For Luca Bocresion ’26, Greek and Latin are more than courses — they’re a way of understanding the world and his place at and beyond St. Paul’s School
November 7, 2025
The 2025 Fall Term Living in Community day offers a crash course in adulthood.
BY KATE DUNLOP
Student leaders in the Living in Community (LinC) curriculum whooped and cheered as their peers entered Memorial Hall on a breezy morning for the Fall Term LinC Day on Nov. 6. Inside, a game show jingle set the tone for a day devoted to a crash course in adulthood presented as an immersive exercise in choices, luck and consequences.
The Game of LinC, modeled on the board game The Game of Life, cast students as recent college graduates whose minds and talents were their only assets — so far. After a session devoted to the basics of job interviewing, students selected a career path (business, education, government, medicine or entrepreneurship) and interviewed with a faculty member for employment and a salary, or LinC dollars, that could be spent on down payments for a house or car, investments and other stuff-of-life purchases. The goal? To have the most LinC points, based on dollars and assets, by day’s end.
Stations on banking and investing offered opportunities for financial boosts, while others, like building a fire (cancelled due to wind), fishing and writing a love poem were designed to offer insights into survival, patience and self-expression.
Those with extra cash could gamble by purchasing a Chance card, which might yield a return and more assets … or set one back. Answering trivia questions or completing exercises such as caring for a child, changing a tire, meditation or cooking could add more points, depending on an individual’s initiative.
Students lined up to make investments while keeping an eye on a live “market” ticker displayed overhead.
A “job applicant” interviews with a faculty member for employment and a LinC Day salary.
While the median individual income in the United States is $39,982 and only about 18% of Americans earn more than $100,000 per year, starting salaries for the game were generous to allow immediate entry into the housing market. Jaden Ficek ’26 and MJ Williams-Bello ’28 both chose medicine but started with a $20,000 salary difference — and though both “doctors” ended the day well, they agreed they could have done things differently, especially when it came to investing in the stock market.
“I would pay more attention sooner to investing,” Williams-Bello said, “but I liked the community engagement, and it was fun to explore the pathways. I approached the day as an experience, not a game, and finished with a house and no debt.”
Anderson Brady ’26 parlayed a financial adviser’s $80,000 starting salary into a comfortable life but found that timing affected his outcome — forced to make major decisions without knowing his full purchasing power, he chose to rent a house and lease a car instead of buying, something he would do differently.
“My investments went up, but I didn’t have as many assets at the end as I would have liked,” he said. “It was a really cool day, though. The stock market was exciting; it was fun to watch the market move.”
The market moved spectacularly for some students who managed to accumulate billions through investments and sometimes … interesting methods.
“The ‘stock market’ was particularly popular and enabled several students to increase the value of their ‘portfolio’ at large multipliers,” said Robb Arndt, the associate dean of students who oversees the LinC program and its student leaders. “I suspect those who ended up losing investments were less active in returning to the table, but that was definitely the most popular and interactive station.”
Inevitably, taxes came into play and 10% was lopped off at the end of the day — a reminder that supporting the greater good also means funding education, infrastructure, healthcare, defense and other programs.
Overall, Arndt says, he was pleased with the level of engagement he saw from the student body. “The LinC Leaders worked hard to build a day that was engaging and allowed students a degree of self-direction, and I think they were successful,” he said.
For Dorothy Kearney ’27, one of the 22 LinC leaders, the many hours and meetings spent making the day a success were worth it. “Lots of work went into making presentations, signs and systems to use for things like the bank and chance cards,” she said. “The most challenging part was probably figuring out how to gamify the day, but it worked out.”
A hallmark of St. Paul’s School curriculum, the LinC program is designed to help every student become a knowledgeable, responsible, caring and contributing member of society. During Third and Fourth Form years, students take classes that delve into topics such as cultural competency, personal identity, drugs and alcohol, and wellness; Fifth and Sixth Formers participate in a three-times-per-term seminar that builds on the knowledge base developed in those classes. Once per term, student-led LinC Days for the student body focus on complicated topics with personal and societal implications.
