By Vanessa Leung ‘25
Every Friday, an email sent out containing a Google Slides document provides a preview of the following weekend's activities. Documents will be open for sign-ups to trips outside of school usually after lunch. Once students sign up they will convene at the front circle where transportation is provided to the designated location. A time period of 45 minutes to an hour and a half will be allotted for the students to spend. After that students will be transported back. For weekend activities happening at school students simply have to show up at the specified place and time to participate.
Weekend trips usually contain trips to Target, Natick mall, and to festivals or places slightly farther away where students have the opportunity to experience the culture and environment around them. On campus activities also include fun choices such as painting, decorating donuts, making pies, karaoke and so on.
Perhaps the only point of frustration that many students share is the way that signups are held. Giving students access to edit the Google Slides is an efficient way of allowing students to sign up by simply adding their names on the list, but this also means the possibility of students deleting other students' names to make space for themselves. While this action is really unfair towards the students who signed up early, there is no solution to this and the person that modified the list of names can not be easily found. The only way is for people to trust each other and to respect the ones who already entered their names. Online sign ups might not be the most effective way of signing up, but it is the best for now.
Another suggestion is for the slides to include an esitmate how much time the trip might take, because oftentimes students might underestimate the time period the trip takes and lose time they planned on doing something else.
All of these activities and trips outside of school have been really fun and enjoyable. Trips are a great opportunity for students to hang out with their friends in different settings rather than only school, and school activities are a great way of showing that our school is not just for academics. The balance between locations that sell necessities and places that provide entertainment in weekend trips are great.
