intermediate program summer site : conversations : first session



	rachel from maryland (7/12) Rachel is entering ninth grade and it's her third year at Explo. We started talking after I realized she was from the same town where I have family. She loves to read and is happy to be back at Explo with plenty of interesting and quirky activities surrounding her! So, course-wise I know you’re taking "Shutterbug" [Darkroom Photography] . . . Yeah, my second course is "Shutterbug". I’ve done some photography stuff at other programs, but it’s been a while, so I figured I should brush up again. What have you been photographing? Mostly people and flowers and stuff. I’m sharing my camera with someone else that didn’t bring one. We ended up taking pictures of whatever we both wanted. We ended up having similar interests, so . . . What’s your other class? Ecology, “Eco-Logic”. What have you been doing in there? I switched into that class on day two, so, before I got there, they had talked about invasive species and stuff . . . Today was cool. We went over to the Margaret Clapp library and played around with these Excel spreadsheets that Will, the teacher, had made about population growth. What exactly were you looking at? Pretty much how if you change the capacity of a place, you can graph the change in the ratio between how many people give birth and how often they die and see how quickly the space would fill up. We took into account humans and then some fisheries. What mini-courses are you taking? I’m doing yoga. I’ve done some years of that on and off at school before . . . and then my second mini-course is archery. What made you want to try archery? I’m not exactly sure, exactly. [Laughs.] I guess I wanted to do something outdoors, since I don’t do a lot outdoors and I thought that sounded kind of interesting. Have you been going outside much in ecology? We had a few days that we would go outside and look at some species. We went to the arboretum and a few days ago we went to the greenhouses on the other side of campus. What trips did you go on last weekend? Last weekend I went to the Peabody Essex Museum and Salem Witch Museum. My roommate and I took the same trip last year, but it’s a really cool museum and we didn’t have enough time for it all last year, so we wanted to go again. What advice would you give to someone coming to Explo? I guess I'd say that you shouldn’t be afraid to try all the new activities, just do what appeals to you. Like “Robots Eat Your Face” . . . I had no idea what that was! But I went and had a lot of fun. And just what was that? We worked in groups . . . and as it turned out, we were given huge cardboard boxes with two holes cut out – so someone could breathe in there – and then we decorated them. And then the robots had an epic battle at the end with robot music. But I had no idea what that was going to be, and it ended up being really fun. What do you miss most when you’re not at Explo? I miss being able to get up and just do something. Back at home – I’m not saying this in a mean spirited way or anything – we don’t live that close to anything. We always have to figure out where you want to go in advance and get in a car. Here, it’s just like “Oh, I can choose from any of these activities to go to or I can go to this course where I can meet people that like the same things I do”. Why did you choose Explo to begin with? Well before this I was doing, well, a more rustic program in West Virginia. I’m not really the outdoorsy, low maintenance type. I’ll admit that. So this sounded a bit better . . . more conversations > first session \| second session