Page 34 - 2008 Wardlaw Hartridge

30 ©ur 125th Year
Best wishes,
Andrew Webster Head of School
1295 Inman Avenue ♦ Edison, New jersey 08820 908.754.1882 ♦ Fax 908.754.4922 ♦ www.whschool.org
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Wardlaw-Hartridge
School
Preparing Students to Lead and Succeed
I have enjoyed getting to know you over the last three years o f your schooling, which is a relatively short time but one that encompasses a great deal o f growth. You are ready to tackle new challenges and find your way toward a future o f your own devising. Welookforwardtolearningaboutthechoicesyouhavemade. Yourteacherswillalwayslovetohearfromand about you, and we hope you will visit from time to time.
As you read this for the first time, you will be on the cusp of graduating and moving on to another school, another community. You will have new opportunities to think and to do, and you will be able to set your own balance between thinking and doing. The poem below speaks to how doing can influence thinking, or how real-world experience can influence academic understanding.
Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper by Martin Espada
At sixteen, I worked after high school hours at a printing plant
that manufactured legal pads:
Yellow paper
stacked seven feet high
and leaning
as I slipped cardboard
between the pages,
then brushed red glue
up and down the stack.
No gloves: fingertips required
for the perfection of paper,
smoothing the exact rectangle.
Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper, and gather slits thinner than the crevices o f the skin, hidden.
The glue would sting, hands oozing
till both palms burned at the punch clock.
Ten years later, in law school,
I knew that every legal pad
was glued with the sting o f hidden cuts, that every open law book
was a pair of hands
upturned and burning.
I encourage you to find opportunities to leaven your academic explorations with direct experiences, and as you move forward to use your talents to better the world and not just advance through it.