College, Uncertainty, and Grytte
At this time of the year, independent schools celebrate their students’ college choices. On Browning’s social media feeds we typically feature a group shot of the seniors in shirts that represent the colleges and universities to which they will matriculate. This year, however, that group picture was not to be. And rather than focus on the institutions that will benefit from our boys’ intellect and their integrity in the same way that Browning has, I would rather focus on how they approached the process that has led them to this moment of success.
This winter, our guidance program was reviewed by a four-person team from the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools (ACCIS), who spent three days in extensive interviews with Browning administrators, boys, and parents, as well as college admissions officers, all as part of a thorough audit that would both identify strengths and assess growth areas in our college counseling program. Happily and unsurprisingly, ACCIS found the work of Sandy Pelz, our Director of College Guidance, to be of the highest quality. As their report enthused:
It is clear that the Browning College Guidance program stands on a platform of significant strength and intentionally affirms the School’s guiding values of Honesty, Dignity, Curiosity, and Purpose. College Guidance is well-supported, well-funded, and anchored by a personal, tailored, and thoughtful process targeting the needs of each individual student.
As proud as we are of our college guidance program and its leadership, we know that things only really come alive when accomplished, reflective, energetic boys are involved in it. Our community’s happiness for and pride in our senior class does not inhere principally in the college matches that they have made, however, but rather the values that these boys have expressed. Like the process itself, the actions and attitudes of the Class of 2020 have affirmed the worth of honesty, dignity, curiosity, and purpose, and our school is the better for it. And along the way—and particularly over the past two months—our seniors have really shown the importance of resilience, the thing our school calls “Grytte.”
Grytte—or, as the rest of the world insists, “grit”—is not simply working hard, or grinding out results. It’s something richer, more nuanced. It’s perseverance, patience, and perspective. It’s the capacity to deal with situations not necessarily of your choosing, and find ways to create not just success, but meaning. As impressed as I am with what our seniors have accomplished and produced during their Browning years—a litany of athletic titles, robotics, debate, and Model UN awards, academic and literary publications, and enduring artworks—I am just as taken by the productive, mature ways in which they have processed the unchosen disappointments of their spring. This is a group that has been denied their final Browning springtime rituals, opportunities, and connections, the things upon which so many memories hang, and yet in BrowningConnect, they have continued to thrive as students, as friends, and as leaders. Wherever they go to college, and whenever that college experience begins in earnest, the resilience of this group will carry them forward.
This is, to be sure, a difficult time for all of us, in any number of ways. We continue to wrestle with very real challenges around health, connection, and security of all kinds. And as members of a learning community, we certainly wish we had answers about what the future will hold for our school. Our good questions—Will we be in our building in the fall? What would continued online learning look like next year? How can we assure the safety of everyone?—resist easy answers. It is amidst this frustration and uncertainty, however, that I hope and believe we can follow the model of our graduates. The absence of simple solutions does not mean that solutions are not available, and we can find them if we embrace the perseverance, patience, and perspective—the grytte—that our senior boys have shown so well.