Not as Easy as You Might Think

Being a faculty or staff kid at Mercersburg Academy is really no different from being any of the other day students here. Besides the perks of getting to see your parent(s) at work everyday, there's a lot more to being in the Mercersburg family before you're a student. All my life I have been immersed in the Mercersburg community, with my mom having worked here for 27 years. I have been to various events, met with so many faculty and staff members, and have even had a job shredding paper in Traylor Hall when former Associate Head of School Debbie Rutherford retired. In a way, I came into Mercersburg with more relationships with faculty members than I did with students.

But even having been in the community for so long as a staff student, I am still just a day student. I think some people need to realize that just because we are faculty or staff students we really don’t get anything different from an ordinary day student. Like other day students, we are in a school that has primarily boarders, and yet we are held to the same expectations as the boarders. I have no problem with that, but it wears on you when you have to be here by 8:00 a.m. every day because your mom has work. Yes, this means no sleep-ins for those morning frees. I think this also highlights a difference among faculty and staff students. For faculty and staff students who live on campus, they are very much able to access everything from SAC events on weekends to help centers during the week, and to hang out with friends when they want.

For me, I live 15 minutes from campus and it’s really hard for me to say that I am going to be on campus for a help session till 9:30 because we live farther away and both of my parents work full time jobs. It's hard to say, “Hey, I know we’re having a picnic, but my friends want to hang out and I don’t want to miss out.” In reality you do miss out, and that is something you have to come to terms with when you are a day student. That’s not even to mention faculty and staff students who live 30 to 45 minutes away.

There is a difference between faculty and staff students that can be quite impactful. There just isn’t enough understanding of day students in general at Mercersburg. You’re here from 8:50 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m. on most weeknights and sometimes 10:30 p.m on the weekends. It is exhausting to constantly run back and forth five or six days out of the week, and on top of it all we still have to go to weekend games, do homework, and balance our lives at home. It is extremely hard and I think when you see a faculty or staff kid or even another day student, don’t ever think they have it easy or better because their mom or dad works here or they get to go home.