By Lilly Fleischmann, ’11, Contributor

When my grandmother was my age, she went to Miss Porter’s in Farmington, Connecticut. She was on the board of trustees of the school for many years, and when she hosted a luncheon with the president, I was invited. She enjoyed her time there so much that she wanted to expose me to the school as best she could through its alumnae. I was more shocked to learn that it was a possibility to go to another school than I was to hear the suggestion of boarding school, and an all-girls one at that.

I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and moved back to Cincinnati when I was very little. I never had a choice in schools; my mom took me to CCDS the day I was old enough to go.

My parents chose the pre-kindergarten track for me rather than Montessori, and I have watched my class grow from 10 or 12 preschoolers to 55 juniors over the past 15 years. Growing up with such a small group of classmates might account for any noticeably lacking social skills or the fact that the size of college populations baffles me. One thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand students? What’s the difference? It’s just a lot of people.

My early education at CCDS also did not seem to include grammar… I could write as comprehensively as anyone, but I couldn’t play Mad Libs until I was about 11 and someone finally explained basic parts of speech to me. Did I miss that day of class? I don’t know, but my brothers (Matthew, ’14, and Eric, ’19) seem to have a much better grasp of them than I do, so either I skipped a step somewhere along the way or the school has made improvements in this area.

I remember being in the House when we still called our teachers by their first names and I got sent to time out. We didn’t have multi-child strollers while I was there, so we didn’t get to go to the high school very much. I don’t remember the old building at all except for the courtyard on the day of the Ice Cream Social.

In Mrs. Krody’s Pre-K II class, we rotated jobs (although my favorite was always line leader), and I remember doing a lot of art there as well as in kindergarten with Mrs. Childs. Around that age, we sometimes pretended to be Pokémon or animals at recess, but almost always played boys-chase-girls because it was way more fun than girls-chase-boys (the girls team was highly superior, anyway). My sandbox activity was mostly limited to participating in efforts to dig a hole to China.

I had Mrs. Macfarland in first grade and was very jealous to learn that Baldur Tangvald’s initials spelled “bat” while mine made the incomprehensible “lrf.” And yes, I think it was about this time that my middle name became the “root” of many jokes… pun intended.

Mrs. Mullee instituted “Mullee Money” in second grade, and  I was so sad to leave her class and know that I could no longer save up to upgrade my third- and fourth-grade desks. How the Grinch Stole Christmas came out while we were in her class, and we spent a lot of time on the website finding our “Who names” and doing other fun activities. I remember Laptop Day in fifth grade, Mrs. Petrie’s Name the Month Contest, Mr. Van Nuys’s geography game, and Mrs. Menter’s M&M’s.

I was so scared to go to Middle School in sixth grade because it seemed so big and I was afraid of getting lost. I had also heard plenty about Señorita Carrillo from the older kids, as well as about the tendency of eighth graders to push sixth graders down the stairs. I never ran into any trouble on the stairs, though, and Señorita came to be one of my favorite teachers. I even went to Peru on her trip along with several classmates. I also remember hating the dances, failing a test for the first time, and attempting to act in our eighth-grade rendition of High School Musical, but teachers including – but not limited to– Mr. Gilmore, Señorita, and Bendgey (Mrs. Corwin) made Middle School survivable.

I never expected things to change so radically when I entered high school. During freshman year, I felt more a part of the school than I ever had before. It felt as if life had really started, and not just because the pressure was finally on for grades and extracurricular activities or because I suddenly amassed a huge number of school T-shirts. I don’t even feel as if I can talk about “high school memories” yet, because the experience here is so dynamic and ongoing.

Believe it or not, I don’t wake up every morning and think about being a lifer. CCDS has just been a part of my routine for so long that I don’t think about it. I don’t know what it’s like to be the new kid. I don’t know what it’s like to go to a school where the students aren’t trusted with teachers’ keys or where you have to worry about things being stolen. Considering this, I wouldn’t say I’m really missing out on anything. And more than that, it’s really been a great place for me, although I don’t have anything to compare it to. Is lifer even a real word? What is the qualifying age for a CCDS lifer? Are there any perks besides getting to walk up to the front of the crowd at convocation? If not, I think there should be.

Photo courtesy of Lilly Fleischmann.