Editor's Note: Montrose 10th grader Maevis Fahey, president of our Soldier Support Club, offers this reflection about the Veterans Day holiday.

When you hear the words “day off,” the first things that come to mind are probably relief, sleep, and time to push off all of your usual Monday morning obligations. A day off is a perfect time to take a break from any stress you may have and relax.

But this Monday is not one of those days. School is cancelled this Monday because yesterday was November 11, 2018. This marks one hundred years since the end of World War I. Every year since, the United States has recognized November 11 as a day of gratitude for all American veterans.

My siblings have been telling Grandma Bohlin stories since I was a child. “Did you know she drove from New Jersey to Boston to see Grandpa in his Drum Corps Performance?” one story began. “When she hit Commonwealth Avenue, she followed the trolley tracks underground right into the station!”

Grandma Bohlin was a youthful 62 when she died of a heart attack. I never had a chance to meet her, yet I have heard so much about the days surrounding her passing that I feel like I was there.

Editor's Note: Associate Head of School Katie Elrod is the force behind Senior Capstone -- a dual-credit class that serves as a culmination of a student's Montrose experience. Seniors choose a pressing contemporary issue, analyze it from a philosophical, theological, and historical perspective, develop a 15-page paper, and offer a formal presentation that identifies potential solutions. In this post, Ms. Elrod shares more about what makes this program distinctive.

Editor's note: In spring of 2018, Nobel-Prize winning physicist Dr. Rainer Weiss visited Montrose and spoke to students. Senior Anneka Ignatius '18 introduced him, highlighting the intellectual virtues that propelled his success. Here is a copy of her remarks.

To complete the work of Albert Einstein demands tenacity and patience. Dr. Rainer Weiss possesses plenty of both.

In Capstone class, the seniors first learned of Dr. Weiss as an example of a modern-day individual who embraces theoria, or knowing for the sake of knowing. 

Co-recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics and Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr. Weiss led a team that detected gravitational waves for the first time. Associate Head of School, Mrs. Elrod, invited Dr. Weiss to speak this year because he exemplifies the Aristotelian desire to know.

In our beautiful, diverse, and often tumultuous world, there is remarkable consensus about the strengths of character we admire in others and strive to develop in ourselves.

• We value habits of mind that allow us to pursue professional and academic excellence -- including tenacity, thoroughness, creativity, and intellectual honesty and humility.
• We embrace habits of heart that strengthen our friendships, family relationships, and communities  -- including empathy, compassion, respect, and gratitude.
• And we honor habits of character that allow us to face challenges and embrace opportunities -- including courage, temperance, responsibility, and integrity.

So how do we develop these strengths?

Resilience increases our capacity to thrive in any situation; resilient people keep challenges and setbacks in perspective, have strategies for navigating difficult emotions, and have the strength to bounce back and take another step forward. According to research out of Harvard's Center for the Developing Child, "The single most common factor for children who develop resilience is at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult."  Within this context of support, here are a few ways adults can help kids and teens develop resilience. 

Modern life is often typified by bursting schedules, meals on the fly, and never-ending alerts, emails, and texts on our phones. Yet if we simply do and do and do without pausing to reflect, we can find ourselves stuck on a hamster wheel. Reflection is essential to self-knowledge, and self-knowledge can propel us toward self-improvement -- toward making choices that align with who we want to be.

As the students streamed through the doors on the first day of school, filling the corridors with their laughter and conversation, my heart felt full. At Montrose, we spent the summer building, painting, and transforming classrooms and offices into more purposeful spaces and places for our girls. We also engaged in deep full-faculty conversation about why we do what we do and ways we can amplify our efforts to make a difference in the life of each young woman here.

What is dignity? Dignity is each person’s inherent worth. Recognizing the dignity of others isn’t always easy, particularly when we feel like another person is not treating us in the same manner. 

But as Victor Frankl writes, our ultimate freedom “is the ability to choose our attitude in a given set of circumstances.” Seeing the dignity in others -- and treating them accordingly -- is a choice we all have to make again and again.

In his TED Talk “Want to be Happy? Be Grateful,” Benedictine scholar and monk Brother David Steindl-Rast says that “it’s not that happy people are grateful, but rather that grateful people are happy.” Modern social science research bears this out: expressing gratitude increases our feelings of joy and well-being. According to a review of gratitude research in a Harvard Health letter, “gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.