Today is the first day in a long time I have gone to sleep and woken up cold. It has rained for the last three days almost non-stop, and I am starting to forget where I am. Not so sunny for the Land of Sun and Sea. Despite the cold, wet weather, the final weeks of Island School are still moving along. While we have Eleutheros papers and math assessments on the horizon, the thing on everyone’s mind is the long run and swim. With only a few days remaining before the event, our morning workouts have become more mellow with the intention of resting before the weekend. By mellow I mean in our swim workout we only had to swim against the current once or twice, rather than the entire time. Even though everyone is fairly nervous about completing the final event, I am confident that the semester’s worth of training we have done will help us accomplish our goals. As long as it doesn’t rain all weekend…

Yesterday students spent an hour and a half preparing for their final Demonstration of Learning that is coming up next week. Our DOL is meant to replace traditional assessments like final exams with a more creative and open ended assignment. With no restrictive structure or format, DOL typically include both academic and extra-curricular experiences, and are presented in a wide variety of forms. My idea is to take my audience on a tour of my favorite places on the Cape and weave in my personal and intellectual growth into the trip. These presentations are meant to show our peers and faculty what information has stuck with us over the course of the semester, without putting the whole audience to sleep.

Even with the rain, our community celebrated Matt’s birthday yesterday with multiple rounds of “Happy Birthday” and a delicious chocolate cake. Everyone made it to the dining hall right on time even though it was pouring rain, maybe they should offer us sweets more often if they want us to be punctual.

While everyone would prefer sun, a little rain doesn’t faze the Island School community in the slightest. It can rain all it wants, just more water for our cisterns.