Better Late than Never: Surprise!

Expectations were high on November 1, and students were confident—perhaps overconfident. With the term soon drawing to a close and Spirit Week coming up, they were expecting to see the traditional green jacket, signaling that today was Surprise Holiday.

But the symbolic green did not appear at morning Chapel. A Surprise Holiday announcement often occurs right after the morning service, as students exit the Chapel, but today it did not. Students were told to attend their normal Thursday morning advisory meetings, and a few dutifully did. But a mass of students, determined to welcome a day without classes, gathered in the Schoolhouse's Sackett Forum instead, waiting and waiting, practically demanding an announcement.
 
By 8:40 a.m., five minutes before first period, some were getting nervous, thinking perhaps they should have brought their backpacks to the Schoolhouse; perhaps they should have done their homework. When Academic Dean Kathy Leggat told everyone to head to class, faces were grim. Students analyze calendars every term, trying to predict when Surprise Holiday will be. They’re not always right. Could their calculations have failed them today?
 
Nope! Just as students were finally filing into their classrooms, the senior and house prefects appeared. They were wearing green, and Headmaster Temba Maqubela showed up in the traditional green jacket. “We knew everyone knew it was today, so we decided to bamboozle them in a way,” said senior prefect Kochoe Nikoi ’19. The goal: to keep the morning to as normal a routine as possible for as long as possible—”so people would freak out.”
 
Exuberant and relieved, students headed to Boston, Cambridge, or a nearby mall for the day, or simply decided to hang out on the quieter-than-usual Groton Circle. Happy Surprise Holiday!
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