School portraits / Senior year, one Hancock weekend · 2025
The Grapefruit Defense, as Filed by a Commonwealth Senior
A Boston senior's friends call him pretentious for liking coffee. He has a counterargument about spoons. Then the whole school goes to camp and the students cook.
In October 2025, Commonwealth School in Boston ran one of its interviews with a student, a senior who says the trick is to "get better at laughing at yourself when you struggle." Asked what surprises people about him, he told a story about grapefruit.
His friends, he said, "call me pretentious all the time, because I like coffee and stuff." He recently mentioned that he doesn't eat grapefruit with a spoon. He cuts it and eats it like an orange. So who, he asked them, is the fancy one? The people with the grapefruit spoon. They were surprised.
It is the best defense against a charge of pretension I have ever heard, because it is itself slightly pretentious. I have owned a serrated grapefruit spoon since 2003. I have never felt so seen.
Commonwealth takes the whole school, twice a year, to a lakeside camp for a long weekend the school calls Hancock. Students plan the meals in advance in teams of cooks, seniors gather the music for two evening dances, and others organize the cleanup squads and a talent show. The school promises that a classmate may turn out to be good company while chopping a mountain of onions.
The family instructions for fall 2026 list arrival times for the bus morning. Day heads and bus loaders at 7:30. Food Czars at 7:45. Everyone else at 8. The first meal at camp is dinner, so pack a hearty lunch. The camp sits high in New Hampshire and gets cold at night: bring a very warm sleeping bag, or two. Cell reception is poor, and parents are asked to resist the temptation to text or call unless absolutely necessary.
Unless absolutely necessary. I would have lasted until about Saturday lunch.
The senior lists chaotic Hancock meal prep among the challenges he enjoys.
At our house I made the mistake of telling this story at breakfast. The eldest looked at my grapefruit, and my spoon, and said nothing, which was worse. The middle one cut his grapefruit into quarters and ate it like an orange, with juice to the elbow, staring at me the whole time.
The youngest asked if she could be a Food Czar. I said she would have to plan a meal for the whole family. She planned grapefruit. She served it with spoons.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Meet Commonwealth Students: Jake ’26, Seriously Unserious commschool.org
- Hancock information for students and families commschool.org
- Commonwealth: Hancock commschool.org