FEATURE
Out of My Comfort Zone and Lovin’ It! Madeleine Kelly ’14, LA student
Senior Madeleine Kelly (at right in photo) spent her junior spring term at the Island School in the Bahamas. She shared with us her experience and the impact that it had on her. One afternoon, a few others and I were down by the docks skipping rocks along the shoreline. While the rest of us were able to skip the rocks across the water easily, my friend Charlie could not skip one. After a few minutes of watching Charlie try and fail, one of the others asked Charlie if he knew how to skip stones. “I can,” he replied comfortably. “I just haven’t yet.” That simple statement of quiet confidence summed up my entire experience at the Island School.
16 I FALL 2013
The Island School website states that they welcome high school students from all over the globe to participate in a unique experience. “With the campus and surrounding ocean as our laboratories, we partner with a world-class science research facility. Together, we engage in the process of inquiry in order to discover sustainable solutions to real world problems.” That’s all true, but to me, as a “survivor” of 100 days of the school’s sink-or-swim (both literally and figuratively) rigor, the Island School is a place that supports its students in a way that allows them to feel safe while pushing them to their limits. From the moment the 48 of us arrived at Cape Eleuthera, we were pushed academically, physically, and emotionally.
