School portraits / A student’s recollection · 2016
The Headmaster's Wife Asked About the Missing Pencil Case
In 2016 a Groton student lost her favorite pencil case and emailed her whole grade. The next day, at the headmaster's house, someone remembered to ask. It was in her backpack.
In November 2016, on the College Confidential forum, a prospective student asked about Groton School in Massachusetts. A current student answered with a story. "We call ourselves a family," she wrote, "and lest you brush it off as cliche, hear this."
A couple of weeks earlier she had lost her pencil case, the one with her favorite pens in it, and was so upset that she sent an email to the other students. The next day she was at the headmaster's house for Parlor, and the headmaster's wife, who is also an English teacher, asked if she had found it.
There are two kinds of being known at school. One involves prizes. The other involves someone remembering your pencil case.
Parlor is a Groton institution. On Thursday evenings, according to the school, students go to the headmaster's house for snacks, board games and ping-pong. Younger grades rotate. Seniors come every week.
The headmaster's house sounds formal. The ping-pong is what makes it work. It is hard to be nervous in a house where a small white ball is loose.
As for the pencil case: "I eventually found it at the bottom of my backpack. Go figure."
Go figure. Every parent who has ever turned the house upside down for a missing object knows exactly where this was going. The bottom of the backpack is the one place everyone has checked, and nobody has checked.
Her least favorite thing about Groton, she added, was waking up for 8:00 Saturday classes. But you get used to it.
Last month the eldest lost her good calculator. She texted the family group chat. She texted her friends' group chat. She asked her teacher. The middle one offered a reward of three dollars, which he expected to be repaid. I emptied the car.
Two days later the youngest, who had not been asked, walked into the kitchen holding the calculator. It had been at the bottom of the eldest's backpack. The youngest has collected the three dollars and now asks, every morning, whether anybody has lost anything.
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.
- College Confidential: Questions about Groton, student post 28, November 16, 2016 talk.collegeconfidential.com
- Groton: Student Life, Parlor and dorm check-in groton.org
- Mia ’28: A DAY-in-the-life, October 2, 2025 groton.org