senior program summer site : conversations : first session



	alex from california (7/12) Alex is a rising senior coming all the way from California. His love for history and the Los Angeles Dodgers is highly contagious! He is enjoying his second summer at the Senior Program. Tell me a little bit about your first course. My first course is Civil War military history. Basically, what we do is we take all the most famous battles of the Civil War and analyze them, see how both the generals of the North and South plan their strategies. Then we plan our own strategies . . . like what we would have done if we fought the battle. A week from today we are going to be doing a big reenactment of one of the battles. Which battle from the civil war is your favorite to study? Probably Gettysburg. What about history attracts you to the subject? For me, I’ve been in love with history ever since I was nine years old. I don’t know, it’s just really cool to put yourself in the shoes of all these historical figures . . . So you know how cool would it of been if you were George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, those guys. Do you have a favorite time period? Well, there are three parts of history that really interest me: American presidents, baseball, and, interestingly enough, the mafia. What about your second course? I’m taking musical theater. It’s a little challenging. For Explopalooza [where students present their final performances] we are coming up with our own musical. Basically, what we are doing is taking random songs that we have chosen and making them into a musical . . . with plots and everything. The song I came up with is “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson. Tell me a little more about your musical theater class . . . how does it work? Basically, in musical theater we start with some voice exercises to prepare our voices. Then we take different musicals, like West Side Story, Chicago, Wicked, and we act them out and sort of analyze the emotions, asking 'what is the back-story behind all this?' What is your favorite musical? My favorite musical is Jersey Boys. It’s a really awesome musical. It’s basically the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and how they all came together, and how they became one of the first pop groups around. What type of musical are you doing for Explopalooza? Basically, we’ve taken our experience in Explo and broken them down to three parts: anxiety, Explo love blues, and new beginnings. New beginnings -- that’s the final part I’m in. It’s kind of like the epiphany of "Oh my god! I saw something today and realized this is what I should be doing!" The final song is about not wanting to leave Explo. Can you tell me a little bit about the mini-course you just finished? Last week's mini-course was called “The Love of the Game.” What it did was analyze sports and how the media has an affect on sports, advertising, and the role of women in sports. Is there one thing from the course that stuck with you? One thing that kind of stuck with me was that athletes get paid ridiculous amounts. We watched a video about the ten richest athletes in the world, and number one was Tiger Woods. A lot of people, including myself, would say, well, he’s Tiger Woods, he deserves that much money. He gets paid about $89 million dollars a year, and some of that comes from the different tournaments that he wins, but the majority comes from all the endorsements he has. Like the Tiger watches, Buick commercials, and Tiger Gatorade. What about your mini-course this week? It’s baseball, and baseball is my favorite sport. I really, really enjoy it, as you can tell my favorite team is the Dodgers. You mentioned before baseball was one of your favorite parts of history, do you have a favorite past player? Yes, I do. Actually, two. They are both the same religion, Hank Greenberg and Jackie Robinson. They both had to overcome adversity as both a Jewish player and an African American player. They both used that adversity to generate great numbers over lengthy careers and wind up in the Hall of Fame. What is it about baseball that attracts you? Well, I’ve been a Dodgers fan ever since I was about five years old. Just the thrill of being at the stadium and watching the game, or also the thrill of being at home and watching the game on TV. My dad has season tickets, and we sit right behind home plate. It’s really cool. We can see the different kinds of pitches as they are being fired into the plate and if the bat gets really good crack on it. Those sound like pretty amazing seats. What advice would you give someone coming to Explo for the first time? Don’t be nervous, you’ll be fine. You’re going to make a lot of friends and I guarantee you will have one of the best times of your life. If Explo was an object, what type of object would it be and why? It would be one giant globe, because we not only have people come from throughout the US, but this year we have people representing Explo from over 46 countries. more conversations > first session \| second session