Organizing the 100th birthday celebration of a school that has hosted to two former First Ladies, receiver of a multimillion-dollar endowment, home to a state-of-the-art science building and paradigm for girls’ education is extremely difficult.

Having covered plenty of events this year as a journalist, it is truly exciting that I am apart of this Centennial Week’s celebrations as my last event as Editor-in-Chief. What I have found through reporting on this year’s celebrations is that just like there is no formula to editing an article, there is no modus operandi to throwing a year-long birthday party. The answer is ever-changing and progressive, just like our school, just like its founder Miss Ela, a visionary for girls eager to drink the intellectual breadth of their studies and explore the exotic unfamiliars.

As Hockaday nears the end of its first century, I too near the end of my year as Editor-in-Chief. In our next issue of The Fourcast, the last of the school year, you will find new names as well as familiar ones. It will be written and edited by our new staff and headed by the new Editor-in-Chief, just before we move forward into a new century of Hockaday.

And while it is difficult to organize a marvelous birthday celebration, our school once again found creative ways to celebrate our past, present and future this Centennial year. The school published a 389-page anthology of its history, opened an exhibit in our founder Miss Hockaday’s name, will light up Reunion Tower and Omni Hotel green tonight and host a grand party in a colossal tent tomorrow—just to name a few.

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who spoke at Hockaday’s 1952 Commencement, once said famously, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift; that’s why they call it the present.” I would say we gave a pretty fantastic 100th-birthday present to The Hockaday School.

– Tiffany Le