to create structure.
Too much free reign can be a burden, so welcome in a book end - your brain likes boundaries, despite what it may tell you.
Madewell Glenmoor Mockneck Merino Wool Sweaters
Back in 2016, 2017 or so, Madewell came out with these phenomenal sweaters that nearly every woman in my family went wild for. They’re merino wool, but they’re super soft and stretchy — and sooo cozy warm. I have zero tolerance for itchy clothing, so you can trust my testimony. My gray version is hella pill-y, so I recently repurchased a burgundy one on Poshmark and it’s been amazing. While they’re no longer sold, they’re super easy to find gently used online (here’s a blush-colored one, here’s an olive one) for a super reasonable price.
Protecting our Democracy!!!!
This weekend, my Aunt Patty, Uncle Charlie, dad and I drove up to Tahoe to canvass for Harris (and democrats up and down the ballot) in Nevada, a critical swing-state. We’ll be up here until the election getting out the vote, and it has been so rewarding to channel my anxious energy into action. I beg you to get involved, in whatever small way works for your circumstances — maybe it’s phone banking over the weekend (not as scary as you might think!!), maybe it’s helping your grandma fill out and return her ballot.
I understand that there are also people who desire to sit this election out due to Harris’s stance on Gaza — transparently I, too, am disappointed by this platform, but I am also keenly aware that the problem will not be ameliorated by another Trump term. We have a far better chance of ending Palestinian suffering with Harris in office. Not to mention we’ll also be protecting the reproductive rights of women (on a federal level), and avoiding the tremendous threat Trump poses to our autonomy, economy and democracy.
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Note: Last week I realized that the newsletter look soooo different on the mobile version (and obviously in email). My carefully-curated color is replaced with a boring gray-ish black background and boring run-of-the-mill font. Though I have to relinquish my desire for control, I encourage you to read the newsletter on the desktop web version (open this link on a laptop to see what I mean).