At Northfield Mount Hermon, Chores Are Graded on Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm. I want to stress that. The school does not just require the chore. It grades the attitude.

Our house has always run on the opposite system, in which the chore gets done eventually, and the attitude is delivered alongside it, free of charge, so everyone understands how unreasonable it was to ask.

The school admits that some students grumble at first. It then quotes a recent graduate, reflecting on the world after NMH: "Eight am workjob? Yeah, that's what that was for."

In a summer 2026 profile, the school asked Tabatha Collins, an alumna who has taught physics there for 25 years, for her favorite NMH tradition. "Workjob," she said. "I cleaned toilets in Cutler and still talk about it at reunions."

Other people's reunion stories involve a sunset or a championship. Hers involves Cutler's plumbing, and she named it first.

Not everything at NMH is work. A student, in a reflection on the school's site, wrote about what she and her friends call marination dinners, Wednesday or Sunday nights in the dining hall from 5 until it closes at 7:30. She was also devoted to the panini maker, and a panini-pressed peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which she described as life-changing.

So: three hours of work, two and a half hours of dinner. That sounds about right to me.

I tried grading on enthusiasm at home. The middle one asked to see the rubric. The eldest emptied the dishwasher while humming, loudly, and asked if that counted. The youngest, assigned the dog's water bowl, filled it with great joy and most of the kitchen floor. She got an A. The floor got a towel.

My wife says the real test is the reunion. In thirty years, will anyone in this family talk fondly about the dishwasher? I asked the eldest. She said she will talk about it. She did not say fondly.