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The People You Meet Here--Guests at Thacher

by Chris :: Tuesday February 7, 2006

Recently, the Thacher School added a brand new theater to its campus. By far one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, it holds just enough people that the majority of the student body and their parents can enjoy a show. The building itself also contains practice rooms, dance studios, and several other rooms.

It seemed like it took them forever to build the enormous building, but it was well worth the wait. The theater’s dramatic opening performance was a one-woman show on eating disorders. The exciting story of three women was most definitely worthy of our theater’s opening performance. After the show the students were able to ask the actress and a panel of four or five professionals, who in some way or another worked with people who had eating disorders. Although I personally wasn’t extremely thrilled by the new knowledge I had gained, I was happy that I the opportunity was provided for me.

Thacher does a good job of bringing in interesting, important people who have something interesting to offer the students here, whether it’s through their occupations or their tories. The other day someone who was one of the producers for the cartoon King of the Hill came by after formal dinner and showed a few students what his job entailed and how the overall process of making a show worked, and at the end we got to see an unreleased episode of the series. About three weeks ago a man came with his wife who had immigrated from Tibet to U.S., and told us his story about his struggles in Tibet, the hard trip to America and about their life in Ojai. There are other people who I wanted to see that I couldn’t because of prior obligations—an alum who had become a correspondent and photographer for TIME Magazine in Iraq who shared with us some of his stories of war time.

I didn’t know it when I was applying, but if I did, a great reason to come to this school is to hear what our guests have to say. The speakers that the School invites here are some of the most interesting people I have ever met. For Black History month, for example, a woman whose husband was a college classmate of Dr. Martin Luther King spoke to us about King’s life. One of her sons is the vice president of some company I can’t remember and her other son is the executive producer of Black Entertainment Television. All these people (including a man named Richard Ryan, a respected drug educator from Colorado and one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met) are some of the most interesting figures that any high school could have speak at their school. For the opportunity to listen to these people alone, I would come to this school!

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