That’s a Waynflete Student, Write?

Waynflete students write.  A lot.  Lab reports, personal essays, journals, and analytical term papers are only a few among the various pieces that students produce during their time here.  They edit themselves, they edit their peers, they are edited by faculty.  But how do we know if they are really prepared for the writing required of them in college?

Well, sometimes we get lucky.

A classmate mine from college, who has taught at both Concord Academy and Buckingham Brown Nichols, emailed me a couple of weeks ago:

At dinner last night my friend Neil Miller, who teaches nonfiction writing at Tufts, asked if I had heard of Waynflete and said it must be an amazing school. He has a sophomore named Misha who writes like a dream and produced an essay about a half hour walking around Waynflete talking to his beloved teachers. I asked if one was Debba Curtis and Neil said Yes! He says the other kids marvel at the maturity of Misha’s writing style, more adult than youth, and Misha says that is just the way they were taught at W. So! Well done!

Naturally, I emailed Misha Linnehan, Waynflete ’14, Tufts ’18, to find out exactly what he was telling his professors…:

I believe the exact Debba quotes were “You know, some day you’re going to miss having Advanced Bio at 8:15 in the morning” and “Three days late in a row, you delinquent?! I’m starting to suspect you don’t like me!”

I really enjoy the class, and I’m happy to see my professor likes my writing. (If you’re looking for another example, not to toot my own horn or anything, but http://tuftsobserver.org/the-stigma-cycle/).  I often think about Waynflete; it is such a tight community (one of my favorite things about the place).

So there we have it – external corroboration that students really do go off to college with solid writing skills.  Not that we doubted it, really, but it’s nice hear!