“What’s up bud how” [faucet water flowing] “was your day...goo” [electric toothbrush buzzing] I hear people showering and talking in the bathroom. But I am sitting here in my room with my history reading. How are they getting ready to sleep? They must have easy teachers.

Lunar New Year is celebrated across the world and falls this year on Feb. 17. Traditionally, the holiday originates from East Asia, but with Exonians from all over the world who celebrate, the Academy came together these past few weeks to prepare meals, host events, and arrange decorations for a holiday full of community and prosperity.

Under the natatorium lights, the pool looks almost too calm, a flat sheet of blue broken only by ripples from the last heat. Swimmers settle onto the blocks; the whistle snaps, and the calm water shatters into spray. On Thursday, Feb. 12, Big Red’s varsity swimming and diving team made the 10-hour journey to Lancaster, Pa., where they spent the next four days competing at the 2026 Eastern Interscholastic Swimming & Diving Championships. The contest, held annually at the Kunkel Aquatic Center at Franklin & Marshall College, is, for many preparatory schools and clubs, the principal event in the competitive season. Faced off against the region’s most talented swimmers and divers, Easterns, as it is colloquially called, is unlike any other meet.

It was 1:53 a.m. My lights were off, but my screen was still bright. Just one more video. My finger kept scrolling on the screen. My eyes were sore, eyelids heavy, but my brain didn’t want to stop. You might call me another screenager in the era of the internet, and I was addicted to the phone itself. But looking back, I discovered that I scroll for the same reason I race from block to block all day. If I keep my attention moving, my brain never has to land anywhere long enough to feel what it’s actually facing.

There isn’t much standing around in Bob Lietz’s practice. As the Exeter boys’ JV basketball head coach, Lietz makes sure players stay in motion on the court, competing through drills that prevent unforced errors like careless passes. According to Lietz, the quickest way to improve in a sport is to play through it.

I’ve known ever since I got here that I was different from all of these other people. They come from all over the world, and they’re such a talented bunch. Then, one day, I realized I’m not the problem. How can I “be the problem”? Then it came to me: I’ve been brainwashed!

Every February, the College Counseling Office hosts College Admissions Weekend for upper parents to learn about the application process. Exonians spend more than 12 months in their upper and senior years preparing their college application profiles, taking standardized tests, writing personal statements, requesting letters of recommendation, and compiling a list of extracurricular activities.

On Feb. 6, 2026, upper Ari Benenson was elected Student Council President for the 2026-2027 academic year. His victory followed weeks of campaigning and two public appearances, the last of which took place in the presidential debate on Friday. Benenson’s administration will commence by the time students return to campus in the spring, where he will be accompanied by Vice President and upper Oluj Okeremi as well as Co-Secretaries Richard Byun and Faye Yang, both of whom are lowers.

Lunar New Year is around the corner, but the sense of familiarity is drifting away from our hearts. Our world is missing that stroke of “red”: the red couplets, red lanterns, red packaging, red clothing, and red fireworks. While our families drift from house to house, trading gifts and red envelopes, we spend the night on the other side of the world, studying for tests, buried under reading and practice problems.

In Exeter, Shaw’s Aisle seven hides my favorite place in town. It’s where I can find Lao Gan Ma, bubble tea, and hot pot soup base. My fading identity, among the dining hall macaroni and cheese and burgers, is being revitalized through the expanding Chinese food industry in America.

The snow day we’d been dreaming about for nine years finally arrived — and ended just as fast. There’s still a foot of snow on the meadows and slush on the paths, but everyone’s back in class, pretending we didn’t just spend 24 hours living in a different universe.

On Saturday, Jan. 17, Big Red boys varsity hockey opened its winter E/A slate with a statement win, defeating Andover 4–1 at the Exeter Rink. “I could definitely feel a different level of excitement and a different level of focus from the players,” Sean O’Brien, head coach of boys varsity hockey, said.

On Jan. 18, Exeter Math Club hosted the annual Exeter Math Club Competition, spreading the contest across Elizabeth Phillips Academy Center and the Hahn Center. 118 contestants comprising more than 30 teams, ranging from second graders to middle school students, traveled from across the New England area and beyond to Exeter for a day of math challenges and fun problem solving.

With a 9-2 record so far, Exeter’s wrestling team, under the leadership of captains Zain Reza and Konrad Kutt, has opened the season strongly, emphasizing resilience, skill development, and team culture.

On Saturday, Jan. 17, a heavy storm hit New Hampshire, coating campus with inches of snow. However, by the time the Academy woke up the next day, the paths were cleared and all buildings accessible. This isn’t an isolated experience — each time it snows, the walkways are passable by the next day. Behind the scenes of our Academy’s functioning is a unit of hardworking superhumans.

If we can rewrite a single typo in DNA to stop suffering, what limits should come with holding that power? Carbamoyl Phosphate Synthetase I (CPS I) is a genetic disorder that disables one’s body’s ability to process protein waste.

Retro synths and dreamy vocals filled Phillips Church as “Blue Hair” by TV Girl played through the speakers, settling over the room just before senior JP Eskandar stepped on the podium.

“Class dismissed.” A thought flashes: Which dining hall should I go to?

On Dec. 6th, Exeter hosted the Phillips Exeter Academy NH First Tech Challenge (FTC) Scrimmage in Grainger. 23 teams from all over New Hampshire competed in the scrimmage. The event was different from an FTC qualification competition to the state competition. “You can just have fun.” said upper Han Yan, member of the Exeter Robotics Club and volunteer at the scrimmage.

The clock rings. It’s 7 a.m. It’s time to zip up my quarter-zip. It only takes a few seconds to put on, but keeping it on all day requires effort, strength, humility, and charisma.

For Coach McBrearty, basketball has always been more than just a sport. From growing up around the game, having a Division I player and coach as her father, to spending more than a decade and a half coaching at the elite collegiate level, basketball has not only shaped her career, but also her mindset, values, and purpose.

On Saturday, Jan. 10, after Casino Night, you head to Grill, craving a refreshing soda to tingle the tips of your tongue. Yet, upon entering EPAC, you wonder why it’s so quiet. You turn around and see the lights turned off in Grill. There now stand rolling shutters now separating you from the soda that you wanted so badly. For the foreseeable future, Grill is closed on the weekends. Scott Jeffco, manager of Grill, shared that “staffing and staff retention have been ongoing challenges for several years.” Besides Grill, the two dining halls are also facing staffing issues. In order to prioritize everyday meals and nutrition sources for students in the two dining halls, concessions had to be made. According to a Grill staff member, Grill needs 10 employees in order to operate all week. However, only eight employees currently work in Grill. With staff already working eight-hour shifts, covering additional weekend hours has become difficult.

When we opened the map app for directions on our phones, they were difficult because these apps originally regurgitated blurry images of our destination. Now we can see our destinations in sharp detail: colorful gardens and newly renovated buildings. There is no mistaking where we are headed now. This innovation, AlphaEarth Foundations, is Google’s artificial intelligence research laboratory, created by Google DeepMind.

When we opened the map app for directions on our phones, they were difficult because these apps originally regurgitated blurry images of our destination. Now we can see our destinations in sharp detail: colorful gardens and newly renovated buildings. There is no mistaking where we are headed now. This innovation, AlphaEarth Foundations, is Google’s artificial intelligence research laboratory, created by Google DeepMind. The project originated in July 2025 as part of the Google Earth AI initiative. According to Google DeepMind, the project “accurately and efficiently characterizes the planet’s entire terrestrial land and coastal waters by integrating huge amounts of Earth observation data into a unified digital representation, or ‘embedding,’ that computer systems can easily process.”

On Nov. 8, the Academy hosted the Exeter-Andover games, a longstanding rivalry that dates back to 1861, a tradition that many students, faculty, and alumni look forward to each year. Weeks before the games, athletes, coaches, and administrators worked hard to ensure that the games would run smoothly and that the athletes would perform best.

When Dylan Richardson came to Exeter as a lower, he decided to run for vice president of the Student Council. And after an emphatic speech, describing both the lofty ideals and policies that he had planned for the Student Council, citing his prior experiences in leadership in his previous school, he decided to resort to “bribery.” Sinking his hand into his pocket, he threw fistfuls of candy into the crowd, amid a torrent of applause and cheers. And with a beam that could light up the Assembly Hall by itself, he shouted over and over, “Vote for me, and you won’t regret it!”

As a tradition that dates back over 2000 years, Halloween has found its way into Exeter’s culture as one of the most exciting events of the year. When fall term comes to an end, students have a chance to enjoy the cool mid-autumn weather. They dress up as their favorite characters, twinning with friends, and trick-or-treating around town.

It was a fateful day. A day of reckoning. It was a sunny morning on Oct. 20 when I woke up to do some morning work. I opened Canvas, and the loading screen appeared, and continued to just circle and circle.

As students began to trail into lunch at the Hahn Center or dinner at Elm Dining Hall on Halloween, they immediately took notice of the dim lights, spooky decorations, and themed food options. As spooky music played in the background, students filed into the lines to pick up some Halloween-themed lunch or dinner items.

A post of two drinks on a café table. A sweatshirt sleeve in a mirror selfie. A shared BeReal with someone cropped halfway out… It’s not quite a secret, not quite an announcement, but a “soft launch.” This is how our generation goes public. We reveal affection through angles and hints, carefully edited for public consumption. Our relationships are increasingly shaped by how they will be perceived online rather than by private feelings. The performance becomes the relationship itself, and we start to confuse perception with connection. Then, is it really necessary to “launch” at all?

Listen. We play Clash of Clans. By the transitive property, that basically means we can design the optimal base, actually a town. This will be an Exeter-centric layout. First: a real boba tea shop in town. Not saying that The Juicery or Me & Ollies don’t deserve their place — but we students do need a boba shop.

On Oct 18, the DJ club brought their first-ever DJ night to the Round Room of the Music Building. Seniors and co-heads Nico Fernandez, Avery Im, and Kateryna Horeva made the party possible by the invitation of Upper Marco Andres Rodriguez. Rodriguez was working on a project to get more clubs involved in student activities. “Because we love teaching people and showing people what we can do as DJ Club co-heads, we saw this opportunity and we were thrilled to do it,” Fernandez shared.

But the Rubik’s Cube did not find a home at Exeter until Brandon Lu ‘17 established the Speed Cubing Club in 2015. Wishing to share his love of the multicolored enigma, Lu took a step further than intra-club meetings and organized the first Phillips Exeter Cube Day, a Rubik’s Cube-centered tournament that was sanctioned by the World Cube Association (WCA), the official governing body of cubing competitions across the globe. The competition appeared well on its way to becoming a tradition, happening once more in 2016, but after Lu’s graduation, the time and effort hosting such an event demanded meant it wasn’t carried through into successive years.

I opened my camera roll from 2021 to find photos of a cake shop next to my house — one that has long since closed. Next up is a photo of me and my classmates on a roller coaster at a local theme park. After that, screenshots of the SSAT and TOEFL scores that became my ticket to the life I am now living. It feels like I am scrolling through another lifetime, one that I can never return to. It’s a bittersweet feeling — that nostalgic mix of happiness and sadness at knowing, for better or worse, that we will never pass that way again. But when nostalgia kicks in and leaves us longing for something that is no longer, how do we find the way back up?

After nearly three years without a victory, Exeter’s junior varsity football team finally broke through. On Oct. 8, the Exeter JV football team received a well-deserved win after 1,064 days of tough losses. After the scoreboard settled at 40-6, the team erupted in celebration at the Pingree School. “We followed the instructions of the coaches—we also had high energy, and we wanted to win,” shared prep Barry Hang, defensive lineman on the team.

In the movies, we often see characters with superpowers walking straight through walls and objects, and this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics brings us closer. We now have a better understanding of how matter can pass through barriers. John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis were awarded the prize “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit” (nobelprize.org). In simple terms, they proved that mechanical tunneling — the phenomenon of the passing of particles through walls at the quantum scale — can happen on a scale that humans can hold in our hands.

It’s a typical scene at Exeter: four coffees deep, well into the early hours of the morning, working on a paper due at eight. That, and resigning oneself to giving SparkNotes a quick skim half an hour before class. Our Academy is renowned for the lightning-fast pace of its courses, so it’s hard to fault students for cutting corners here and there. But, in surviving the intensity of the school’s English curriculum, the heart of its intended effect can be lost.

Dean Camilus's podcast, Identity-n-Me focuses on one's indentiy and their expriences that come along with that idenity. In the past he has interviewed teachers and students as well as people outside of the Exeter community.

“It’s okay, you will get it next time.” When it comes from a classmate, it feels totally natural. But when it comes from the father who has been pushing you to succeed, it might feel like the world is leaving you behind, and you are free to do anything. The big pressure difference on the shoulder divides people and breaks people down.

Sure, you could study…or you could just airball it on test day and tell colleges your real test was surviving Exeter.

For over seven years, Principal William K. Rawson ’71, P’08 has provided steady leadership that defined life at Phillips Exeter Academy. He constructed the pillars of the community with a focus on belonging, integrity, and unwavering dedication to non sibi in times when the Academy was learning how to heal and rebuild trust.

When I get to class five minutes early, I end up feeling guilty if I spend them talking to a friend instead of reviewing for my next quiz.

After four weeks, over 100 student clubs on campus have settled in and met several times. However, there has been a lot of confusion for both club co-heads and members to sign up for and organize clubs through the Blackbaud software.

Leadership on the boys’ varsity water polo team comes in two very different forms. Senior Jack Cassidy is the steady, disciplined captain who believes success comes from the smallest details—showing up early and practicing extra. His co-captain, senior Andrew Gao, couldn’t be more different: “I like water polo mostly because I like physicality and hitting people.”

On Sept. 13, new Exonians packed Love Gym, perusing Exeter’s many clubs while returning co-heads introduced their clubs. Piles of candy and trophies covered club booths. The gym echoed with tunes from Exeter Association of Rock and even bagpipes. Our fellow Exonians reflected on this day, full of new opportunities and interests, embedding first club meetings in their schedules.