On Wednesday, August 30th, we welcomed a group of alumnae back to St. Mary’s Academy for our fourth annual Belles and Books event! We tasked both students and alumnae to complete the same summer reading: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. In his book, Gladwell attempts to reveal the many factors at work that contribute to a person’s success and analyze patterns using examples from various fields, such as professional sports, tech, and music. These people who achieve extraordinary things he calls outliers.
Alumnae circulated through our English classes throughout the day and held lively discussions not only about the book and the author, but also about how they define success, what you can take away from well-known success stories, and whether they believe themselves to be outliers. This gave students an additional chance to hear and explore new perspectives on the book—and to get to spend some quality time getting to know our fantastic alums! Thank you so much to the alumnae who shared their time and their thoughts (as well as life anecdotes and advice!) with our Belles!
