senior program summer site : conversations : second session



	layla from new york (8/6) Layla is a New Yorker in her first year at Explo. She's a residential student going into 10th grade and she loves the arts. She also speaks four languages! And since she's been at Explo, she's been inspired to try even more. With the end of the session approaching, she says she'll be sad to go. What's your favorite course? Well, I'm taking art history and creative writing. I like them equally because I like artsy stuff. What have you been doing in creative writing? The first week the instructor would give us prompts -- like the beginning of the story, then we'd have to complete it -- and we put all of our little stories in a magazine kind of format. Last week, we worked on poetry, so the instructor would give us subjects and we'd have to write about them. This week, we're doing a multi-genre project where we have to make a story but in five different formats. It could be like a letter, a journal entry, an article in a newspaper, a picture, anything. What was the magazine you mentioned for your first work? We each got half a page and then we Xeroxed them and handed them out to the entire class. What's been your favorite aspect of the class so far? My strong point is poetry, but it was good having to practice doing other genres because that's where I need practice. What are you doing for your final project? Well, we had a choice between a collection of poems or the multi-genre project, so I decided to do the collection of poems and we're handing them in on Thursday. What have you written about in your poems? A lot of different things. Like how hectic life can be when you live in New York City, to friends, to family, and just everything really. What about art history? How's that going? Art history is a really big subject so you can't cover it in three weeks. The first week we kind of went over how to analyze art, and we went through different styles of art and when they began. The second week, we started kind of getting into how to analyze art the right way and how to describe it first without expressing personal opinion, which is hard. This week, we're doing a curator project where we're making our own showing of contemporary pieces and I think it's showing on Thursday. We're taking contemporary artists from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. It's based on different media used to make each of the art pieces. Sounds fantastic! So tell me, have you found it difficult to meet people at the Senior Program? Not at all. I'm really good friends with the people in my suite because I live with them, and there are so many kids here that I've been meeting new people, like, every single day. I don't think it's hard to make friends at all. Do you have any special trick for meeting people? No, I'm just very loud and spontaneous, so people tend to, like, come to me to tell me to be quiet . . . and then we just end up being friends. What's been your favorite thing at Explo so far? It's hard to say just one; I have multiple. I love quad time because I'm really social and I get to hang out with people then. And I really loved the hypnotist; that was amazing! I've never seen something so crazy before. I didn't really believe it was real until the hypnotist went to work and got these people to do all kinds of things I don't know if they'd ever do otherwise. He convinced this one kid that he was like a defender of fruit, so the guy would try to eat a piece and the kid would get all mad. But then he switched it so the kid hated fruit and was really hungry so he started eating it. Then the hypnotist made him love fruit again and the kid was so upset, he was trying to give the fruit CPR! Have you been encouraged to try new things since you've been at Explo? Well, I never really play volleyball, but here I've been playing with my friends sometimes . . . and I definitely think I'm getting a little better, so I'm going to play more. I also really want to learn more languages. I speak four already, but I want to learn even more so I can communicate well with everybody. What languages do you speak? I speak English, French, Spanish, and Farsi, which is the language of Iran, where my parents are from. I want to learn Arabic, German . . . Wow, cool. So what are you going to miss most about Explo? Definitely the people. There are so many cool people here that it will be sad to leave them. The last week is difficult because you have to think about saying goodbye, which is sad, so you try to just have as much fun as possible and not think about it ending too much. I could definitely see myself here for another three weeks. If you had to describe Explo as an object, what would it be? A globe. It's so international and it goes around so quickly and there's so much going on. If you were an animal, what would you be? A cheetah. They're agile and they seem cool. more conversations > first session \| second session