A Place to Blossom

 

I am sure your expectations and your concerns also travelled with you. Whether you worry about making the team, speaking perfect English, or dropping Pre-Calc, these are legitimate issues, but you can’t let them weigh you down.

 

Don’t get me wrong: Stanstead won’t erase those issues for you; the classes aren’t easier, nor do they let you speak your home language. But they hold something better: a solution. They offer a community.

 

Allow me to explain…

 

Think of a flower. Okay, now, you are the flower.

 

And Stanstead is your garden.

 

A flower needs good soil, oxygen, and water to grow, like a teenager needs sports, Mr. Simard, and food.

 

Under those circumstances, the flower can learn, grow, and develop. But did it flourish yet? Not quite.

 

Imagine a garden where every flower stays closed, keeping its petals folded. The garden may have everything it needs to grow, but it would still feel empty.

 

Now imagine every flower opening, reaching towards the flowers around it, filling the garden with colour. Wouldn’t that be beautiful?  When each of us reaches, grows, and opens to one another, we create a garden more beautiful than any flower could be alone.

 

Because a flower truly flourishes when it opens its petals to the world. And so do we when we open ourselves to the people around us.

 

You can survive with a garden. But you thrive with a community.

 

That affection you hold for your family, your friends, your roommate, your teammate – wherever you find it, hold on to it. Because when classes get hard, you’ll need a classmate, when practice is rough, you’ll want a teammate, and when home feels far, you’ll need a friend.

 

That’s what makes Stanstead more than a place where you study, practice, and live for ten months.

 

It becomes a place where you grow.

 

Ten months from now, you’ll start packing. As you leave Stanstead, I hope you take home suitcases empty of concerns, but heavy with connections you’ll carry forever.