dr. riley Farewell

Kimberley Riley

US History

The Bryn Mawr School

109 Melrose Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland 

21210

Dear Bryn Mawr Community, 

If Bryn Mawr has taught me anything, it is this: there are an infinite number of ways to be beautiful, talented, engaged, curious, kind, and generous-in short, a wonderful person, admired and valued by the people around you and an important part of the world. In convocation or class, students sometimes bring up the “Bryn Mawr Girl,” as if there were a perfect person to hold yourself up against, or worse, that everyone around you was comparing you to this unattainable standard. As a teacher, I can say definitively that this cookie-cutter person doesn’t exist, and that the school would be a lesser place if they did. Of course, students do many of the same thing decade after decade. They study the same basic subjects, engage in the arts, or try out leadership, or decide to resist all these things in favor of their own thing. Yet, these shared experiences don’t create a single type or a single bar for success. If anything, the typical form of high school life highlights all the unique ways in which each student unfolds their individually beautiful self in these commonly shared rites of passage. As we think about the end of another school year, let’s honor and celebrate all our variegated selves, confident in the knowledge that whatever we do in the larger world, our Bryn Mawr experience will always remind us that it is our individuality that delights and makes us strong.  

It has been a pleasure and an honor to be part of such a committed learning community. The school’s strong spirit manifests itself most fully in the conversation, experiment and thought happening around us every day.   I have always loved walking down the hallway on the upper floor of the Howell building when classes were in session and listening to the lively sounds of discussion, of questions and answers, groans and laughter. Teaching and learning remain part of the best things that human beings do in the world, and I hope that you will all take this spirit with you, as I will, wherever you go. 

Sincerely, 

Dr. Riley