Before our graduates left campus our summer student and Old Ridleian Nicholas ’12 interviewed a few of them about their Ridley experience. In this interview he spoke to German student Lea Müller. Lea was a school prefect, she won the top prize in the public speaking competition and she played first team tennis.
1) Where is your favorite place to study on campus? In my room in Leonard House.
2) What is your best memory of the past year? My best memories are from Snake Dance, the Alumni dinner (I loved that especially) and all the breaks with my friends.
3) What will you miss most about Ridley? I will miss all my friends and how easy it is to live here. If I want to see friends, I open my door. If I want to be alone, I close my door. I will miss the whole boarding life and all the little things.
4) Who are your favourite faculty members:
– Mr. Doyle
– Mrs. Chausse
– Ms. Cox
– Dr. Foster
5) What did you learn from Ridley?
I learned a lot from my time at Ridley:
a) People are always around you that support you
b) Life is new everyday. Everything and anything can happen.
c) Diversity is key
6) Can you share a quote (yours or otherwise) about any aspect of Ridley/life at Ridley (ex: academics, art, buildings, duty, history, passion, etc.)?
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.
Unfortunately, that is too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.
The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
-Steve Jobs
I love this quote because I think at Ridley we all have experiences that make our lives special. Out of our own life we can then get creativity that is unique and beautiful.