Blog & Resources for Parents

In advance of International Women’s Day (March 8), I visited the IWD website to see their theme and main ideas this year and to check out any recommended resources. The website is filled with informative articles from various sources. A few things caught my eye. The first is that their campaign theme this year is #EmbraceEquity. I couldn’t help but feel inspired and happy about this coincidence—as you may know, last summer, our Associated Student Body chose “embrace” as Westridge’s theme for the year.

Monique Eguavoen, Ed.D., joined Westridge this year as director of college counseling. She came to us from Southern Methodist University, where she served as associate dean of admission—sitting on the admission leadership team and leading a department responsible for comprehensive admission and enrollment services for first-year students.

We sat down with Eguavoen to talk about her goals for Westridge college counseling, how the landscape of college admissions has changed, and how students and families should approach applying to colleges and universities.

There’s a round sticker on a bookshelf in my office that says, “Say yes-and.” I got it at the beginning of this school year during the Upper School Club Fair; students in the Comedy Club were giving out stickers with various phrases to anyone who stopped by their booth. I chose this sticker because it felt genuine to me and aspirational at the same time. Certainly inspirational.

As many theatre students know, “Yes-and” is the first rule of improv, and as a person who did a lot of theatre and improv as a student, this concept has always made sense to me. According to The Second City, “the basic concept of these two words is that you are up for anything and will go along with whatever gets thrown your way. Essentially, you don’t use the word “No” in improv very often. The “And” part comes in when you are in a scene and can add to what your partner started rather than detract from it.” It is open-minded and additive.