Before I ever set foot inside St. Agnes Academy, I already knew about Veritas Vacation Day.
Every tour, every conversation with a current student, it came up. Their eyes would light up in a way that was hard to explain, like they were letting you in on a secret the school had been keeping just for them. I didn't fully understand it then. I just knew it was something people held onto.
What I didn't know yet was that I would too.
St. Agnes Academy is an all-girls school in Houston, and when I was accepted, I'll be honest, I had hesitations. I had never existed in a space quite like that before, and uncertainty has a way of feeling like a warning sign even when it isn't one.
But somewhere in my first year, St. Agnes started to feel like mine.
The energy of the place is hard to describe. Welcoming, inclusive and loud in the best way. There were no performances, no posturing, just a building full of girls figuring themselves out in the same place at the same time. The traditions, the celebrations, the random moments of joy, they all felt bigger because of who you were sharing them with. I couldn't have told you why then. I'm still figuring out why now.
St. Agnes never needed a reason to celebrate. Cinco de Mayo meant a piñata in the courtyard. The Celebrate St. Agnes rally meant the auditorium was packed wall to wall with noise and school pride. And then there was Veritas Vacation Day.
Veritas Vacation Day. Planned in secret by the Dean of Students and a handful of faculty members who, somehow, every single year, manage to keep it quiet. No date on the calendar. No countdown. Just an ordinary morning that turns, without warning, into something else entirely.
As the year stretches on, the speculation begins. A student spots an unusual truck parked outside, and the whisper moves through the hallways: Is today the day? Most of us hoped it would land on the morning of a big exam. When it was announced, you could feel it moving through the building, screaming that didn't stop, rolling from classroom to classroom. Then came the bounce houses, the mechanical bull, the snow cones, the desserts, and somehow, puppies. The campus transformed into something that had no business existing on a Tuesday, and nobody questioned it.
I took it for granted the way you take most things for granted at seventeen. It wasn't until I graduated that I understood what I had been given.
Two years out, I am now an intern at Nan and Company Properties. My manager, Avery, is also a St. Agnes alumna, and she walked those same hallways three years before I did. There's a shorthand that exists between people who came from the same place, even when they didn't overlap. She had her Veritas Vacation Day. I had mine.
But St. Agnes isn't standing still. Since I graduated, the school has continued to grow, with new buildings, updated spaces, and one addition I wish I had gotten to experience myself. Tucked next to the cafeteria is a café, a collaboration between St. Agnes and Common Bond, run by the same cafeteria staff who fed us every day. It's a small thing, maybe. But it says something about a school that already knew how to take care of its students finding new ways to do it.
Somewhere at St. Agnes right now, a student is walking into school on an ordinary morning, completely unaware that today might be the day, that the trucks are already parked and the Dean of Students is about to change everything about the next several hours. She has traditions I never got to experience, and buildings I haven't seen. But we both share Veritas Vacation Day.
I hope she screams when she finds out. And I hope someday she understands what I'm still working on understanding myself, that St. Agnes didn't just give us fun days and good memories. It gave us a place that believed we were worth celebrating. And that kind of thing stays with you, even when you can't quite explain why.
— Lucy Fulghum
