Senior Dinner Address � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �

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Seth Karpinski

Upper School science teacher Seth Karpinski was chosen by the Senior Class as this year's Rice Award winner. He delivered the Senior Dinner Address on July 31, in which he explored the importance of appreciating the little moments that happen while we aren't looking.

There are some elephants in the room that we should probably get out of the way� First, I have a wireless mic; I've never felt more like Justin Timberlake, and I really like it� Second, look around you� This is the weirdest thing I've ever been a part of� Number three, this is the one I really want to address: you had a choice of who you picked to stand up here���� Among your choices: a PhD in Material Science from Columbia University, a Division One Lacrosse national champion, acclaimed actors, poets, artists, and a multi-time nominated Grammy musician� And yet, I'm standing in front of you� What is going on right now?

I, Seth Karpinski, am best known for this: My crowning accomplishment is that I abandoned David Ben Ezra at a California Chipotle Mexican Grill. This is who you chose to bestow wisdom to you. What I want to talk to you about today is processes. A process is a series of actions or steps taken to achieve a particular end. And all of these processes have these things called by-products. The by-products are not really what you're going for, but they happen along the way. I want to talk to you about two different processes in my life: a process that happened in 2020, and a process that happened in 2000. Let’s start with the present day. To understand this story, I have to introduce you to some characters. These are two of the most important people in my life. I want to talk about recent accomplishments of these people that I met in college. The first person is Hardy. Hardy lives in Colorado and he's working on starting a grassroots revolution. [sidenote: Do you guys know what SUP is? Stand-up paddle boarders]. Hardy wants to get 20 to 30 stand-up paddle boarders all paddling at the lake at the same time, and the name of this club is SUP Bro. He wants to name a standup paddle board club SUP Bro, and the only rule of SUP Bro is that the only thing you can say as you paddle along is “SUP, Bro?” This is someone who is important to me. The other person is Greer. Greer's most recent accomplishment is he participated in the Toboggan National Championship. You've heard of it, right? You know the one in Camden, Maine, that no one has ever heard of. That’s what he's doing right now. Greer is the kind of person who is extremely athletic and good at everything he does, without even trying. Greer made the 2008 national team for rowing.

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My family has a lake house and Hardy and Greer visited during quarantine. Greer pulls up. He is 6'7, but he drives a Kia, which makes me really happy. There were two things on top of the car: surf skis (I had no idea what a surf ski was) and two 21 feet long kayaks weighing 26 pounds each. The width of the seat is 17.5 inches. He brings two of them knowing Hardy and I are competitive with each other. And he's like, “Hey, I got this idea...You guys gotta race today.” We object for a bit, but deep down, we're like, “Yeah, bring it on. Let's do this.” So, we're sitting on the lake and we get in these boats and 33% of us had an awesome time, the other two people? Not so much. Hardy was flipping this thing over and over and scratching and yelling. And I'm watching this thinking, “I'm not doing that.” I blocked out the rest of the stuff that happened that day, but Greer left one of the boats and it's still in my garage. I'm looking at this thing, and I’m thinking, “Here's a process. I wanna race this thing. I want to race this kayak.” I was 18 in the year 2000. I grew up in Berkshire, Massachusetts and I went to a small public school of about 162 people. It’s a little different from Hackley. 60% of my graduating class didn't go to college, and about 30% of the rest went to nearby state schools. During that time, I took myself very seriously and was obsessed with the college process. Everything I did and every test I took was an opportunity to increase my GPA. With every race I thought, “I might get recruited, this could be the big one.” I was 100% obsessed with that particular end. So, I spent my high school years working hard to look perfect on paper; to build a facade. In the moment, I was so proud of each of my accomplishments… with the beautiful facade I created. But with facades comes a lot of danger—they come with the heavy weight of the expectations of the community, my family, me. The weight of that just really, really held me down. Still, the entire time I thought, “Particular end, particular end, I wanna get into a school, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this.” And it worked. I got into Bates College, and I was pumped. I thought, “This is gonna be such a good fit. I can ski. This is Division One. This is what I've been working for.” I made that particular end, I obsessed over it, and finally I was there, and I remember the moment sitting in the car with my mom and dad, thinking, “Yeah, I got that particular end. This is amazing. I did good...Alright, next process.” But, I've never been more scared in my life. I was super terrified. You know when something's about to go wrong and you just get this wicked tension? Maybe it's before a race or before a big test and you're clenching your teeth and white knuckling. I remember sitting there thinking, “What's going on? What's going on?... process, process, process, particular end...You know what, the particular end is whatever facade I made, that's what I have to be, and I have to go to Bates and I have to show everyone that I'm perfect academically, I wanna be social and go to all the parties, I wanna be the life of the party, and blow up athletically in Division One.” I remember putting all of that pressure on myself. I'm in the garage and I'm looking at that boat determined to race this thing. I remember that day telling my Dad, “Let's go down to the dock. I’m gonna get in. I'm gonna put this boat in and then I'm gonna learn how to get in this thing. I'm going to do some balance drills, and after I do some balance drills, I'm gonna get in the boat and I'm gonna go out for a paddle,” and he was like, “Oh, okay, alright, we'll do this.” And so we go down to the dock. We were there for 59 minutes. I didn't get in the boat once.

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I remember grabbing onto the boat and my dad was saying, “Are you serious? Are you joking? What'd Greer say? Did he tell you how to do this?” and I responded, “Greer told me he just never falls out, so he doesn't know how to get back in.” Not only was I humiliated in front of my 70-year-old father, but then I decided to paddle out wearing my life jacket and I found myself going five strokes and then flipping over… and another five strokes and then flipping over. I went to the middle of the lake where there were a ton of elderly people in pontoon boats. I thought they wanted to check out the cool kayak, but instead they were genuinely concerned for my well-being. I was really ashamed. After 59 minutes, I'm shaking and thinking,“You're a D1 athlete... your job is to coach.” And deep down I felt really ashamed. But I laughed and played it off. So, I'm in the car on the way to Bates, putting pressure on myself about what I will be doing while in school the next four years, thinking, “Finally, I get out of here. I finished high school. This is what I've been waiting for. This is gonna be big.” And I just found that the boat just kept flipping. I remember going there and people immediately asking where I’m from and then sharing their places: Milton Academy, Deerfield. I didn't know what any of those places were. They’d clarify, “Just right outside Boston.” I guess my family didn't have a lot of money because I was on a lot of financial aid. And all of a sudden, it flipped. I didn't feel like I belonged there. It was one of the first times I just felt totally outside. I remember even academically being so sure of myself, and then being crushed with feedback such as “You're writing at a ninth grade level.” The tension increased. I couldn't get rid of it. My Friday nights were not what I planned. My goal was to be the life of the party, and that I would uphold the facade I created for myself. But instead, I spent Friday nights in the library alone, just trying to catch up and trying to stop flipping. Every Sunday I would call my parents. And they knew something was not right. I was exhausted, I was so tired. And I couldn’t let go of the shame. Surf ski is really weird. Greer told me, “When it gets really bad and you're about to flip, all you've gotta do is totally relax.” It's impossible to do that, but it's so true. If you're in the boat and your tension and hesitation is building, you're toast. There's no way you're staying on that boat. There's a couple of different ways to build tension: internally when you do something wrong, and tension driven by external forces. I'm bad at those. Those are the ones that hurt.

On a windy day, I told my wife Holly that I was going out for a paddle. She told me it was a ridiculous idea, but I was stubborn and went out anyway. I made it to a cove and was making my way into the main part of the lake with high winds. It was cold enough that I had to wear a wetsuit that day. Every single time I come into that cove, white caps would hit a certain way on the boat and it would flip over. I’d get back on swearing that “I’ve got this,” but each time I’d flip. I stressed to myself, “You're a D1 athlete, you got this, you got this,” and it would keep flipping. I was frustrated. I started tearing up thinking, “What is going on?” When you flip and when you have that tension, it's not a gentle flop, it's not a little splash, it's a really big one, and I remember at one point my paddle went one way and the boat went another. I swam to get the paddle and I looked back at where the boat was and the wind had taken it. I swam as hard as I possibly could

The Senior class presented faculty member Christopher Loomis with the 2020 Yearbook Dedication in recognition of his impact as a teacher, coach, and dean�

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and it kept getting further and further away. I felt so ashamed and defeated and alone in that minute.

There was so much tension my freshman year at Bates. I couldn't stop flipping— academically, socially, and athletically. Everyday I'd put pressure on myself: “Here we go. You got this, you got this.” But it was really, really tough. I remember laying in bed thinking, “Man, what are you doing here?” I laid there and the boat was just going, and I swam so hard. There's this weird thing in dirt sports called the flow state. The flow state in endurance sports is “the zone.” In the flow state, you lose perception of time completely, and it's like you're outside your own body watching what is happening. People describe it as this energized focus. It can't break you, and you are 100% in the moment, you are 100% present. I remember being out on the boat and it was dark. I went out at dusk, and if you go out on a lake certain nights, it's glass. And it’s beautiful. And I was in that boat, and every single catch, every paddle stroke just fit perfectly. And that resistance, when I pulled back, was there, but it felt good. I was moving faster than ever, my hips relaxed, legs in motion, perfect cadence. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life, but the key word is it's a moment. The flow state is a moment. That's a by-product of a process, just like the tension in the boat, that's a by-product of that process. Right? Particular end. Race that thing. I remember being at Bates experiencing rare moments when the tension would melt and I felt like I could be myself. Those moments would forever live with me. Most of them include meeting Hardy and Greer, and all of the good times that came after. Those are the moments that I felt completely present. So 38 year old me is out on the boat again during quarantine, and I'm paddling and it’s flipping and I'm getting angry. But there was a moment when it flipped over and something changed. I said aloud, “I'm gonna flip again today, and I'm gonna go paddle tomorrow and I'm gonna definitely flip tomorrow, and I'm gonna flip 1000 times more.” All of a sudden, in that moment the tension and shame lifted. In that moment I knew...if I don't feel tension, if I don't feel unstable, there's no way I can learn from the experience. There’s no way I can have those pure beautiful moments. I'm in that boat. Particular end. Race that thing. I spent over 100 hours on the boat by then and, in those hours, there was so much tension, but also moments of pure beauty. I remember that moment, paddling along and feeling grateful. I really needed to feel something, and if that feeling was pain and learning how to deal with that pain and acknowledging that pain, and embracing it, to have those moments in peace, I was so grateful for that moment. When I wrote this speech, I thought to myself, “Alright, well, what would 18-year-old Karpinski want to hear?” This is what I'd wanna hear: When I was sitting in your seat, the particular end that I was so obsessed with was extraordinarily tiny, but I didn’t know that. I wish someone had talked to me more about the by-products... the things that I wasn't obsessed with. I wish someone had talked to me about the tension. I wish someone told me when I was in that car feeling extremely scared, “You're gonna get some papers back and you're gonna feel really, really horrible about that stuff.” I wish someone told me that I'd be lying in bed feeling really alone. By-products. I wish someone told me that there are really good ones. I wish someone told me that those difficult moments were just moments. Your entire life is not going to be a flow state, but there will be moments that are absolutely beautiful. And when you feel that, when you're in the lake and you lose perception of time, when you make friends like Greer and Hardy and you're in the moment...recognize that you're there, get your eyes off that particular end, because I think that when the dust settles and you look back at that particular end you’ve been focused on, it will feel exceptionally small. And those byproducts, those moments of tension and flow state, that's your life. Thank you and congratulations Class of 2020.