8. Tiffin Talks Day in the Life
After First Dance, we settle into a routine, which coincides with the shift from summer to fall.
The days are still warm (hot as hell if you’re on the football field wearing full pads), but we grab a hoodie when we’re going to the Teddy or the Sink after dinner, and Davi Banerjee posts a thousand pictures of what she calls Tiffin’s “foliage porn”: the leaves of the shade maples turning colors.
Our teachers finally figure out which Madison and Olivia is which, and the puny third-formers learn the shortcut from the Paddock to the art studio, where they’re all required to take Visual Foundations (and they start calling it “Viszh Found” like the rest of us).
Our days at Tiffin start with breakfast, which is mandatory for third- and fourth-formers.
Fifth- and sixth-formers will often roll through the Paddock for the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches that Chef Haz sets out.
Sometimes one of us will stop to talk to Chef—he can often be found just outside the back door, smoking.
Davi keeps begging Chef to appear in a TikTok—she features his food all the time—and although he has resisted so far, she thinks she’s wearing him down.
He finally asks if there’s “any money” in being a TikTok phenom, and while the answer is yes for Davi, she has to be noncommittal with Chef.
When she tells him he’d probably receive some new cookware or a case of organic peanut butter, his interest seems to fade.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays we attend Chapel, where the dress code is coat and tie or dress or skirt.
Every Tuesday during Chapel we’re “treated” to a senior speech.
Each sixth-former is required to present a talk centered on a meaningful experience, ideally one that’s led to a philosophical insight or personal growth.
Favorite topics are dead grandparents, grandparents with Alzheimer’s, or lessons learned at boarding school.
However, the week after First Dance, Annabelle Tuckerman captures our undivided attention with her senior speech, entitled “Three Brushes with Death.” Number one is Annabelle’s revelation that her mother, upon discovering that she was pregnant with Annabelle, was determined to get an abortion.
She was on the partner track at a big New York law firm.
“Because the world is a patriarchy,” Annabelle explains, “a pregnancy would have derailed her career.” We tense up: Has anyone uttered the word “abortion” in Chapel before?
Also, we think, what kind of mother tells her child that she was nearly terminated in utero?
Number two: When Annabelle was eight years old, a tumor the size of a grapefruit was removed from her abdominal cavity. Although the tumor was benign, we agree this counts as something life-threatening.
Number three: This past summer, while on Martha’s Vineyard, Annabelle was the victim of a hit-and-run accident.
She was biking home at midnight from her job as a food runner at the Red Cat when a car swerved onto the bike path and hit her, leaving her unconscious.
When Annabelle came to, she didn’t know where she was or what had happened, but she had road rash across her thigh and her bike frame was mangled.
It was only later, once she limped home, that she recovered the memory of being hit by a car.
“Other than surface wounds and the temporary amnesia,” Annabelle says, “I was fine.” She wipes imaginary sweat from her forehead in a “Phew!” gesture.
“I’ve been wondering what the universe is trying to tell me, and I’ve decided it’s this: I’m built to survive whatever comes my way.
It’s also taught me to practice gratitude for each day I’m given. I’m lucky to be here. Thank you.”
We erupt in thunderous applause while Annabelle’s friends rush to give her a hug.
Her bestie, Ravenna Rapsicoli, says, “Why didn’t you tell me what happened on the Vineyard?
” The answer is that Annabelle Tuckerman wanted to save the story for this very moment.
She recognized senior speech gold when she saw it.
The only person who remains nonplussed by Annabelle’s speech is Head Prefect Lisa Kim. She’s scheduled to speak next Tuesday, and she’d been planning on talking about her dead grandfather. She wishes she could come up with something more dramatic, but Lisa’s life has been blessed, and quite boring.
Tiffin’s college counselor, Honey Vandermeid, abandons her morning swim; Jewel Pond becomes arctic in a matter of days.
Honey sighs; she’s too busy to swim anyway.
Since Tiffin has been ranked number two, a slew of colleges have decided they’d like to visit the campus.
Honey, who once had to curry favor with the Ivies, as well as places like Duke, Tulane, and “the U” (University of Miami), is now hard-pressed to find enough dates.
Honey is also busy deflecting invitations from Cordelia to spend the night in her cottage.
Honey is the dorm parent for the four upper floors of Classic South (she agreed to take four instead of three because Simone Bergeron is brand-new).
Surely Cordelia realizes she can’t sneak out.
What if someone vomits in the middle of the night and needs her help?
What if there’s a blow-up between roommates?
What if the fire alarm goes off and Honey isn’t there?
It’s not like summertime, Cord. My week is full to bursting.
That’s the thing about boarding school… the academic rigor, the long athletic practices, the clubs and affinity group meetings, the assignments, the tutoring and study groups, the meals and robust social calendar, are all meant to keep everyone—students and faculty alike—too busy to think about sex and romance.
On any given day, Audre Robinson can gaze out the east-facing windows of her office in the Manse and imagine the fine instruction and engaging discussions taking place in the Schoolhouse.
Senor Perez is teaching Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera to his AP Spanish class; they’re fundraising to go to Barcelona over spring break, though Senor is a little disappointed that only half his class has signed up to go (and not the students who would be the most fun either; the fun kids are planning to go to Harbour Island in the Bahamas, an unofficial Tiffin tradition).
Roy Ewanick is teaching differential equations to his advanced math students—all of them sixth-formers except for Royce Stringfellow and Andrew Eastman, who is surprisingly gifted with numbers and abstract mathematical concepts, if not with turning in any of his assignments.
Simone Bergeron’s students are reading Hakluyt on colonization.
Simone longs to be the kind of teacher whom the students want to please, both academically and behaviorally.
She feels she’s succeeded on this front except in the case of Charley Hicks, whose work is impeccable (really, she could teach the class) but who glowers at Simone with barely disguised contempt.
Simone isn’t sure what to do with East from an academic standpoint. With each passing day and each missing assignment, the need to speak to him alone becomes more pressing. And yet Simone puts it off because she’s afraid of what will happen.
Finally, she sends him an email.
You presently have a zero in my class. If you’re finding the reading challenging, I’m happy to set you up with a tutor.
He responds immediately. I’m not doing the reading LOL. Want to meet in the tunnel again tonight after lights out?
Simone gasps and deletes the email, then deletes it from the Trash folder.
She can’t believe he had the gall to send that on the school’s server.
She can’t believe he had the gall to send it, period.
She’s particularly horrified by his use of the word “again.” She can’t report this email even if she wanted to, because she hasn’t told a soul about finding East in the tunnel.
She has made eye contact with East once or twice per class up until now, but the next day, she avoids looking at him completely.
She sends an email to Audre that says, I have concerns about Andrew Eastman. He has yet to turn in a single assignment. What should I do?
Audre writes back, Thank you for letting me know. I’ll handle.
Simone feels guilty about asking Audre to take this bit of classroom management off her plate. She wasn’t looking to completely pass the buck, nor did she necessarily want to sic the Head of School on East. Oh well—what’s done is done. Simone is off the hook for now.
But at the end of the third week of school, there are still no assignments from East.
Rhode Rivera is teaching the transcendentalists: Emerson and Thoreau.
Their themes of self-reliance and connection to nature should resonate with Tiffin students—here at boarding school, in pastoral New England—but only a handful of kids seem to click with the material.
Most find it dull and impenetrable. Madison J.
raises her hand and says, “Why do we care that these old white men went out to live in the woods?”
Why, indeed? Rhode wants to be teaching Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, Richard Wright. Following Emerson and Thoreau is Hawthorne, and then he’ll tackle Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. After his due diligence with texts that are still somehow embraced by Tiffin’s board of directors, he’ll move on.