senior program summer site : conversations : second session



	max from texas (7/31) Max is in his first year at Explo and he's going into the 12th grade. He comes from Texas and he's a residential student. He has rekindled a love of architecture here at Explo and was really surprised by his interest in his philosophy of physics mini-course. What's your first course? "Rock as Revolution". It's good. I didn't know how much of an effect rock actually had on our culture, especially going all the way back to the 1950s. It kind of led a lot of movements that were going on, or was at least a big part of them. And of course we're just learning a lot about rock -- and rock is cool, obviously. I like my instructor. I was surprised -- he'll look up songs on YouTube and find lyrics that we go over. I personally never focused on lyrics, but they have a big meaning. Also little things like riffs and body movements on the performers were actually revolutionary at that time -- like with Elvis. We cover a decade at a time. There's a lot of discussion, video, and lyrics. What about your second course? My second course is architecture. It's going well -- I think that's what I want to be when I grow up, an architect. I had kind of forgotten about it because I haven't had any class like that in like three years, but I kind of remembered all the cool stuff about buildings. We go over a lot of the little things and talk about how much emphasis on art there is with buildings. We go over pictures and blueprints and all that. We went to the Yale Art Gallery and the Center for British Art -- that was fun. We looked at the architecture, just the buildings themselves, and not even at the art in there. Those trips were a big part of the class, so I've kind of had a reawakening of how cool architecture is. Those buildings were both done by Louis Kahn, right? Is there anything that stands out for you? The Yale Gallery -- I remember specifically the ceiling. It's great; it's like all triangular, and the staircase is a triangle instead of a spiral, which I've never seen in my life -- that was really cool. Then the other museum's staircase is square but it's still cool, the way it's designed. There's a lot of unity in that building. It surrounds this big atrium in the middle which kind of makes it seem like you're outside. The architecture from the outside carries into that room and the whole building surrounds it. The point of it is to know where you are in the building at any moment, like locationally, so that even if you're spatially unaware, you should know where you are in the building, because there's so much you can read from the layout. I'm glad I took the course because I'll probably do architecture or engineering. Have you been on any college trips? I went on the Harvard/MIT one and I'm going to Brown/Providence next week. I've looked at a lot of colleges in Texas but none from the east coast -- I've never been out here. My plan right now is to try to get into the University of Texas, which I hopefully can, and if I can get into an Ivy League school, I'll go for that. And of course the money is a factor: whoever offers me the best scholarship. What's your mini-course? My first just ended -- I took philosophy of physics. When I got here I was thinking, "Why did I take this? Why did I sign up for this?" I thought it would be really hard with the physics. But we just discuss all about physics, not necessarily equations, but we talk about space and time and time traveling and all this cool stuff that is awesome to think about. Pretty much my mind got blown a little bit each day. Especially a lot the first day as we were getting into that mode of thinking. I would watch that stuff on a show, but I've never had the opportunity to talk about it with, like, a whole class for real. Maybe a friend here and there, but we actually had a class focused on just discussion of things that aren't even physical -- just, like, space. Like, is space real or is time real? Or, are we moving backwards in time? Things that you can't ever talk about. And my instructor is really cool and open. Obviously, you're going to have a lot of people who don't know what they're talking about. I mean, we don't know these mysteries of the universe, so he really led the class great and was open to ideas and discussion. We did some activities in there that were really trippy. For example, if you're going to move somewhere, you have to move halfway first. But if you keep moving halfway, technically you'll never get there. So we had a lot of little activities like that. I pretty much don't know if anything I can see around us is true anymore. You have to really wonder. I mean, multiple universes, splitting universes . . . all sorts of crazy stuff. That's intense. So that stuff is new for you. Have you been encouraged to try anything else new while at Explo? Well, the main events aren't anything you do on a daily basis at home, so those are always new. And they just closed the Six Flags in Houston like five years ago, which was really disappointing, so I went to Six Flags for my trip Sunday, which was really great because I haven't been in a long time. I used to be kind of scared of rollercoasters, but I broke my fear of that. And overall . . . just working with new people, which I don't do at home. At home, I just stick to my friends. I love them, so I don't really try to go outside the box with doing new stuff with new people . . . but here, you pretty much do [stuff with new people], whether or not you're trying. It happens. You work with new people and do stuff with new people every day. more conversations > first session \| second session