In this excerpt from his All-School meeting remarks, Winnie Wood Prince '26 asks his fellow Bears to look beyond their transcripts and discover their personal passions to fuel academic success. 

“Now I'll tell you what my path looked like at Berkshire. My freshman and sophomore years were more about my friends and social life, and I wasn't truly applying myself in school. My junior and first half of senior year were more productive than the last two years I had here, but I never found myself standing on this stage with an academic award. My freshman year, I thought to myself, 'I'm going to make it on that stage next trimester,' and I would say it again and again every trimester. By my junior year, I had worked my way up to the best GPA I had ever received in my career under the Mountain. A 3.80, which I was pumped about, but it does not cut it for the glorious academic award.

However, I had not felt disappointed with years of failure because I was also finding success in other areas, like Chinese, and that's my point. I have never gotten my hands on one of these awards, yet Chinese has been one of my strongest subjects, leading to my own Independent Study here because there wasn't a higher Chinese class available. I am not saying that to brag; I am just trying to make a point. Success at this school shows up in different places and at different times.

My Berkshire career has been quite nonlinear, messy at times, nothing close to a straight line, and chances are there's a bunch of you guys out there with the same nonlinear path. That does not make you an unsuccessful person. It just means your story looks different. Some of the most interesting people I have ever met did not get where they were going by following a straight path. They got there by figuring it out as they went. Nobody gets there clean; you fall, you figure it out, you keep going. 

Here is the thing about success: it does not have one look. For some people, it shows up as a 4.0. For others, it shows up as finally understanding something that broke your brain for weeks, or earning the respect of a teacher who pushed you, or becoming a version of yourself that freshman year you would not even recognize. None of those things comes with a trophy, but all of them are real. There are multiple ways to be smart. Emotional intelligence, the way you carry yourself, the way you show up for the people around you, the way you handle a bad trimester and keep going anyway, that is also intelligence and success. As I said before, success comes in different forms. 

The most important aspect I have learned over the years is balance. Discipline and putting the work in are pertinent to finding your success, and in my freshman year, I wasn't the poster child for balance and productivity. But I figured it out, slowly, on my own timeline, in my own way. And that's all I'm asking you to do.

So congratulations to every single person receiving an award today, you earned it, and this room is proud of you. And to everyone else sitting in those seats, you're not behind, you're just on your own path. Thank you, Go Bears.” 

Winnie Wood Prince ‘26 is a four-year senior from Newport, Rhode Island.