Deerfield is notorious for hurling tasks at you that appear impossible. However, Deerfield is also famous for training its students well enough (through seemingly throwing us in the deep-end) that by the time four years is up, the finished product is self-disciplined and not too daunted by the prospect of a 12-page paper on Modernism.
This sense of rigorous academic discipline as well as a willingness to accept exceptionally hard tasks has proven not only useful, but necessary, as I press on through my gap year. Now four months in, I am working as a general assistant at Timbertop, the ninth-grade campus of Australia’s Geelong Grammar School. Situated in the Victorian Highlands, Timbertop is the famous Outward-Bound based school that “toughened” Great Britain’s Prince Charles.
Timbertop students, and all Timbertop staff, for that matter, seem to do two main things: run and hike. And when I say run, I mean we all run a marathon and when I say hike, I mean we all hike nearly every week for at least three days, covering around twenty miles per day. I don’t care how much mental fitness one may have acquired through Deerfield’s trials; it is still going to require a good bit of training to get yourself around a 26-mile course.
Now, not having been any sort of cross-country star during my years in the Pocumtuck Valley, I find this whole intensive-physical-fitness/running-up-mountains thing was rather new to me. However, the concept of having a daunting task put in front of me (in this case, the marathon), that I neither wanted to do nor thought I could do, was no stranger. And every day, half a planet away, though I am doing hill-training for two hours instead of pounding out a paper on Plato, I use the same basic skill-set that Deerfield drilled into me—hard work even when it hurts, persistence, and an open mind.
Mental stamina, whether it gets you up the highest mountain in the country with a 50lb. pack on your back or through that infamous Dante project, is an invaluable ideal of Deerfield. True, Timbertop is pounding a whole new level of physical endurance into me, but as any athlete will tell you, running and hiking are psychological sports, and I seriously doubt that I would have adequate mental strength for this semi-boot camp, if it weren’t for Deerfield.
Anne Jamison ’09 was the front page editor of the Deerfield Scroll. She is currently on a gap year in Australia.