Writing 101: A Room with a View

Last week I went to a screening of John Hughes’s “The Breakfast Club” to celebrate its 30th anniversary. It was a cinematic time machine to 1985, the year I was a freshman at The Dalton School.

The last time I visited Dalton was June 2014, for a reunion. Our reunion took place in the 10th floor library, where I spent almost every day during high school. It has been renovated, but it still has two levels. I worked late hours in the upstairs enclosed glass room on our newspaper, The Daltonian. If it was a Saturday, the staff took over the library for cut-and-paste and played music, transforming a tranquil study space into our editorial domain. I would bring cassettes, and I remember playing The Bangles on repeat.

During the week, we had “labs” which were free time where you could study, go out for a bagel, sneak a cigarette around the corner. I was usually in the library, at a table, doing my homework. I also loved looking through the stacks of books and would often just end up reading sometimes sitting on the floor, next to all the books.

Dalton was a hard, competitive environment. I felt the pressure to get A’s and everyone’s goal was to get into the best possible colleges. Along the way, I navigated cliques, sat on the steps of the Met (If you’ve ever watched Gossip Girl, yes we really went there, but it was a nighttime meeting spot.) I had crushes on upperclassmen and revered my teachers. Mostly, I just wanted to survive high school and it was day-by-day a challenge. Vacations were capped by who had the best tan, fashion from Benneton and Guess ruled as we did not wear uniforms, and while it was and still is one of the top private schools in NYC, I often longed to go to what I would simply refer to as a normal high school. The library was always an oasis and I’m glad to revisit it last year.