The night before I left for the interview in New Hampshire, I drove to Kansas City, where I had a second job teaching a literature course for women recently released from prison. The program I worked for was called Changing Lives Through Literature, and meeting the women enrolled in the class had certainly changed mine. Most of the women in this class had been born into hard circumstances, and the stories they told about their lives were often as eloquent and as full of insight as the literature we were reading. Listening to them reminded me that the world is full of bright, talented people who might have had different lives had they had different opportunities. I felt sad, but also fortunate, and even more committed to making the most of the gift I was about to receive.

By noon the next day, I was in Exeter. I met poet Ilya Kaminsky, the 1999-2000 Bennett Fellow, and he assured me that the fellowship was the real deal: there were virtually no requirements on the time of the Bennett Fellow. I would only be expected to write. I giddily followed him around campus, taking in the beautiful red brick buildings and the bustle of students across the quad. I sat in on one of Rex McGuinn's English classes, noticing the small class size, the diversity of the students and the way Rex encouraged them to teach each other by discussing varying answers to open-ended questions. Ilya showed me the gym, the biking paths on the outskirts of campus and the amazing library, which I would have full access to as a Bennett Fellow. Some of the students seemed a little tired or worried about upcoming exams, but I couldn't help envying them. My first impression of Exeter was that it was a place where people were allowed to reach their full potentials.

Back home, I had a good six months before my tenure as Bennett Fellow would begin, so there was plenty of time for my excitement to ebb and be replaced by anxiety over what it would be like for someone like me to live at a New England prep school. I imagined life wouldn't be quite as easy as it was for me in Lawrence, the college town where I had lived for the last 10 years, where I had amassed a collection of close friends, where I knew at least one person on almost every street in town. I worried I was in for a year of isolation and loneliness. I worried about winter in New England. But I wasn't about to let an opportunity like this slip away, so on a hot August evening, I had a party at my apartment and let my friends carry out whatever furniture they wanted. I packed what was left-a suitcase and my computer-in the back of my car, let my dog ride shotgun and drove away.

A Grasshopper Among the Ants

I was right about the loneliness. Although the students, faculty, staff and families I met at Exeter were invariably friendly, they all had one thing in common: tight schedules. These were busy people, I realized. They got up early. They ate quickly, squeezing meals in between classes, games, practices, play dates, debates, readings, pediatrician appointments, faculty meetings and study hours. The spare time of Exonians, it seemed to me, was overwhelmingly devoted to running. (Every time I looked out my window, I saw at least one person running.) I, on the other hand, did not run, nor did I have any kind of schedule. I recently read a quote from a previous Bennett Fellow who said he felt as if he were "a grasshopper surrounded by ants." I wish I could have read that two years ago, when I was struggling with the realization that as a Bennett Fellow, I had all the leisure time I wanted, but I would probably be spending it alone.

And really, that was what the Bennett Fellowship was supposed to be about, being left alone. I finally had a vast amount of time to myself: time to write, time to read, time to think and learn. And though I know many people at Exeter left me alone because they simply had many things to do, others left me alone out of courtesy, because they knew I was supposed to be writing. I craved the camaraderie and coffee klatches of my graduate school days, but I knew that time alone was what I'd come to Exeter for, and it was up to me to make the most of it.

So I got to work. I stuck to a disciplined schedule of four hours of writing a day, four hours of reading at night. Even when I walked my dog, I listened to books on tape. I also took advantage of Exeter's library to do the research I needed for my book, The Center of Everything, a coming-of-age story set in the Midwest during the Reagan presidency. I grew up in the 1980s myself, but my memory of big events wasn't as clear as I needed it to be. Much to my delight, I found videos of several of Reagan's speeches in the library. Some of the details of these videos appear on the first page of my book. I also found footage of the Iran-Contra hearings, and of the Challenger tragedy. I thought about my narrator as I watched them, trying to imagine what her impressions would be.

Later in the novel, one of the main characters gives birth to a premature baby, and I was a little daunted when I realized I didn't just have to learn the details of care for premature babies; I had to learn how they were cared for in 1985. The library's archives came to the rescue again: I found a Discover magazine from 1985 that contained an article on a day in the life of a special ward for premature babies. The library at Phillips Exeter is the most accessible, user-friendly library I've ever encountered. It helped me immensely with my work.

During her year as a Bennett Fellow, Moriarty completed her first novel, The Center of Everything, which has just been published by Hyperion to glowing reviews.

My daily regimen of writing, reading and research was good for my novel, but I'm an extrovert at heart; I simply need to interact with other people to be happy. So I was grateful when Rex McGuinn introduced me to the wonderful students in his writing class. Some of these young writers-Maya West '01, Marissa Lowman '01, Mackenzie Hawkins '01 and Jason Arold '02 come to mind-regularly met with me in the library after dinner to work on their essays and short stories. I was impressed with how motivated they were to learn, consider and revise, and I was regularly knocked out by the maturity and thoughtfulness of their prose. As a lifelong attendee of public schools, I had the usual stereotypes concerning private school students. Getting to know individual students at Exeter made me see the range of backgrounds, experiences and attitudes of the young people who truly made up the student body.

But mostly, I wrote. By the end of the year, I had a finished novel, one that I was proud to have written. I remember working on the last page as I listened, through my open window, to the names of graduating students being read into a microphone in the distance. That same month, I sent my novel off to an agent in New York, and hoped for the best. Whether or not it ever got published, I told myself, I had accomplished something. I did what I set out to do, and, thanks to the time the Bennett Fellowship allowed me, I could honestly say that I had done the best work I was capable of at the time.