8:00 a.m. classes aren’t easy. They’re especially difficult in the middle of the winter, when your clothes are soaked with snow, dripping on the stairs as you trudge to the fourth floor of Phillips Hall. Yet, as students make their way into one classroom in particular, the smell of freshly baked banana bread wafts through the seams of the door. A warmly lit room welcomes them, the dark wood of the Harkness table cooling the mood. On the other end sits Instructor in Modern Languages Katherine “Kitty” Fair, her familiar face bringing an end to the shivers and fatigue of the morning. This year, Fair has announced her retirement from the Academy, leaving a bittersweet gap in the hearts of Exonians across campus.

Every run in the scorching spring heat, every tackle taken with a surge of adrenaline, every bruise sustained in silence, every huddle under the darkening skies — all of it has led to this moment. To this field, beneath these lights, and with the crowd’s roar reaching a deafening crescendo. The build of tension is thick enough to be tasted. The line is drawn at midfield, the ball perched on the tee. The referee is readying the coin to flip. Players on opposite sides lock eyes beneath the visors of their helmets.

When the lights dim and the spotlight settles over the center, she steps onstage, heels quiet against the polished wood, her black dress simple, austere. There’s a slight fluttering of pages in the wooden benches in front of her, the audience flipping through the pamphlet looking for the young violinist’s name, and the melody she is about to play.

Amidst a spring night behind Hoyt Hall, a circle of girls leaned in around the cackling fire pit, balancing marshmallows on crooked branches, laughing when one caught fire or sagged into the flames.

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