 My favorite thing about Summer Ventures was probably the people. It's not all about like staying in a classroom. It gets a lot more. It's a lot of hands-on experience. It's just the whole atmosphere is very relaxed and chill. I feel like I've made my best friends there and I still talk to them to this day. I have loved it so much. Summer Ventures in Science and Mathematics is a cost-free, state-funded four-week program that immerses high school students in a college experience on one of the University of North Carolina's five participating campuses. Every summer, academically talented rising juniors and seniors with an interest in science and mathematics, live together in dorms, study with some of the best minds in the country, and have access to millions of dollars in labs and recreation equipment. All while having the time of their lives. Basically, everything I'd heard is that it was a lot of fun. At Summer Ventures, everyone's completely different. There are people from all over the state, from different backgrounds. It's just so many new things you can learn about people there. My homeschool didn't have a lot of resources that I could use and being offered the chance to go to a university campus and try something I was interested in sounded like a great idea. So the first day or two, I didn't really want to talk to people that much and I was just kind of, I don't know, I didn't really know how to approach people. But then I guess the ice breakers and everything, we had a lot of activities that were meant to help you out with that. We had a lot of games on campus. We did hunts around campus to find things for prizes. We did a lot of fun things. And they really wanted to make sure that everyone got to know each other even before we split up into our individual classes. Okay, let's put their hands closer now. Before I went, I was thinking that I was going to be in way over my head academically. I didn't know what kind of program it was if they were going to demand so much of me and I was just going to sort of fall flat on my face at the very beginning. The teachers were really enthusiastic and they were funny. They tried to make the material like relevant to our own lives and all the kids were really cool. My friends thought that Summer Ventures would be a nerd camp. I came back with a lot of pictures and a lot of stories and they were kind of jealous. I really liked the dorm life. That was actually my first dorm experience. The dorms are actually really nice. They're big and they all set sinks in it. I missed my pants a little but it was kind of nice just to be able to conduct myself without them around and see how I handle myself. My typical day was waking up at seven in the morning, getting ready, brushing our teeth, getting dressed and then we would head off to Wagner Hall for breakfast and then we would walk the class at 8 a.m. and our instructors would usually give us a lecture at the beginning about what we were going to do that day and we were going to talk about where we were going to go and since I was in Coastal Geology class, we would usually go to the beach to look up our things, get on the van, listen to some music, look outside and just head to the beach. My research project was on organic life in the marshes and how water content affected that organic life and so I worked with another girl on this project in the marshes and we would collect samples every few meters or so and then we would take the samples back to the lab and we would dry the sand in the oven and we would sift it and we would examine its contents and so we could tell from the amount of organic life and water how the water affected what creatures were living in the marshes and it was really interesting because we got to explore organic life which is interesting because animals are pretty cool and we got to go in the marshes which was crazy because they're knee-deep in muck and water and they were tides and we had to time everything just right and it was hot and it was just crazy but we had a lot of fun working in the marshes. Every day I woke up I was excited to go to class. It's not something that I got to do every day. I got to work with forensics and we were studying forensic taphonomy and taphonomy is decomposition rates and how the weather and other environmental factors affects how a body decomposes. It really got me interested in physical anthropology just sort of the different parts of the body and how they work and that kind of thing especially in the field of osteology with the bones and things like that. It was really nice. I learned math that I would have never learned at school. There was a game called the divisor game and we were trying to figure out which prime numbers you would use to get the highest score. We came up with a formula to find out what would be the numbers you pick and it was kind of frustrating sometimes but it was just kind of a good feeling to know that I came up with a formula for math. This is just a tiny sample of the types of topics students study at Summer Ventures. The course offerings encompass a broad range of topics across many disciplines. Students are encouraged to think independently in this hands-on environment and challenge themselves by focusing on a specific topic and participating in individual research projects. At the end of the program they present their findings. I wasn't really expecting anything that happened to be there. It happened at all. I met all these new people from all across the state. I got to work with instructors and professors that I never would have had the chance to work with. I got to learn about something new and present an entire presentation on it in front of all my parents and friends. And I also got to do all kinds of really exciting activities. No matter which campus you attend, Summer Ventures is the experience of a lifetime. I would recommend Summer Ventures because for one thing it allows you to get out of your comfort zone. The experiences and what I went through there is something that I'll never forget and so I'm just really glad that I went to Summer Ventures. The experience, it goes by so quickly. It's just something that you've got to do. You learn so much not only about school or academics but you learn a lot about yourself. It was cool. It was just fun.