Five Former Students, Where They Are and How They Got There
“I feel Sudbury Valley does give people some self-confidence, but that's not exactly what I mean. I don't mean that you feel like you can do anything. What I feel is that I can cope with failing or succeeding at doing anything that I'm interested in trying to do. It's self-confidence in the sense that one's not really afraid to try things that seem hard. I wasn't afraid to get married to somebody when I was twenty because I was sure that this was the right thing to do at the time. Looking back at it, it was not such an unreasonable decision, although lots of people would say that's a young age. But the point is not whether it was the right decision or not – it did end up being the right decision. The point is that I had this idea that this seems like a good thing to do and if it's not then I can probably cope with it and if it is, then it will have been a good thing to do.
“I wasn't afraid to try to get a Ph.D. in Mathematics, which is a hard thing to do and something that I had no idea if I could do or not. I just thought, ‘Well, if this works out it will probably be fun. If it doesn't work out, then I'll do something else.’ So this is one way that I think Sudbury Valley's been really important for me.”
This retrospective celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Sudbury Valley School. The evening consisted of presentations by five alumni who described how Sudbury Valley affects who you are.
