A Day in the Life

Come check out our spring archives exhibit, A Day in the Life: The SPS Student Experience Then & Now. The exhibit was inspired by an idea from our Archives Proctor, Daisy Wu ’25. It was developed and co-curated by Daisy and the School Archivist, Ms. Parsi. We asked Daisy what it was like to work on this project:

“When I started working on A Day in the Life: The SPS Student Experience Then & Now, I thought I’d just be sorting through old yearbooks and dorm maps. I didn’t expect to get so caught up in the details—how students used to write letters home every Sunday, or how the school once had separate dining halls for different forms. Some things felt completely unfamiliar, like the dorm system before the 1970s. But others, like students decorating their dorm rooms or trying to guess the date of Cricket, felt surprisingly familiar. It made me think about what stays the same, even as everything else changes.

With help from Ms. Parsi, I scavenged through the school archives—reading old class schedules, flipping through early issues of the Horae Scholasticae, and tracking the evolution of Coit Dining Hall through photos. Along the way, I started to notice how small details—like a handwritten schedule or a dorm photo from the ’60s—carry so much of the lived experience. Putting this exhibit together has made me see SPS differently. It’s not just about big milestones—it’s about the everyday moments that quietly shape life here, connecting students across generations.”