From Zug, Switzerland to Washington, D.C. to Kansas City, Missouri, students went everywhere T2.
By Cate Pitterle ’20
Highlighting their academic work with unforgettable experiential learning, three groups of students traveled outside NC borders last trimester—and some even got to hear Chief Justice John Marshall say “ok, boomer” out loud.
Loren Troan (’20) was one of fourteen students traveling to Washington, D.C., as part of the Campus Conservatives club. He said of entering the Supreme Court before oral arguments to Babb v. Wilkie, “Just entering the courtroom gave me such a sense of gravitas and history. I didn’t even need to be told to be quiet, my voice started hushing on its own.”
The club met personally with Justice Clarence Thomas before finishing the trip with a visit to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative lobbying group. Coming into that visit, Troan said, “my perception [of lobbying groups] was of more dark, smoky rooms in the middle of the night, but the room we were in was bright, it had a view of the capital, and it seemed more open and transparent than I had initially envisioned.”
Kailey Wrege (’20), who organized the trip, wrote on her blog of the experience that “I have stories and experiences that I’ll be sharing with my grandchildren.”
The dialogue continued with a trip to Zug, Switzerland, for an “international conference inspired by the gathering of Global Shapers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland the following week,” Mr. Palmer Seeley, who went on the trip, explained. Six students “representing a broad spectrum of student passions at CA from climate change to gender equity to service learning to artificial intelligence” were selected to attend, according to Mr. Seeley.
The yearbook staff took a trip of their own, seemingly to the middle of nowhere—Kansas City—before discovering a wintery metropolis not that different from Raleigh. They toured Walsworth’s printing factory, seeing how books are put together in real time. “We saw how they made all the different colors and we saw the rolls of foil, and it was really colorful and fun,” said Christina Mangelsdorf (’20). “My favorite thing was watching the printing presses go through and just print off hundreds of thousands of pages. It was very mesmerizing.”
They also visited the Walsworth office, where they learned how the marketing and design skills used in yearbook could apply to jobs, looked through dozens of yearbooks for inspiration, and formulated new recruiting strategies for next year.
“Watching that final step of the actual printing of the book made the entire project come full circle and made the book and our work come alive,” said yearbook advisor Ms. Bonnie Dodwell. ”As a result of the experience, the staff and myself can look at the process on a much more professional level.”