Any reports from the current CTY sessions?

09xoxo
Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:18:56 +0000

I went to first session this year and took Crafting the Essay. It was my fifth year (and final year by choice)at the CTY program. In the past I’ve taken Inductive and Deductive Reasoning, Model United Nations and Advance Geography, Ethics, and Logic: Principles of Reasoning. The first two were at the younger students camp.
At the younger students camp, there is a lot of RA supervision. At the two sites I went to, you weren’t allowed out of your building unless your RA brought you out to have fun. Most of the free time was spent talking and playing cards. However there is only an hour or two of free time each day, so it’s not a big deal. THere are a lot of planned activities and such and it’s not easy to get bored.
At the older students camp (7th grade and above), there is less RA supervision. Between 7:30 and 9:45, whenever there is free time, you are allowed to roam around a specific part of campus, usually a field or a quad. You walk by yourself to class, meals, and at some sites, activities, but are required to attend all of them. A lot of time is spent talking, fooling around, and frisbee and four-square are really popular.
Academic-wise, I find it hard to measure how much you really learn in a writing or a humanities course. I have to say however, I was never gifted in writing, and most of my writing skills come from taking 4 years worth of humanities at CTY. In the math course, I was overprepared, having taken algebra before that summer, but I still learned a lot. I learned how to do proofs, think outside of the box, and a lot of random stuff.

I love CTY. It’s my second home, and the friends you meet there are amazing. I think the best part about it is the social life.