by Cacique Anika
This morning, after waking up at 6:15, we all changed into our athletic shorts and bathing suits, ready to jump in the water or onto the road for round two of the half marathon and super swim. Just kidding! The day began with a light morning exercise. A short run to the marina and 15 minutes of stretching for the swimmers, and a jog around the clubhouse for the runners. After we all devoured a delicious breakfast, we changed into our uniforms for a grueling day of classes.
In English, we read our last pages of Omeros, an epic by Derek Walcott about his home country St. Lucia, and bid goodbye to the characters we had grown so fond of the past few months. I remember the first day I opened the book, and read the starting chapter about canoes, rum, ants, and tourists. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, and I was convinced that I would never be able to understand, or enjoy the book. Three months later, after discovering the symbolism behind Philoctete’s wound, journeying with Achille to his lost home in Africa, and spending countless classes trying to find out who the father of Helen’s child was, I can’t believe that our experience with Omeros has come to an end. It may have been frustrating trying to annotate difficult passages and identify the complex symbols throughout the epic, but the sense of accomplishment we all agreed we had gained through understanding Omeros is so gratifying.
In math, we scrambled around campus trying to find all the solar energy grids, documenting how many panels each had, what direction each was facing, and to what degree each grid was tilted. Connor and I spent a while figuring out which combination of aspects was most efficient in collecting solar energy, then tried to determine where the ideal location would be to place an additional grid. It’s going to be weird going to back to school in January and going back to traditional math problems, with a whiteboard in a closed classroom. Our math experience at Island School is so unique from any other math class, and all of us have learnt so much from going out and trying to solve genuine problems around campus using our math skills.
In art, we began to compile material for our portfolios,began to compile and in history we watched a TEDtalk about stepping back and solving problems. Many students were overjoyed at the thought that these were our last true Island School classes, and many others, like myself, were distraught at the thought that our semester was slowly coming to a close. During exploration, a few girls spent a relaxing afternoon on Boy’s Dorm Beach, writing postcards, reading, and tanning. Others biked to the marina store to grab a cold drink, or went exploring around high rock or 4th hole. As you can imagine, we were still pretty exhausted from our big events over the weekend, so there was a lot of napping and doing nothing too. Tomorrow morning, Forrest and I look forward to enjoying a nice sleep in for all of swim track, while run track gets psyched for an hour of yoga and stretching with a visiting yoga instructor.