Alice Copperfield

During Alice's semester at THS, her grades plummeted. She blamed the stress of being away from home, but the real reason was that she had spent far too much time in California trying to be cool and being distracted by boys. She was unceremoniously yanked out of Tyrehampton at the end of the semester, and went back to her all-girls school in Boston. She and Eleanor wrote letters for as long as was realistic for teenage girls, but they eventually tapered off. She also kept in touch with Mr. Hayes, who had been the only teacher to give her an A that disastrous semester.

Alice still got into Harvard pre-med, but because THS had wrecked her GPA, she didn't get the full ride that she had been counting on, and relied on student loans. Still, she was always top of her class, and expected to eventually be rich when she became a top surgeon.

But then, her junior year at Harvard, she met Dante Rossetti in the library. He was a visiting graduate art student from Rome, and she had always been a Europhile, so naturally, he swept her off her feet. When he left at the end of that year, he invited her to join him in Rome after her graduation. Besotted, she let her grades slide and did not apply to medical school. A year later she turned up in Rome with nothing but two suitcases, a mountain of student debt, and an address for Rossetti, only to discover that he was living there with another woman, and had completely forgotten (or so he claimed) about their promise to reunite after her graduation.

Unmoored, Alice flitted around Europe for a few years, doing odd jobs like teaching English or seasonal labor. Recently, Mr. Hayes, who has since transferred to a public school in the Bronx, told her about a program to get science teachers into inner-city schools, as well as Mrs. Hatch’s building. She has just arrived in NYC, hopeful for a fresh start.

Quick Facts

 * Professional email: acopperfield@schools.nyc.gov
 * THS Class of 1987 (but graduated from a high school in Boston)
 * Harvard Class of 1991; rowed for Harvard
 * Spent four years living and working around Italy and the rest of Europe from 1991-1995
 * Enjoys yoga and running, only drinks good wine and scotch, is a horror buff, and still gets advance copies of movies from her aunt who works in Hollywood.

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