Education
Moravia High School
I graduated from Moravia High School fourth in my class… of twenty-eight. I was active in a lot of extracurriculars: Student Council (president for two years), Brain Bowl/Quiz Bowl (team captain), FCCLA/FHA (state convention delegate in 2001), and choir and show choir (roadie).
Years ago I posted about where I actually spent my time in high school (hint: very little of it in class). Because of my activities, I got out of class pretty often to do things like fill the soda machines, set up and tear down Student Council events like homecoming and dances, work with the PCIT team to install and fix district computers, travel to Brain Bowl meets, and visit another local school for a health class I was taking over the Iowa Communications Network. And even though I didn’t spend as much time in class as the State of Iowa would have liked, I finished with a good GPA and a diverse set of skills that helped shape me into who I am today.
People like to knock small schools. But with more than two decades between high school and today, I feel lucky to have gone to one. It gave me the kind of close community that, as a kid, you can’t wait to escape. It’s only now that I realize how much of a family my little school really was.
The other benefit of a small school is the chance to try more things. The multi-sport athlete is all but gone at big schools. At a small school, you’re likely to play the same guys on the gridiron as you do on the court and on the diamond. You think Dowling and Valley have a rivalry? You should have seen our grudge matches with Moulton-Udell, game after game, sport after sport. And as you can tell from my activities above, I also got to try the arts, clubs, government, and technology. At a small school, there’s almost always room for you.
I’m grateful for my high school experience, and for who I am because of it.
In a small town, you have maybe 30 kids in your class, and they’re the same kids from preschool through graduation. Each year is new and different, but it builds right on top of the last. By the end, those 30 others are as close as brothers and sisters. Strong relationships come from shared experiences, and with these people you have nearly every day for 15 years to build them. You share their excitement when they catch their first fish on 5th Grade Fun Day. You cry with them when they lose a mom, dad, brother, or sister. And you help them celebrate when they beat brain cancer into remission, or recover from a tractor accident that should have killed them.
Small towns and small schools are really just big families.
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