Summer: when the sun shines, birds chirp, and students escape the humdrum of everyday school life. You might find some Aragon students relaxing under a tree, reading a good book. You might find some students in their houses with the curtains drawn, watching Netflix. Still others might be working at a local Icicles, and some might have gotten an internship at a prestigious tech institution.
But no matter how much you look, you won’t find all Aragon students hanging around in the Bay Area; in fact, you could look all around the country and you still wouldn’t find them. These students have accepted scholarships from the Council of International Education Exchange, or CIEE, and have gone to study abroad. Through e-mails, school announcements and ambassadors, CIEE offers students the opportunity to study outside of their home countries, often on scholarship money. This past summer, a handful of Aragon students received a total of $40,090 to travel overseas and study.
Senior Alex Corkery, another scholarship recipient, travelled to the Dominican Republic to mentor impoverished children. Her experience focused more on volunteer work than sit-down classes; she only had one Spanish class per week.
“Each week, we were at a different place,” Corkery said. “One week, we were leaders at a summer camp. We just played games with the kids and painted with them. The camp was to stop child labor. It is a huge problem in the Dominican Republic. The camp showed them that they can have a childhood and they don’t have to support their family.”
One of the ways the children earned money for their families was collecting bottles from a mountain of trash and turning them in to the government for around 5 cents each.
Corkery said she was surprised how exceptionally happy the children were despite their impoverished living conditions.
“It was just crazy for them to be such happy kids when they have nothing. It changed me as a person to see them being happy- it made me feel like working with them was making a difference,” Corkery said.
Junior Neel Sardana found himself in Berlin, Germany, studying international entrepreneurship.
“We would go out and do market research, interview people on the street, ask them if they would buy our product and get feedback on what we can do to improve our products,” Sardana said.
Studying in Berlin gave Sardana the chance to explore an international market and solve issues unique to the city.
“We designed an app,” Sardana said. “Berlin is a city that’s really known for small businesses. So our app promoted shopping locally.”
Sardana was given the chance to operate on his own with little adult assistance. He was given a weekly allowance from the program leaders and nothing else, neither food nor supplies. He was expected to buy them and manage his finances on his own.
“I felt really independent in the way that I had maximum control over my own life, and that I had to buy everything I needed for the program myself,” he said.
The program ended with a Shark Tank-style business pitch to entrepreneurs in which Sardana’s team won the prize for most likely to be funded.
Senior Samantha Wen’s scholarship took her to the jungles of Costa Rica, where she studied tropical biodiversity. For Wen, contrary to the humdrum sit-down classes that are typical for summer programs, every day was an adventure.
“We would go on crazy adventures [such as] snorkeling, climbing a 132 foot trees, rappelling down waterfalls, going to animal reserves, canoeing, cliff diving, going to volcanoes and much more,” she said. “The program said it would be in Monteverde, but we traveled all around the country the entire trip because it is so small it is easy to get around.”
Through these daily excursions, Wen learned the importance of biodiversity and factors that threaten it.
“Most of the time class was interactive and outdoors, where we could get a closer look at the animals in their natural habitat,” she said. “We did have some classes inside where we learned more about what biodiversity is and how to help protect it and the earth.”
Wen’s final project was to create a short documentary compiling all she had learned about the importance of biodiversity and how to protect it.
Wen said she valued the connections she made with other people.
“Even if you are shy and think it’s hard to meet new people, it’s really easy on this trip because you are sharing incredible experiences with them,” she said “We spend a lot of our time just bonding with each other by just talking about our lives and telling fun stories or playing card games or playing sports on the beach. I honestly don’t think I have connected with a group as fast as I have with this one.”
