By Heng "Brandon" Liu '25 and Lorenzo Santos '25, President and Vice President of The Student Government Association
As we open one last document with our Tower Hill Google accounts, we can’t help but feel a sense of closure. It’s been a while since we’ve written—the last time being a Weathervane article on June 6. At the time of polishing this piece, graduation was a month ago, but it feels as though an eternity has passed. The emptiness of this document, now populated with Times New Roman text, stares back patiently as we type, delete and retype the words that we’ve come to befriend throughout the past four years on this white-gray-blue canvas of Google Docs. In a kind of serendipitous way, writing this piece reminds us of our last Tower Term—“Nurtured by Nature”—walking barefoot through a still creek and stirring up sediments across the waterbed. We had no particular goal in our waddling, but the dancing swirl of sand and tiny rocks beneath the waterline could serve as a fitting metaphor for the pool of memories we intend to stir up now.
HENG BRANDON LIU ’25
I came to Tower Hill as a freshman, having been convinced by my best friend, Lorenzo Santos ’25, that its academic rigor would please my parents very much. I eventually moved to an apartment seven minutes away from the school, so there wasn’t much decision on my part in enrollment. Lorenzo would be right about the school’s academic rigor, as English that year saw me clocking over an hour spent on each night’s reading. In class, I stuttered over my ideas, despised myself for not thinking fast enough during discussions and hated the idea of workshopping essays. Regardless, freshman year seems like a blur now.
One thing is for certain: I graduated having triumphed over my fear of writing with the help of my Tower Hill teachers. I might even dare to say I have a passion for writing now. Not only is it a way of documenting, I learned it’s also a way of preserving. It requires an active and purposeful kind of observation. What precisely about a horror movie scares me? What do the clouds look like today? Where, from my childhood, have I felt this fluttering feeling in my stomach? These are all questions that prompt imagination or investigation. Writing your gut-instinct answers down (or whatever may come after a few hours of thought), allows you to preserve a part of you from a specific moment so you may revisit it later for meditation, revision or even a good laugh. What about the dreaded analytical essays? I hate to admit it, but they’re also a healthy exercise of careful observation. As students, we write all these essays without fully realizing we are, oftentimes, attempting to empathize with an author. Each passage is a possibility of connection across time, borders and identity. This empathy and skill of analysis surprisingly translated into a crucial part of my leadership as Student Government Association President, whether in advocating for the student body or following up after a senior speech.
LORENZO SANTOS ’25
Writing this portion of this piece more than a month into summer break now, it feels as though ages have passed since those early June days exploring the wildlife during our Tower Term. Directly out of graduation, emotions ran high and floods of memories crashed against our minds and hearts with high frequency and intensity. But now sitting here at my kitchen table, I find my mind calmer and clearer.
As I predicted for Brandon and me before arriving at Tower Hill, these past four years have been full of challenges that have shaped who we are today. With such a wide range of interests and personalities represented in our community, every student encountered opportunities to stretch themselves and grow. Some rose to meet the demands of the school’s rigorous academics, others discovered new skills through the sports requirement, and many explored the wide array of clubs and activities that Tower Hill encourages. In this way, the school’s motto, Multa Bene Facta—Many Things Done Well—proved to be an inspiring call to embrace all that Tower Hill has to offer.
But in a seemingly contradictory way, I have found that every one of my peers has risen out of this strenuous environment, having grown more than would have ever been possible without it. Alongside each difficulty that rose to block our way forward, I always found myself surrounded by teachers, family, friends and advisors who worked tirelessly alongside me to push me further up to the peak of my potential. No matter the difficulty, the ceaselessly collaborative environment helped bulldoze any obstacles between us and our goals. And it is with that learned resilience that I was able to continue pursuing my dream of becoming SGA Vice President.
Tower Hill changed us, not only as students, but as people. We learned not just to face failure, but to embrace it. Every difficult topic and impossible task only sent us catapulting further and further toward our dreams. Certainly, not every day could be like our Tower Term, wandering aimlessly and joyfully through nature, but it was those stormier times that made the clear days even more beautiful and carefree.
