Letter

by Dr. Nancy Le Nezet, High School Principal

Dear Class of ‘23,

It has been a whirlwind of a year and I think we can all agree it has gone faster than we expected! There has been a sense of “busyness” and many of you have commented on your packed schedule of classes and activities. The truth is, the pandemic forced us to slow down and go back to basics. As a result, the return of normal activities - full sports seasons, live shows with real audiences, parents attending events and exhibitions, full exam sessions, overseas school trips - has felt like a tsunami. It has been fun and full of joy, but has also thrown us off-balance at times.

All these activities can help us find our balance, if we are thoughtful about how much we take on and how intensely we do it. During the pandemic, students continued working hard on their studies but they no longer had the extracurricular activities and leisure time allowing them to put their work into perspective. When all the activities were allowed to happen again, we threw ourselves into them with renewed intensityhence the occasional feeling of running out of time and energy.

Author Thomas Merton wrote: “We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.” This is something we can take away from this year: perhaps next year will be a good time for us to continue reflecting on the right balance, the one that makes us happy and not just busy, the one that allows us to flourish because it includes some reflection time and downtime and breathing time.

Dr Le Nezet

William Kim

Next Adventure: Princeton University

Joined SFS in XX grade