The Perils of Comfort A Wolverine Reinvents Himself
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hile demonstrating the usefulness of one of his levers, Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse claimed, “Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.” On an August day over two thousand years later, those words, carved into a simple sign outside Bridgton Academy’s Hamlin STEM Center, caught the eye of a new student. “On my first day, I looked outside my window and saw that sign...it’s just words, but that quote has done a lot for me.” Sebastian Soltes ’22 came to Bridgton from Calgary, Alberta looking for a place where he could stand under his own power, away from the familiar comforts of his home. “If I went to a Canadian school, it just would not be different enough. The way I looked at it is that the more different an environment I put myself in, the more exponential the growth would be, because I’d need to deal with people who are different from the people I’ve been
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around my whole life.” When considering where to take a postgraduate year, Sebastian knew he had an opportunity to do something special. When he saw Bridgton’s motto, “The year that makes the difference,” it struck a deeper chord about how he wants to live his life. “Since before I came here, the idea of a postgraduate year was about growing as a person.” Since his arrival, the Academy has proven to be the perfect place for the explosive growth Sebastian wanted. “Being away, I’ve needed to adapt to being my own person. The people here don’t know my family, they don’t know my grandparents and all that, they know Sebastian. My family name means nothing and that was important to me…that I mean nothing. I mean only what I put into the Academy and the student body. It was very important to me to go somewhere so far away that I could make my own way.” He has clearly done just that. Sebastian found that the rigorous standards and hands-on support of the faculty and staff at Bridgton helped him to achieve a new level of academic success. “I came here as a student hating math, I hated STEM subjects, and now I am tutoring other students in statistics twice a week.” His CAP (College Articulation Program) Statistics teacher, Mr. Jeremy Muench, attests to his development over the semester, “Sebastian’s attitude went from asking, ‘Should the answer be X?’ to ‘I think the answer is X.’ His confidence has really grown and it is the result of his consistent investment in the class. He stays involved and when he sees something he can improve on, he takes the actions necessary to grow and find success.” Even Sebastian was surprised by how his perspective on academics has changed at Bridgton. “I came in with the goal of being a better student, but the driving force was improving so that I could play football. Now, when I think about my priorities, my biggest priority isn’t even football anymore. It’s the fact that I love the academics that I do at Bridgton so much...it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever felt like that.” As is so often the case, the relationships he has formed at Bridgton have defined his time here as much as his achievements in the classroom and on the field. “It surprised me how close you can get with people. I never thought that friends could feel like family in the way they do here, but I truly feel like some of these guys here are my brothers. They’re just family now.” While Sebastian was initially wary of the constant
contact that comes with boarding school, it proved to be one of Bridgton’s most pleasant surprises. “I’ve always thought it was important for me to get my alone time. Suddenly, I don’t have that here, but that need has gone away. I am constantly with these guys and I wouldn’t change it. I love it because I’ve actually just found my people.” Sebastian’s care for his newfound brethren inspired him to be the first student this year to deliver a chapel speech, “I had a very clear message about the severity of this year and how it can be used to change your life because I believe that it can. It’s something I really wanted to get across for some of the guys who might not take it as seriously.” When Sebastian describes the “severity” of the year, it is not a complaint. He started thinking about the positives of experiencing discomfort while preparing himself for the football season, “This summer I was working with a trainer...He would make us do these sprints. They were the worst thing I’ve ever done, but after a week I could do two more than I did the previous week. Then the five minutes of sprinting at the beginning of the offseason became fifteen minutes by the end of it. I could feel how much growth I got out of that.” When Sebastian decided he wanted to deliver a speech to his peers, he focused on this relationship between comfort and discomfort, the ways Bridgton can be uncomfortable, and why Wolverines should relish that discomfort rather than hide from it. It’s a message that resonated with his peers, “I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and say things like, ‘That really opened my eyes, because I’ve been letting it go by like it’s another year of high school.’ I know there are some guys who don’t take it the way that I do, but I think that it’s so important to take advantage, because this is an amazing place.” “I don’t want to come out of Bridgton the same Sebastian that I was in 2021. I want to be the guy who packed up and went to Maine for a year and became more comfortable with himself, became more confident, became more rigorously focused on academics…I want to make myself a better person and I can’t think of a better place with more caring faculty, where I could make better friends; it’s everything I expected it to be and more.” It is safe to say that Sebastian has found his ground to stand on and we are all excited to see how he moves the world in the years to come. BA
