Remarks by Sarah Lavender Smith CdeP 1986 at Fall Family Weekend 2015

Good morning, everybody. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a graduate of the class of ’86 and the parent of Colly, a senior, and Kyle, who’s a freshman.

It’s an honor to speak here this morning, because this place—this Outdoor Chapel—has always felt sacred. Right here is where my brother got married, and where my family held a memorial service for my grandfather. It’s where I liked to come as a teenager to sit and think.

I’ve heard a lot of guest speakers at Thacher over the years, and often they recall the first time they visited the Thacher campus. So at the risk of sounding cliché, I’d like to start by telling you my memory of my first visit here, because it’s one of my earliest and most vivid memories. 

And it has nothing to do with horses, avocados or orange blossoms.

It was February of 1973, and I was about to turn 4 years old.

 

 

So, I like to tell people that I literally fell head-over-heels in love with Thacher, and I’m very grateful my life keeps circling back to this place.

This morning, I’d like to use this opportunity to talk to all of you—as a parent to parents, alumna to students—about bouncing back from mistakes and learning from them, rather than being defined or haunted by them.

First, let me explain what I’m doing these days, because it’s not what I originally set out to do. I thought I wanted to become a writer, like my grandfather, David S. Lavender, who taught English here for more than three decades and authored numerous histories and novels about the West. I got my graduate degree in journalism and started a

career as a newspaper reporter.

But then I developed a hobby that eventually turned into a second career, and that is: I became a competitive long-distance runner and a running coach—which is kind of funny, because when I was a student here, I distinctly recall how running two laps on the track down there felt like a form of punishment.

Since then, I’ve run over 60 marathons and ultramarathons, always finishing and sometimes even winning. But something happened this past March that I’m not particularly proud of.

For the first time ever, I got a DNF. That stands for Did Not Finish. It happened at a 62-mile race along the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. I just felt lousy from the start. We were running along a rugged section of the Pacific Crest Trail, and I was slipping and tripping on the rocks, and pretty soon I fell behind the pack of top 10 women. I didn’t have the excuse of being injured, but I felt profoundly burned out and ambivalent. So for the first time, I simply called it quits and dropped out at the halfway point.

After that, I felt pretty shaken up and depressed about being a quitter, and nervous about racing again. But then I began to make peace with the experience; I analyzed all the mistakes I made in training and all  the mental factors that set me up to fail, and I ended up performing better at races over the summer. This DNF turned out to be one of

the most valuable learning experiences I’ve had as an athlete and a coach.

Now let’s go back 30 years to my senior year at Thacher, because having a freshman and a senior here sparks a lot of flashbacks to those years and to what I learned. Of course I remember moments in the classroom when I felt transfixed by the lessons. There was the time I peeled back the tissue of a fetal pig in biology, or all the times I

raised my hand in English because I was so excited to discuss the metaphors in The Great Gatsby or in Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

But I also ruminate about the times I messed up, the times I got JC’ed—and yes, it happened more than once—and how those mistakes affected me.

My first three years here, I earned a reputation as a strong student and a top rider. I won the freshman high point award at Big Gymkhana (go Blue Team!), I loved life in the dorms, and I was eager to please my teachers. The same could be said—more or less—about my boyfriend Morgan Smith, who was one year ahead in the class of 1985.

For those of you who don’t know Morgan, he’s sitting here today because we ended up getting married. (Life is funny.)

Morgan started his senior year happy and proud to have been chosen to be a prefect.

On one ordinary afternoon in the fall of 1984, when Morgan was a senior and I was junior, we were sitting outside of Study Hall talking about how much homework we had and how we really did not want to go to formal dinner. (Sound familiar?) So we came up with the bright idea to skip dinner and go back to our rooms. We just wanted to do

our work and didn’t want to deal with getting dressed up for formal.

It was easy. All we had to do was sign out and say that we were down at my parents’ house eating dinner with them. So that’s what we did.

But the faculty somehow figured out that we didn’t go to dinner at my parents, and that we had lied on the sign-out sheet. So we took a trip to the Judicial Council.

I got work crew and a stern warning, which wasn’t the end of the world.

But Morgan got hit hard. Morgan was stripped of his prefectship. He felt like he had a cloud over his senior year. This was a really hard thing for him and his parents to go through. But he got through it, and his senior year was not defined by it; in fact, many of our classmates and teachers don't even remember this incident. Now we can look back and chalk it up to something stupid we did and learned from. Most importantly, I got the message: that you have to tell the truth. The Honor Code doesn’t have any gray

areas.

One year later, Morgan went to college and I started my senior year. My senior year had a lot in common with that race I ran last March, when I got the DNF: It started off badly, it was really rocky, it kept getting worse, and I felt like a loser.

Here are some of the highlights I remember: I was not elected a prefect. Mr. Robinson gave me my first C in English. I stayed in bed and slept through so many AP French classes that my teacher, Mr. Bird, finally left the classroom one day, marched into my dorm room, woke me up and said, “What’s the matter with you?” Then in the

spring, when it was time for the AP English exam, I had some kind of anxiety attack mixed with an existential crisis, so I walked out of the exam room midway through without answering a single question.

But wait, it gets worse! Toward the end of April, I did something stupid, and escapist, and illegal. Not surprisingly, I got busted, so I took another trip to the Judicial Council.

Keep in mind that this was gymkhana season. The one thing that I really looked forward to and worked hard at during senior year was riding and taking care of my horse, and I really wanted to get the high point award at Big Gymkhana that year.

Instead, I missed the Big Gymkhana entirely because I got suspended. I had to go home for a couple of weeks. It was an awful experience all around. But at least I came back and graduated.

So what ultimately saved me senior year—how did I get through it and end up OK? I’d like to give my parents some credit, but they were kind of missing in action at that point. Instead, three other things helped me, which are at the heart of the Thacher experience, and for which I will always be grateful.

Number one, my teachers. They really did care; they really did influence their students, as they did in my grandfather’s day, and as they continue to do today. As the historian Henry Adams said, “a teacher affects eternity—he can never tell where his influence stops.”

I first heard that quote at my grandfather’s memorial, when Mr. Mulligan used it in his remarks. Alumni who had my grandfather as a teacher tell me about how he used to write in the margins of their papers, in big red letters, “B.S.” — which stood for “Be Specific,” and how he’d say, “There is no such thing as good writing, only good re-

writing!” He pushed them and inspired them.

When I was a student here, my English teachers, Bonnie and Peter Robinson, did the same thing. They nurtured a genuine desire to participate in class and to read the books and poems they assigned. So when Mrs. Robinson took me aside and told me she was

concerned about my behavior and my feelings—actually, her exact words were, “You seem to be on a path of self-destruction”—I opened up to her.

Now, as a parent, I appreciate again the tough love and dedication that every faculty member here brings to his or her calling, inside the classroom and out. We should all say a prayer of thanks for the great teachers here, who are also great coaches and mentors.

Number two, the horse program helped me. Having to get up and feed my horse every morning gave a structure and purpose to my day when I was on the verge of blowing off everything else. Being able to gallop up the trotting hill, and jump one of those picnic tables out by the Diamond Hitch barbecue, gave me the kind of release and thrill

that I really needed.

Number three, the Honor Code. When I got caught and confronted during the spring semester of senior year, I told the truth. I knew that telling a lie would make things worse, and I actually wanted to confess—I wanted to come clean. Unfortunately, two of my good friends were confronted about the same infraction. They chose to make up stories and deny what we had done. They got expelled and never got their diplomas.

For a long time I came back to campus full of shame and regret about my senior year. I so very much wanted a do-over, a second chance. But at a certain point, I came to terms with it, learned from it and forgave myself. I found my footing in college, hit my stride, and everything really did work out.

To all of you students who are listening, I sincerely hope you do not make these kinds of mistakes. I hope you do your best and make the most out of your time here at Thacher.

Try always to follow through on your word and to see things through to completion. Have the courage to embark on new challenges, and try to not to DNF.

But when you screw up something or fail at something, either now or later in life—and it’s probably a matter of when, not if—then own up to your mistake. Learn and grow from it. Make peace with it.

Understand that your shortcomings and mistakes may outnumber your times of success, and that’s normal. In fact, it can be a good thing, because your response to those shortcomings builds character and might ultimately be the thing that leads to your success.

And parents, I urge you to love your kids unconditionally and to support them, especially when they mess up and fail. Understand that they probably feel pretty terribly about themselves, even if they act like it’s no big deal or they don’t care. They do.

Don’t try to fix their mistakes for them, but do express your love and confidence that they will figure things out and everything will be OK. I appreciate this school for so many reasons. A big reason is that this hallowed place teaches—and disciplines—its students in ways that make them smarter and stronger in the long run.

Thank you.