Milton Magazine - Milton Academy

Spring’s Endowed Speaker SeriesBrings notable women toMilton’s campussays Bogdanich. “When doinginvestigative reporting, you haveto work with someone you trust.You need someone who haschecked every fact and [checkedthat] every sentence has beenthought out, the context is there,and the emphasis is right. Iquickly came to the conclusionthat Jake was somebody I couldtrust. I was one lucky fellow towork with him.”Now in his fifth year in China,Jake says he misses his friendsas well as the great outdoors heenjoyed growing up in Newton,Massachusetts, and later, in NewHampshire while attendingDartmouth. Jake lives in Beijing,where the air hangs heavy withpollution over the sprawlingmetropolis. He occasionallydrives a couple hours out of townto hike along the Great Wall.“When I first got here, it wasfine, I was in love with the cultureand the city itself and didn’tmind the air pollution,” he says.“Now I’ve been living here fiveyears and it wears on you. Itgets harder to go outside andexercise.”Jake, an art history major atDartmouth, says his experiencein the Peace Corps provided asolid foundation for his currentwork. Living in a remote village,he met people from all walksof life, and fell in love with theChinese people.“Once I got over the lonelinessand culture shock, and I workedthrough the distrust, it was wonderful,”he says. “The amount Icould learn in a single day wasincredible. I’d meet manuallaborers or pensioners and I’dpractice my Chinese and learnabout their lives, in their ownvoices. I earned enough to travelon school holidays, and it mademe want to write.”That urge to write has servedhim well, and it seems certainto take him on a world of adventuresin coming years. Since theuprising in Tibet this spring,Jake has been working on findinga way to travel west to talk tothe monks who led the protests.It can be a treacherous drive over17,000-foot passes where mudslidescan unexpectedly wash outthe roads. By May, he’d yet to getthere.“I’d love to go to the towns whereprotestors were fired upon, butthe roads getting in there areblocked,” he says. “I need to goback and visit the monasteriesand get closer to the action.”Whether he’ll write that storyfor the Times, or in the memoirhe is contemplating, remains tobe seen. Deep down, Jake sayshe’s yearning to try his handat long-form journalism, writinga first-person account ofhis experiences in China. Thatwould include his experiencesteaching English to Chineseteens and working in Tibet. Hiscommentary on Tibet wouldlook beyond the uprising and therepressive policies of the Chinagovernment.The Pulitzer may just provide theticket to a book contract.“I’d be writing in first-person,so the reader would have a trustworthyguide,” says Jake. “I’d bemore comfortable writing frommy subjective experience, ratherthan in the authoritative voiceof daily journalism. I would belooking for a different level ofmeaning.”David McKay WilsonSamuel S. Talbot SpeakerDr. Cheryl Sandford JenkinsDr. Cheryl Sandford Jenkins,along with her husband, Dr.Jeff Jenkins, visited Milton onFebruary 13 as the Samuel S.Talbot Speaker. A psychologistspecializing in adolescence, Dr.Jenkins has 30 years of experiencecounseling independentschool students in boarding andday schools. Dr. Jenkins has beenthe principal investigator of theIndependent School GenderProject, a project conceived byEllie Griffin, Milton’s director ofhealth and counseling services.The project’s goal is to addressequity issues for men andwomen, and boys and girls, inindependent schools.Dr. Cheryl Sandford JenkinsAccording to the HumanDevelopment Institute, “the missionof the Independent SchoolGender Project was establishedin 1997 to ‘create a frameworkof research, assessment, andstrategies for change throughwhich schools can addressgender-based practices and attitudesaffecting girls and womenin order to promote wholeand healthy environments forboth females and males in ourschools.’”The Project has gathered surveydata from students and facultyin independent schools acrossthe United States and Canada.During her visit, Dr. Jenkinsshared the results of the surveywith the Milton community. Shehas presented these results, overthe years, at national conferencessuch as the National Associationof Independent Schools, theAssociation of Boarding Schools,and the Hotchkiss Conferenceon Women and Girls.Licensed as a psychologistin New Mexico, Dr. Jenkinsbecame director of counselingat Albuquerque Academy. After15 years in the Southwest, shereturned to New England andserved as director of counselingat the Loomis-Chaffee Schoolbefore taking her present positionas director of counselingat St. George’s School in RhodeIsland.Class of 1952 Endowmentfor Religious UnderstandingSpeakerDr. Karen L. KingDr. Karen L. King, WinnProfessor of EcclesiasticalHistory at Harvard Universityin the Divinity School, spokewith students on February 27 asthe Class of 1952 Endowmentfor Religious UnderstandingSpeaker. The title of Dr. King’stalk was “What Else Didn’t WeKnow? Ancient Gospels from theEgyptian Desert,” and it exploredhow we approach historicaltexts, in our research and in ourinterpretation.In talking with students, Dr.King explained, “History doesnot just exist; it is interpreted,and often injected with our ownpreconceived ideas. History ismuch more complicated than thestories can tell. If we reject thiskind of complexity, we lose the64 Milton Magazine