School portraits / Ring Day at Winsor, one spring, junior year
On Ring Day at Winsor, It Is Just a Normal Day
Every spring, Winsor's seniors secretly plan the ceremony where juniors receive their class rings. The juniors know it's coming, dress up anyway, and insist nothing is happening.
At the Winsor School in Boston, a girls' school, juniors choose a class ring at the start of the year: the Winsor Lamp of Learning on top, their initials and class year on the band, in a metal of their choosing. Then they wait for Ring Day, which the seniors plan in secret. Each junior is assigned a senior, who hands her the ring, a poster and some candy.
In 2018 a junior explained one detail in the student paper, the Winsor Banner. Most students have the ring sized for the ring finger of the right hand. This leads, she wrote, to jokes about getting "engaged to Winsor."
In 2023, another junior wrote a reflection for the school. Back in Lower School, she had wondered why everyone was so excited about Ring Day. Even so, she found herself planning her outfit the day before. When she arrived on the day, she was glad she had dressed up, because every junior and senior was in skirts, dresses or nice pants. Anyone could tell it was a special day.
Fifteen minutes before the ceremony, she and her advisory stood by the junior homeroom and joked: "just a normal day at The Winsor School." They were, she wrote, clearly very jittery.
A whole grade in its best clothes, telling each other nothing is happening. This is the oldest joke in adolescence, and it works every time.
Then they walked down to the courtyard and the seniors were waiting with posters. It took her a minute to find hers. The courtyard, she wrote, was filled with joy. And what surprised her most was not the ring but how much she had felt it: the anticipation in the minutes before, and the excitement when it came.
The juniors get to have both, the joke and the feeling. I am not sure the rest of us ever learn how.
The eldest took the test for her learner's permit last year. She came down to breakfast in her good jacket with her hair done and announced it was just a normal day. Her brother looked at her, read the room, and went back to his cereal. She left twenty minutes early.
She passed. She came home and screamed in the driveway, which the neighbors heard. Then she came inside and said, calmly, that it had been a normal day. She has worn the jacket every day since.
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.
- Leslie M. ’19, Ring Day, The Winsor Banner winsorbanner.org
- Ring Day Reflection, The Winsor School winsor.edu
- Winsor Community Life winsor.edu