A question I am asked constantly. There are so many different things we do everyday it’s hard to believe that some things that happened 12 hours apart were even in the same day. When I was a potential student, I remember wanting to know what a daily schedule is here, coming from another student. And the secret is, we never do the same thing everyday. Every single day is a new adventure.
At 6:15am, Girl’s North Dorm wakes up blasting music to get the day going. Its early, but its so exciting waking up because the day is full of adventures and opportunities.
At 6:30am we head to circle, and the caciques (student leaders of the week) and faculty make some announcements and then we head off to our designated track: run or swim. I’m a runner, and our typical track is about 4 miles daily, but the courses are always different. Some days instead of our tracks we do psychos, bizarros, or run swims (all things you will learn the meaning of at The Island School). On Saturdays we get the option of yoga or a team sport (ultimate frisbee, soccer, water polo, etc) and it’s an awesome start to the weekend.
7:30am we have chores, a group of about 3-5 of us in our designated spots for the semester playing music and making the campus spotless.
At 7:50am we have personal space, and basically we just make our beds and put away clothes. You’d be surprised how messy Girls Dorm can get in 24 hours.
8:15am is finally breakfast! We get so much done before 8AM, but it’s so cool because we still have the whole day ahead of us. Personally, my favorite day is Oatmeal Friday’s. Don’t miss it.
9:15am classes start-we have two 90 minute blocks but they go by fast.
Lunch is at 12:15pm, and typically at meals it only takes 20 minutes to eat, so I usually go back upstairs and hammock or start my homework for the next day.
At 1:15pm we have more classes, usually 90 minute blocks again but it varies. On Mondays and Wednesdays we have research class and that goes until dinner. But occasionally we have things like beach clean up, World Cup, or gym class with the Deep Creek Middle School. These are always the best days.
On days we don’t have research, 4:15pm is exploration time. Usually that would be Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (because we still have school on Saturdays!!) Explo is my favorite part of the day because it gives you a chance to explore outside of the Island School bubble. One piece of advice: never EVER do homework during explo. My motto is “we didn’t come to Island School to do homework all the time.”
6:00pm is circle again, where we regroup and start to settle down for the night. We have dinner at 6:15pm, and then after we typically have the whole night to relax and do homework. The workload here isn’t too bad but you should know how to manage your time well.
10:00pm is check-in, where everyone has to be upstairs but can still be doing homework. At 10:30pm all the lights are out. Although 10:30 seems early, the day is so exhausting it’s almost too late. I haven’t even seen 11:00pm.
This is our daily schedule from Monday to Saturday. On Sunday we get the entire day to ourselves until 6:00pm with an optional freedive in the morning. Of course this isn’t what the entire 100 days looks like though, because there is only a short snippet of time that we have a structured schedule. Like I said before, The Island School is 100 days of continuous adventures, and like snowflakes, there are no two days alike.