Our Wildwood, Summer 2016, Volume 39

VANESSA MILES Was there a time at Wildwood when you learned to dig deep and develop your own sense of grit?

Miles Guggenheim, attending Brown University Vanessa Mancinelli, humanities teacher

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When I was in 9th grade, I heard chemistry was going to be challenging. I’ve never been very good at math, and chemistry was always looming over me. But I think developing grit in those classes has helped me. Being able to bite the bullet is just a skill that you have to learn. And once you learn it—and you learn it in the most unpleasant ways—you can apply it to parts of your life that you really are passionate about. Do you think teachers and adults misinterpret grit? Sometimes I hear people talk about grit as, “I suffered so you have to, as well.” I know kids who’ve never been pushed in their life and they’ve always backed away from this, and it’s just a very unhealthy thing. That’s why I see more value in finding what the kid’s passionate about and then making him or her work even harder at that. I think that’s more valuable. If you’re taking a class that you don’t want to take just to develop grit, then you get a weird kind of dynamic where you feel you’re being punished rather than pushed. You don’t develop grit through torture, breaking at the wheel. M

What Habit do you use most at Wildwood, and what do you think will be most useful in college?

Connection is my favorite Habit. I like it because anything we create, we don’t create it from air; we create it from connection. Connection is really the beginning of any academic piece of work—it’s being able to connect ideas, being able to answer questions. Connection is really the root of creativity and building something important. You don’t make anything by yourself. You make something by connecting other things together.

Describe a time when you were surprised to discover a new passion or interest at Wildwood.

I wanted to try theater at one point. I like acting, but I never indulged myself with it because I never thought acting was creative. I always thought acting was almost like reading sheet music. Now, after going through that experience, playing a scene from Hamlet for Hamlet Night , I can disagree with that. I think in acting, in a way, you’re also writing. Without you, Hamlet the play doesn’t happen. It’s not worth anything. As an actor, you have to analyze the work—especially acting in a Shakespearean way. You can’t just recite it. You have to ask, “What am I saying here? Where is the emotion behind that?”

What would surprise me as your teacher? What don’t I know about you?

I have to get to some pretty obscure stuff because Wildwood’s very good at having this teacher-student relationship. So … I love bird watching.

Do you? Are you serious?

Yeah, I have manuals. I have binoculars.

That is amazing. I’m so glad that’s the thing you told me. WW