Interviews

Outside is as dark as inside, and swaying in the swing can’t calm me right now, not when I turn my head around. The music in my ears deprives me of the steps around me, but there’s no one around me. Every time I see something move out of the corner of my eye there’s nothing when I take a better look at it, the walls, the trees, the houses, the couches, the flowers. Everything and nothing surrounding me. The constant sway can’t stop me from looking at the smiling flowers. White flowers bunching around each other, separating in the middle and forming, what looks like, a pair of eyes. The rest of the flowers curl below the circles above, a smiling face made of flowers. The flowers are smiling and it looks like a ghost is behind it, observing me. It feels like a timer and the clock’s ticking.

What am I scared of if there is nothing around me? I’m not scared of dying, I know it’s something that’ll eventually come, I’m not scared of anyone around me, I’m not scared of the dark, or flowers, or shadows, or noises. I’m not scared. I'm not scared, I'm not, but the flowers keep smiling and the shadows keep watching every movement I make. Everytime I look around, something moves, nothing moves. And now being outside seems like a worse idea than upstairs in my room.

There’s a pit in my stomach and it’s deeper than the wide, opened door. I had closed it, I closed it when I left. Both beds are empty when I turn to look at them and there’s talking beside me. It lags like a machine and it has my sister’s voice behind the glitch. I don’t want to turn around, I don’t want to see what’s inside. I’m trembling, my whole body is shaking, and my eyes move towards the nonexistent sound. I can’t wake up from this nightmare. Not when I turn around and see my sister’s beaten body with an unnatural smile on its face. The eyes melting down and the smile widening across its face. It’s a glitch, I don’t know what it is, but the body in front of me is glitching. The voice never stops and it says my name.

I think I’m scared.

Boarding School’s Impact on Brain Development

By Louisa Strong ’26

According to numerous scientific studies, boarding for middle schoolers (especially those aged ten and eleven) could run the risk of being very detrimental towards the boarder's mental health longterm. Higher rates of social and study-related anxiety were noticed in boarding students rather than day students, as well as learning anxiety (Ma et al).

Do these studies play out in real life here at Hebron? One faculty member on campus suggested that good experiences of boarding could outweigh the negative studies, and maybe the more positive results of boarding were not what the researchers were looking for. So, five middle school boarding students were interviewed to find out more about the impact of boarding on their everyday life as well as their mental health (not all of the students interviewed wanted their names used in this article).

For all of the interviewees, Hebron is the first boarding school that any of them have attended, and they all came here because their parents wanted them to, but the students all thought that this was a good decision. For Daniel Salinas Valdes, coming to Hebron has improved his mental health because of the consistent in-person learning and activities, whereas the pressure of good grades and performance is starting to get to other students. In fact, many HAMS classmates said that their mental health has remained mostly unchanged since boarding at Hebron, but that their relationship with their parents has definitely altered. Four of the five students interviewed feel that they are more distant emotionally from their parents now that they are so far away from them. This makes sense because they went from seeing their parents every day to seeing them a few times a year. There was only one exception to this general feeling of distance: that student said that now that she is away from her parents, she wants to fill them in on her life all the time.

Another big question was the issue of friends. Would being in a new environment spark new and better friendships? The answer is complicated. Almost everyone had to take some time to figure out which place provided the best friendships for them, and the majority answer was at home. Though many feel more themselves when they are back where they are from, they still recognize that their friends at Hebron are supportive and special.

After being presented with some of the studies’ research, the students gave their opinion on how boarding can affect mental health. Wolfie Egan thinks that for sixth-graders and younger, boarding school could be unhealthy. Daniel Salinas Valdes expressed a similar opinion that boarding school should start from ages fourteen and up because younger students might not be mature enough to handle being away from their parents. One study did show that highschoolers were not met with the same mental struggles from boarding as middle schoolers (Ma et al), so his fourteen and up theory makes sense. Andrea Puszkar Hesselman pointed out that boarding when you get easily homesick and are very dependent on your parents would not end well. Another student thinks that your experience depends on your mindset, while a final student doesn’t believe that boarding school has any impact on mental health.

Spending a year away from their parents has felt freeing and amazing for most of the HAMS boarders interviewed. This time away has grown a sense of independence in the students, and Wolfie Egan even ventured to say that he doesn’t feel like he needs his parents anymore. Being confronted with a new setting has been refreshing for some and stressful for others, but has left even the stressed students feeling mature. What I take from these interviews is that entering a year or more away from home can be challenging, but that with the right mentality and the right age, you will make friends and experience newfound independence. Maybe the urge towards boarding school should come with more caution, but boarding can nevertheless be an opportunity to expand your horizons past a place of comfort and habit.

Work Cited X. Ma et al. “Comparison of Learning Adaptability, Mental Health and Academic Achievement between Boarding and Non-Boarding Primary School Students”. Chin. J. Clin. Psychol. 2013;21:497–499.

“An Island of Sanity”: An Interview With Mr. Phillips

By Nola Goodwin ’23

Come July, Hebron Academy will have a brand new head of school. This is a big transition for the community, but certainly an exciting one. On his visit to campus at the end of April, I was able to sit down for a quick interview with Mr. Phillips, and he shared some facts about himself and his job. Before Hebron, Patrick Phillips was the head of Hawaii Preparatory Academy, and is looking forward to joining the Hebron community.

“There was this sense of Hebron being a really special place,” said Mr. Phillips when asked what drew him to the school. “I remember coming to campus and being drawn to the place, but much more so to the people. I could understand why people talked about it as such a special, unique place, and why alumni from thirty, forty, fifty years ago would say ‘this is where I found who I am.’”

Mr. Phillips may not have officially stepped into the role yet, but I got the impression that he’s committed to making positive changes during his time here: “One of the best parts of my job is working with students and faculty to, as I like to say, bridge the present and the possible. Maybe we’re happy with where we are now, but where are we going to go? I want to help figure out what that looks like for the students and the faculty, and try to move the school in that direction. I always call my time with students an island of sanity. That part of the job is a time where I can just be present with the kids.”

In addition to discussing his upcoming position, Mr. Phillips shared some fun facts about himself. For example: he loves hockey, hiking, and just being in nature, which will absolutely be an asset during his time on campus. In spite of his desire for a “refined palate,” he was unashamed to admit that his favorite food is 100% pizza. On the flip side, Mr. Phillips told me that some more time had to pass before he revealed all of his hidden talents, but he did share that he’s unnaturally good at guessing the time without a watch. Definitely a useful skill. He was more excited to talk about his college radio show, though: “It was brilliant. I’m not sure if we found the recording today we would say the same, but I think it definitely still was.”

To end our interview, I asked Mr. Phillips what he wanted the student body to know about him before next fall, to which he responded: “I hope they can learn that I’m interested in their lives, in making sure that their experience is everything they hoped it would be, and what we hope it to be. And that means I hope they feel comfortable coming into my office, stopping me as we’re walking, chatting with me in the lobby. I think that’s an incredibly important piece of building community.”