senior program summer site : conversations : second session



	jeremy from california (8/5) Jeremy's in his second year at Explo but his first at the Senior Program. He's a residential student from California who's entering the 10th grade. He's learning a lot in his classes and he's also becoming more independent with the extra freedom offered here. What's your first course? Video production. Right now we're working on our final movie. We've been learning about techniques: how to position the camera, using editing programs like FinalCut Express, putting together a movie, establishing shots, jump cuts, zooming, that type of stuff. The film we're working on is going to be shown at Explopalooza on Friday. We have four characters. Each did something you're not supposed to do at the Program and it ends up that the fourth character, which happens to be me, is actually the one causing all of the problems. For the most part the others are innocent. It'll be about two to three minutes long after editing. We had one assignment at the beginning of the course, in the first week, where we had to make a quick one minute film that didn't really have a plot so we could learn about shots. Shots are the most important thing. Our teacher made sure we had different kinds of shots . . . learning not just to do what's called jump cuts . . . keeping the camera in the same spot then turning it off and back on. The sense of direction was just to make sure it was appropriate for Explo, and we couldn't edit the first project, but for the final one we can edit it. We also looked at some movies in the first few days to get a sense of different shot angles and types to help us when making our movies. So with the one you're working on now, is there some kind of message in it? It's really supposed to be funny. It has a plot, but I don't think there's really a moral or a lesson. It obviously shows you get in trouble for the things like jaywalking, but it's not necessarily aimed at teaching a lesson. It's supposed to have a plot, be funny, use different shot angles, and be more professional than a home movie you'd make on your own. I won't ask how it ends; I don't want to ruin the surprise for viewers. But what's your second course? Java programming. Today we learned about Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs), how to build one and then when you use like a drop-down box or a text field to associate a certain line of code that performs an action with it. It's pretty difficult. The GUI part isn't too tough. We use a program called Net Beans for Java programming, but the coding is similar to C++ in some ways. We started out learning how to have the computer say something back to you by printing out some text, and we've been learning how to turn numbers into text or into integers so the computer can use them. Also how to take some text that a user types in and turn it into something the computer can read and say back to you. That's pretty much what we've learned so far. The first week we emphasized learning about what programming really is, vocabulary, stuff like that, and the last week we've been getting into actual programming. On Friday, for example, we learned how to "flip a coin" and have the computer randomly generate if it's heads or tails and how to tell you that . . . how to give an end result of how many times it was heads or tails, and how to ask how many times you want it to flip and having it respond to that. Are either of these courses the sort of thing you're interested in pursuing? Maybe directing, related to video production, editing. I don't think I'd be a good actor but behind the scenes is something I'm interested in. Java programming is also something I'm interested in and I want to try, but it's also a little complicated so I'm not sure. Do you feel like being at the Senior Program has made you more independent? Definitely. There are some big differences between the Intermediate and Senior Programs. The Senior Program is much more independent. There's probably twice as much free time here. Main events and activities aren't mandatory here either. It gives you more choices, more time to be with friends, and it gives you the independence to get some ice cream or go look at books. I find things to do -- sometimes I go to activities, sometimes I play cards, sometimes I hang out in my room, sometimes I find friends to chat with, stuff like that. If you had to describe Explo as an object, what would it be? I know this has been said so many times, but I like the globe idea. There are people from all over the world and you're forced, not in a bad way, to meet and work with people internationally. In my living group are kids from Greece, in my classes are kids from France . . . it's really nice to see their lifestyle and so on. If you were an animal, what would you be? I've seen so many squirrels lately. I don't know, it's kind of random. My friends and I keep seeing squirrels all over the place, follow them around, so it would be interesting to see things from the squirrel's point of view. I've never seen so many squirrels in one place in my life. I'm not sure we have squirrels in California, or at least not this many. more conversations > first session \| second session