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2007 Salutatory Speech

My name is Susan Louise Maday Travis and I am a four-year member of the NMH class of 2007!

When I was a freshman here NMH had just started the freshman village and somebody somewhere was really excited about it and so they were redoing everything in Merrill-Keep, which is this brick dorm over *there* and one of the things they did is they turned the entire front lawn to dirt so they could permanently relandscape it.  I didn’t live in Merrill-Keep but a lot of my friends did because we were all in the Village, and I would walk up to the front door all the time over the dirt (because there was no path) and my shoes would leave footprints in the sand and I remember always feeling like I wanted my footprints to stay there forever.  This manifested itself different ways.  Sometimes I would walk up to the door, then walk back out to the street and then walk back to the door, covering the path with my footprints, but by the time I came back outside my prints were already covered by the people who had come after me.  Other times I would stray from the path, walking *next* to it or, you know, totally nonconformist like walking in a circle or making a diagonal across the field or hopping like a kangaroo or something, desperately trying to make my mark on the sand.  But inevitably, the rain or the wind or a giant bulldozer would take my dreams away, leaving no trace of my teva-prints in the fine sand that covered the lawn of the freshman village for so many months that we lived there.

I’ve felt continually frustrated during my NMH career, this excruciating growth process called adolescence, at my inability to leave footprints everywhere I go.  I have walked these campuses for four years, I’ve done so much and given so much and I want to be remembered!  I’m selfish man, I want people to know I sat in this very Auditorium at my first all-school meeting and it was full of students and I sat up in the balcony with my class and I was scared out of my wits when the whole school yelled BRING ME MY ARROWS! during my first Jerusalem.  I want others to share my joy during the first warm spring rain walking down to Marquand (that one’s *that* way) for breakfast, feeling fresh and beautiful.  When people think of required sports, I want them to think of me, spring term of my freshman year, reluctant to work and terrified of failing, and finding in myself a strong and beautiful athlete.  I want to be remembered at NMH forever!  But guys, I worked in the archives for two years and let me tell you, it’s not likely that your name will be bouncing around these halls in 50 years.  And that’s fine!  I realized finally that my footprints didn’t need to be visible for them to make a difference.  The steps I took then and the steps I take now leave marks on all of us, sculpt us into the people we are as we work in the NMH community, as we prepare to leave.  Those footprints that I made my freshman year live on in the landscape, just as our footprints, our hugs and late-night conversations and friendly smiles, live on in all of us.

At the end of my sophomore year, a memorial service was held in the Northfield Music Building to honor the spirit of Northfield.  After reflecting on what Northfield meant to those present and so many others, people gathered to make a walk of the four miles from Northfield to Mount Hermon.  It was raining lightly, and my good friend Peter Weis had brought big plastic bags for people to cover their nice clothes so they wouldn’t get wet.  It was about this time of year, a week or so left in my home, and I chose not to walk.  Instead, I went outside and danced in the rain, let my feet sink into the mud and the wetness seep through my suit-jacket and into my being.  I don’t think of my steps at NMH bringing me closer to graduation, but closer to the heart of what NMH is really about.  I want these last days that I spend here to be filled with conscious awareness of this place that will suddenly transform as I descend with my classmates from that stage Sunday morning.  Don’t leave too soon!  You don’t want to lose these precious moments to the future.

There are a few footsteps that I would like to make before I leave. Administration, I love you.  You work very hard and you’re always protecting us as students, and that’s fantastic.  I think you need to work less.  I think you need to find a way for teachers and dorm staff and coaches and work job supervisors to be less committed to commitments so they can spend time with their students and nurture them without becoming overwhelmed.  Bring back a schedule that nourishes the spirits of students and teachers.  Always, always, always create time for quiet reflection and comfortable spaces for students to relax in.  Make the dining hall less scary!  Find a way for the woods to be part of campus, not apart from it.  Continue as you always have to act with the students first and foremost in your minds.

I’m really honored to be given the chance to be here tonight, speaking with you, but really, the reasons for me being here are sort of arbitrary.  The things that I’m proud of here at NMH hardly ever happen in the classroom, and the things that bring me the most joy have nothing to do with grades or accomplishments.  The most important thing about NMH for me is that it gave me the strength to be myself.  NMH looks good on paper, but it means so much more in the heart.  My time here has taught me how to forge my own values and live a life that adheres to those values in everything I do.  To be honest.  To be inclusive.  To be a good friend.  I leave this place unsure of exactly where my life will take me, but confident that it will be full of joy and laughter and friendship.  Thank you for giving me the courage to be me.

My years at NMH have brought me back to a place I thought I’d never return, the freshman village.  It was eerie setting foot on Pierson Road fields for my second freshman orientation, and even stranger walking the grounds of my old home, Northfield, with a row of anxious and excited “froshlings” following along while I say things like, “That’s where the freshmen used to live,” and “There was a dining hall in that dorm and on Tuesday mornings there were donuts for breakfast.”  Looking into the eyes of our group members, I could watch my footprints crumble away in the wind, confused as to why the freshmen were spending their first day of high school wandering empty halls and barren fields that they would never call home.  Spending this year with the next generation of NMH students has been the best experience of my life.  Getting to know them, walking with them and watching them leave their footprints all over campus has been so incredibly wonderful.  As the year draws to a close, I think of myself three years ago, beside myself with tears for having to leave the place I had fallen so deeply in love with.  Though there is no doubt that I will cry this week, a lot (I have already) I know that I am leaving this place in body, but not in spirit.  And even though my footprints may have disappeared in many peoples’ minds from the Northfield campus, I know that Her spirit lives on in people that I’ve spent these years with that bring so much to the NMH community.  Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone for all that you have done and all that you will do in future.  Good night.