Growing Pains

Adolescence is a tricky business. Children crave comfort and adults strive for independence, but where do teenagers fit in? We long to be thought of as self-governing individuals, but at the same time we pine for our carefree days on the playground, when parents packed our lunches with little heart-shaped notes inside and teachers handed out glowing praise like a politician hands out false smiles.

Even though many of us are boarding students living outside the cocoon of our families, we are not expected to participate in society (or the Deerfield community) as adults. Handbooks, rulebooks, guidelines, restrictions, provisions, limitations and censure dictate the way we live our Deerfield lives. Free will and individual judgement collapse when faced with that all-powerful doctrine, “DA to Z.”

As many of us here at The Scroll arrive at the final stages of our Deerfield careers, we grow more and more anxious to throw off the constraints that have fettered us since the age of 14. While we understand the necessity of the majority of the rules here on campus, it is frustrating to be forced to return to the dorm at 9:45 in the middle of a passionate debate in a library study room or a thought-provoking conversation with one of our wonderful teachers (with whom bonding time is running out).

If Deerfield prides itself on being a college-preparatory school, why does our senior year of high school feel so mollycoddling? Can the administration let our leash out a little bit and recognize that in just under a year, the word “curfew” will be but a distant memory? The Scroll realizes that the abolition of a senior curfew is but a remote fantasy, but hey, a newspaper can dream.