Retreat: Told by the Senior Student Leaders

Retreat

Pacifica’s annual student retreat, a three-day jaunt in the desert of Lost Canyon, Arizona, has a different meaning for each student depending on their grade. For freshmen, it comes with a healthy dose of trepidation. The seven-hour bus ride full of kids you barely know, the meals that include eggs of dubious descent, and the shared living situation all serve to instill terror in the hearts of freshmen boys and girls alike. For sophomores, the retreat is a return to an almost familiar place. They are able to experience the camp without the blinding glare of first-year newness, allowing them to grow more comfortable around their peers. Juniors get their first taste of being the older ones. They experience a greater degree of freedom and allow for the carelessness that can only come before a long year of their most rigorous course load. But for seniors, retreat is a culmination of many things. It is the first instance in which seniors participate in all their “lasts,” things that they will never again experience as a student.  

I asked the student leaders of Pacifica’s four teams: purple, blue, pink, and yellow, for their insights on retreat as a senior– and what it means to leave a lasting legacy. “I remember having the best team leaders my sophomore retreat,” pink team senior Josephine Tilford says. “So I wanted to be that this year for the pink team.” That seems to be a common theme among the seniors: a desire to leave something good behind. “I wanted to be a really loud but encouraging leader,” says Ellie Knight, one of the student leaders of the (winning) yellow team; “I wanted our team to most importantly have fun because that’s what retreat is all about.” Both of these team leaders express a desire to give back to their community by making the retreat a positive experience for younger classmates. The seniors at the ‘23 retreat wanted to get the most out of their last trip to Arizona.

Aside from the opportunity to be a student leader, there are also various traditions that seniors partake in at retreat. One of those, when seniors sleep on the field outside (or more recently, inside the auditorium), wasn’t necessarily a comfortable experience. “It did hurt to sleep on the floor,” Knight admits. “We barely slept at all,” purple team’s William Reimers echoes the sentiment. But even despite the unforgiving auditorium floor, there were positive moments to be found. “We watched Pitch Perfect and stayed up super late just talking and making each other laugh,” Tilford says. “It was really special and an amazing bonding experience for all of us.” This represents another unique part of retreat. It gives students the opportunity to connect beyond the bounds of age, gender, interests, etc. Walking into the game room, you can see any given combination of students, with nothing in common other than their shared desire to play a game of pool. 

Blue team senior Elle Starratt brings up another senior tradition when the seniors sneak out to the hot tub past curfew: “This night became my favorite night of retreat by far,” Starratt says. “... the senior girls do not get to have moments alone together, just us.” Senior traditions provide an opportunity for the senior class to spend time together in a more concentrated group. Just sitting in the hot tub with your fellow seniors can be an important time to connect. 

Aside from the senior responsibilities, the senior students are able to pursue other activities and discover their favorite. “The highlight of retreat this year for me was the lip sync battle,” says Starratt. “It was so much fun rehearsing for it and choreographing it,” Tilford agrees. The lip sync battle is an opportunity for students to express their creativity; it is one of the only competitions where they control virtually every aspect: the song, the choreography, the outfits, etc. “I wanted to be a loud and all-spirit team leader and even though we got crushed, our victory in the lip-sync battle proved my point about our spirit,” says Reimers. All the teams had an impressive showing, but ultimately the purple team took first place with their energetic Bruno Mars cover. 

When reflecting on retreat, the senior team leaders all have fond memories of their different experiences. “I’ll miss cabin time the most and the quiet time when you’re just alone in nature,” says Reimers. Cabin time is a unique part of retreat, and another opportunity for students to connect with their classmates in their grade. “... the thing I think I’ll miss the most is the closeness and time we get to strengthen our friendships,” Tilford adds. Retreat is such a special time because it quite literally forces the students to connect in close quarters. By the end of every retreat, there are new friendships, new interests, and closer bonds established. Although the seniors that made this year’s retreat so special will be leaving in the spring, I hope it will serve as a unifying experience for students to come.