Reflections of Havergal: 1994-2019

SCHOOL LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DAI LY L I FE

memories of the school community provide illuminating points of comparison. The pace of life has obviously sped up since 1894, but, as they did in Miss Knox’s day, routines with clear and meaningful expectations provide a sense of security that frees students to explore and discover. In 1900, the principal events and activities for an entire year could be encapsulated in four pages—with commentary. Today’s digital school calendar shows the year by months, and each school day in each month is packed with colour-coded information. However, one need only take a look at the “Table of Contents” at the front of any student agenda to realize how complex life at Havergal really is. With Junior, Middle and Upper Schools and a boarding program, the days are full for the whole community. Given the range of obligations and opportunities each school day brings, one of a Havergal College student’s best friends is her agenda, and any girl who has mislaid hers knows the feeling of panic that ensues. Not long after it is placed in the hands of its new owner, the agenda begins to take on her identity and seems almost to pulse with life. The first thing each student is likely to do is decorate the covers, and over the course of the year, she’ll make note of projects and tests, of special events and sleep-ins, rehearsals and grade meetings, Crazy Sock and Number 1 dress days. The entries are made by hand, and that hand uses pens and pencils and bright markers. Pages get ripped, smudged, stained. They hold laughter and frustration and delight. So what is an agenda worth by the end of the year? It’s priceless. Like an analog clock, the agenda gives the sense of the sweep of time, rather than the discrete moments that in a digitally dependent world seem to comprise the day. No doubt there are cardboard boxes in some homes that are full of agendas acquired over the years. They can be hard to part with because, as Katharine

Survivors, Ludemus , 2007.

It is not surprising that students have mixed emotions in their final year: they have felt both excitement and sadness since the earliest days, as the 1900 Ludemus piece, titled “Our School”, makes clear:

“Our School” Ludemus , 1900

Students who have attended Havergal since Kindergarten or Grade 1 have a special bond as “survivors”. All graduates, however, leave important legacies. And they sometimes take the form of the wisdom they pass on with respect to what they call “survival skills”, one of which is, of course, a sense of humour, evident since the earliest days. There are many days between that first and final one at Havergal—and they are packed with activity. To say that a day in the life of today’s Havergal student is very different from what it was in the school’s early years is to state the obvious, but the collective

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