Interview with Crescent School Alum, Naveen Gupta

Who you are right now might not be who you are when you graduate. Having an open mind going into Crescent is probably the best thing you can do for yourself.

Crescent has a really strong science program, and I’ve kept that going in university, and now in medical school. A lot of my mentors at Crescent were in the sciences. Crescent was a place where my interest and curiosity in science unfolded, and allowed me to grow.

Some schools are big athletic schools, others might specialize in drama. One thing that’s really strong about Crescent is it’s a bit of everything. For me, growing up, I had trouble just fitting myself into one category of interests. So I did the plays at Crescent. I was part of the hockey team. I was also doing some basketball growing up. And then I did music, and leadership. I wanted to do as much as I possibly could, and there was really an opportunity to do anything I wanted to do. I was able to find myself in that school and have it carry through to my life today.

What makes Crescent special is it’s like family. A big value in my own family is the feeling of community, and having that extra layer of love around us. And I really felt that at Crescent when we were choosing a school. I remember going for my interview, when I was 7 or 8 years old, and I remember just thinking, ‘Yeah, this is the place for me’. It just felt like family.

What I appreciated most was having all those open doors available to me. Crescent is an ‘everything school’. Having drama, music, hockey, leadership, all there in one place while also getting that level of education — it felt like specializing in different areas as opposed to just one. It allows different kids of different backgrounds to thrive in that kind of environment.

I remember just having a lot of classes on ‘What it means to be a man’, and I think that was very essential. That’s something Crescent does very well, specifically in those years around Grade 9, where adolescence becomes adulthood. That's something that really differentiates it from different independent schools. It instills these values of what it means to be a good person. And it came right at the right time in those years of finding yourself. We would have a lot of speakers that come just to talk about character. I think ‘character’ is the word that floats around Crescent the most.

When it comes to Crescent’s personality, the trait that resonates with me the most is ‘respect’. If Crescent were a person, it would be a very respectful person. I think that’s something that Crescent teaches really well.

It’s one thing for an institution to just  say, ‘We’re going to teach these values’, and it’s another thing to actually instill them into the curriculum, into the staff. There’s a lot of levels of the school that have to be on board with those values in order for it to be instilled in every student. That level of respect is very common amongst all those who graduate. You see it with recent grads, as well as older alumni. That level of respect kind of sticks and it latches on and it doesn’t let go.

There’s even more opportunity here than other private schools. As a student, I came to realize that I had been given a gift here. You realize that, yes, private schools in general have a lot to offer, but Crescent itself has just that much more. Some people are skeptical of that, because you can’t fully appreciate it unless you’ve been on the campus, you’ve talked with students, you spent a day in their shoes, and you start to see how much those values are instilled, how many opportunities are readily available.

I would say that typical Crescent students are very respectful. They are very good listeners, very compassionate people, and very hard-working. I have one friend who came to Crescent in Grade 11 from the public system, and I remember asking him what was the biggest difference he noticed. He said, ‘At Crescent, it’s cool to care, it’s cool to do well’.

I wouldn’t be who I am today without Crescent — and I love who I am. For a student growing up, Crescent is a safe place to make mistakes, and I think that’s essential. Sometimes it hurts, but it’s the best way to learn.

I remember spending countless hours after school with my teacher talking about how I can improve. This was a consistent experience for me, from Grade 3 to Grade 12. That level of teachers being there for you was always apparent. And we spent hours and hours and hours over the years, just dissecting different ways I could be doing things.

That level of opportunity that you get at Crescent, it is just unfathomable. And looking back, I’m never going to have that level of opportunity ever again in my life. To have had that opportunity is priceless.

The teachers at Crescent are there to foster growth and experience. They really show that, day to day, they will do anything, they will bend over backwards to be in your corner.

What makes Crescent unique is how it instills those four key values of respect, responsibility, honesty and compassion. It’s in the curriculum, it’s in every teacher, it’s in every student. It very much is Crescent.