In the summer of 2015, I attended the Virginia Governor's School for Humanities, a unique summer program that was championed as a "safe zone of free expression and intellectual curiosity" that will ultimately "change your life" by its alumni. A self-autonomous community.
The Governor's School days were fascinating. Staggering into the classroom and chewing the last of the tater tots from that day's breakfast, the students, sporting blood-shot eyes and caffeine-driven minds, would pull out their materials for the day. The Digital Ethnography teacher, sweeping in like the notorious Professor Snape right out of a Harry Potter book, would begin the class with a summary of the previous night's reading, discussing the paramount ideas of the articles and shooting incendiary questions.
The students, ranging from accomplished songwriter to potential valedictorian to national champion chess player, would become ignited. For the next few hours, the students would attack loopholes found in the reading, explore the author's rhetorical choices, and challenge fellow students’ ideas, creating a one-of-a-kind discussion. As the discussions morphed from topic to topic, ranging from the philosophical to the pragmatic, the students, exposed to a plethora of unique polemics, would create something indescribably beautiful: an intellectual community that thrived on the thoughts and ideas of its participants.
I was not one of those participants, at first.
I was too intimidated by the ingenious ideas my fellow classmates were putting forth, too reticent to share my seemingly inferior opinions. This made my first week a horrible experience, one brimming with feelings of loneliness and homesickness. I couldn't understand how to incorporate myself into a community with such precocious high schoolers, students that were the same age as me but leagues away in terms of critical thinking and intellect.
The first time the Discussion Round Table class professor called on me, I was mortified. I wanted to disappear into the ground. With a cherry red face and a wavering voice, I gave a one-sentence response regarding the unseen negative consequences of humanitarian aid for impoverished countries. And another sentence about the corruption that often laced humanitarian aids. And another after another, eyes reflecting my intellectual anticipation and voice broadcasting my growing confidence, I became a part of the discussion.
For the next two hours, my fellow peers and I would leech off of each other's ideas, twisting and unraveling convoluted questions and venturing into unanswerable territories. For the next three weeks, I assimilated myself into seminars with topics ranging from the effects of social media on students to the unseen truth behind attending top-tier universities to the Appalachian coal mining controversy. They were thought-provoking. They were alive. And I was finally a part of the community.
Not only was Governor's School an exemplary community, it was also family. We dressed in our penguin and rubber ducky print pajamas during late card-playing nights and devoured bag after bag of buttery popcorn. We fought over the last scrumptious snickerdoodle cookie, aggressively playing rock-paper-scissors to coronate the next cookie champion. We joined the boy delicately strumming his guitar, the girl singing a mellifluous harmony, and the entirety of the Governor's School community reaching towards the universe and singing "Hallelujah" under the star-blessed skies.
