New School Students

2018-2019

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You can’t sum up a New School student in one basic description. Each student has their own passions, and it is those passions that help shape each year at The New School.

Here is just a small snapshot of the student body in the 2018-2019 school year:

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A Student’s Perspective

Hello! My name is Luke Champney, I’m a senior, and I’m about to finish my sixth and final year at The New School. This school has been such an instrumental part of my adolescent life that I will likely only begin to understand its full impact on my development as a person long after I graduate. After all these years, this school’s quirky system has become the norm: small, discussion-based classes, frequent writing and presentations, demanding, yet inviting teachers; and most of all, a constantly rotating yet always familiar student body. I am used to knowing the names and faces of nearly everyone I pass in the hallways, and will soon be adjusting to an environment large enough to form its own little social, political, and economic enclave. But somehow, the transition to this environment doesn’t intimidate me nearly as much as it should. After all, how will I be spending most of my time with my peers besides in small, intimate environments like The New School?

This year went by in a flurry of paperwork. Despite the ever-approaching deadline of the last day of school and the monotonous stress of college applications, the idea that I was about to leave here for good never truly weighed on me until around now. If anything, as much as I have enjoyed my time here, I am also glad to move on with the next stage of my life. That said, I still had quite a nice time. I worked closely with student government (launching a new event!), finally got around to taking Calculus, enjoyed the privileges of a driver’s license and the ability to go out for lunch, and passed the time talking with my friends, as always. Despite the significance of the occasion, not much felt different.

One glaring exception to this, however, was the senior exhibition. I have known that I wanted to major in linguistics since middle school, and finally having an in-school outlet to pursue this interest was wonderful, even if attaching deadlines to my hobby and sending a paper out to an actual professor was stressful. I made said paper as specific as I could, writing about the development of present and past verb stems in Persian, while giving a much more broad presentation about the evolution of language. Despite my concerns with making linguistics interesting for a wide audience, my presentation went quite well and my interest in this
field was even more strongly confirmed.

I will miss this community and all of the opportunities it gave me. At the same time, I’m quite excited for college and can’t wait to finally be up north in Amherst. I’ll leave the question of whether I’m able to reconcile these feelings to next year, when I come back to visit over break. Until then!

Luke Champney
Class of 2019

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The Class of 2019

Each June, we say goodbye to our senior class with a mixture of sadness and joy.

We miss having them with us every day at school, but we are excited to see them start the next chapter of their lives.

Here is a look at the Class of 2019:

Some Wisdom from the Class of 2019

The Class of 2019 answered some questions before graduating and leaving campus for the final time as students. Here are a few of their favorite memories and words of wisdom for current and future New School students.