Page 18 - Priorities #32 2005-November

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assistants see to sports injuries and teach classes in kinesiology—all new additions since I played basketball there.
In recent years, buildings like the Fine Arts building and the Chapel have been renovated to accommodate the larger student body—so to speak. Science teacher Paul Trudelle remembers watching the eighth- and ninth-graders, especially the boys, cling to the edges of the pews in the back of the unrenovated Chapel. Desperately trying not to fall off the pews and onto the floor—thus attracting unwanted attention—the students would perch
as carefully as possible. Now, with the beautiful renovations to the Chapel, all students have a place to sit comfortably so that they can focus on spiritual, not physical, balance.
The music program has, from its inception, been plagued with space and facility issues that I remember well. I played in the budding orchestra, led by Dr. Martin Mayer, when it practiced in
the Father Christopher Room in Founders Hall, peppering the administration’s day with bursts of unpolished music.
Even after we vacated Founders Hall for the upper reaches of campus, we lent unintentional musical accompaniment to the day. Brother Edward Englund remembers trying to hold a Plato seminar in, appropriately enough, what was then called the Seminar Room (today it’s the orchestra/choir room). The class had one rather unusual component: a soundtrack provided by the orchestra’s percussion section, enthusiastically rehearsing in the Assembly Hall next door. Plato’s harmony of the spheres indeed!
I had a similar experience when practicing with the chorus in the Seminar-cum-Music Room. A teacher from next door came over and asked us to stop because his class couldn’t hear him over our voices. (Or maybe ours were more interesting... .)
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As student interest grew, we began doing small ensemble work. Finding a room—any room—with the appropriate acoustics was next to impossible. Father Martin Mager remembers the Shoo-be-doo- wahs, an all-male a cappella group, practicing in the men’s restroom in Church Square because the space was available and it had the best acoustics! Maybe that explains why all four boys studied science and engineering in college.
The Priory has always been a place of resourcefulness and energy, and facility changes play a large part in that. After all, where would the Priory be if the monks all those years ago hadn’t moved those rocks, and bought that army barracks? The improved facilities that each generation provides make it possible for the students to use their talents in all aspects of their school lives. That fuels the excitement and vitality that make the Portola Valley Benedictine education so valuable.
Although I would not change one minute of my Priory experience, I would really have enjoyed that Performing Arts Center, and all of the other renovations the Priory has made and is in the process of making.
Maybe despite the changes the Priory is the same place I attended after all—the place that with energy and dedication turned a five-foot-tall eleven- year-old with a very short attention span into a five-foot-eight university student with a penchant for opera, and laid the foundation for who I am and who I am to become.
Ora et Labora indeed.
Editor’s Note: Devin is living in New York City and wrote this for Priorities while home for the summer following her graduation from Columbia University. The complete history of WPS’s first 40 years, including some humorous recollections, is online—go to www. woodsidepriory.com, click on The Priory/Overview, then on History.
A Sophomore’s View Of The Trinity Project
“The new Performing Arts Center, with the new and larger auditorium, will be an all school meeting center... The new library will include two computer labs and media classrooms, a garden reading room looking out on Church Square, private and group study areas, and a new rare books room. . . Students will be able to “hang out” at the new student center, which will have a Panther Café [and a central lounge area] and will house the offices of the yearbook, Associated Student Body, and potentially the Dean of Students and Campus Ministry.”
Molly Dellheim
Class of 2008
Excerpted from an article in the student newspaper