A Day in the Life of the 2021 Summer Seminar
You’re awoken by a glimmer of sunlight streaming through the window of your dorm room. “Finally, a sunny day!” you think as you prepare for another morning at the Summer Seminar. You head to breakfast and grab a takeout box of eggs, sausage, and hashbrowns prepared and served by a few familiar faces: several former Outer Coast Year students who returned to Sitka this summer to work in the Sitka Fine Arts Camp kitchen. It’s already getting warm out as you join the small but mighty “breakfast crew” eating in Smokestack (our student union). You discuss last night’s class readings and commiserate about this week’s early 7:45am Morning Roundup.
The rest of the cohort and staffulty trickle into Smokestack, and Morning Roundup begins with a quick Sun Salutation led by Academic and Residential Advisors (ARAs) Nirali and Grace. The pair then guide the group to the beach for a ceremonious ocean water face-splashing, inspired by Yotam’s passing comment that “a swim would be so nice right now.” Frank, Program Coordinator, announces upcoming events, including a Community Hour with Sitkan artist and educator Ilgavak and a weekend hike up Verstovia Mountain. After Roundup comes service, and you dash back to your room to put on hiking boots.
Ilgavak teaches students about sea otter ecology and Native subsistence at Whale Park
The bus departs for the 30-minute ride up Harbor Mountain, where you are maintaining and building trails with the US Forest Service. Your Service Coordinator, Claire, prompts a few questions for silent reflection during the drive: What have you enjoyed about service in the past two weeks? What has been challenging? What will you take home to your own community?
Already, you’ve worked on several service projects in Sitka: breaking ground on a new bike path off the Cross Trail, interviewing Brave Heart Volunteers, and working with the Sitka Fine Arts Camp groundskeeper, Gayle, to maintain the campus. Building a relationship with the Sitka community this way has felt important, and though hauling logs and shoveling gravel can get uncomfortable, the company of your fellow classmates, staffulty, and Sitka neighbors makes these four hours very worth it.
After hauling a backpack of wood a half mile down the trail, you take a last look at the view from atop Harbor Mountain before riding back down to campus, where lunch awaits at the Sweetland cafeteria.
Students and staffulty transport wood and gravel along the Harbor Mountain Trail
Stomach full, you cross the wooden footbridge on the way to the Yaw Arts building and walk into class. Faculty member Lizzie Krontiris is already there, and after exchanging greetings, you swap intel on where to find the ripest salmonberries around campus. Soon all your classmates have settled into the room, and so begins another day in Lizzie’s class, Wealth and Commonwealth. For the past few weeks you’ve been considering wealth, and specifically, how social structures shape wealth distribution. Today you’re examining “the commons.” Your peers lead small group discussions about the readings and then class shifts into cohort-wide dialogue: what is the concept of the commons? Is it compatible with capitalism? Feminism?
After class, you’re back in Smokestack for Community Study Session. You join peers Eli, Elliot, and Yotam for a group reading of the most challenging parts of tomorrow’s reading. After working your way through some passages from Marx, you move over to Trisha’s table to work on your course reflection project.
The project is one of three main academic pieces you will produce this summer, alongside two essays. It’s a chance to think about how the texts and conversations from class have influenced your thinking thus far, and how they might affect your life after Outer Coast.
You’re still mulling over ideas for your reflection project, but Trisha already has one.
“I took this class because I wanted to be more politically well-versed in the subject [of wealth], which is very relevant to my life because my parents own a business,” says Trisha. “I’m writing a hypothetical letter to my family about ideas of wealth and the importance of different perspectives.”
Around 4:45pm, you and Trisha pack up your things and head back to the dorms before dinner.
Students and staffulty enjoying dinner in Smokestack
In the Sweetland hallway you run into Robbey and get chatting about storytelling tomorrow — he’s working on a story about developing video game characters — and before you know it it’s already 5:30pm. You enter the dinner line, grab a compostable silverware packet from the bin (individually packaged for pandemic precautions), and make a mental note to pitch your reusable silverware idea at Student Body (SB) meeting tonight.
You sneak in a power nap after dinner and then it’s on to the Pit (the student lounge) for an SB meeting. Tonight at SB, you talk weekend events (a bonfire, sleepover, picnic, and dance party are all brewing) and pushing back class start time by half an hour.
As a member of both the Applications and Curriculum Committees, you have more work to do before you can call it a day. Most urgently, you need to read a faculty application before the applicant’s interview tomorrow, so you and fellow CurriComm member Eli walk to the pier for sunset watching and application reading.
It’s nearing midnight, and you’re finally in bed. Tomorrow will bring another whirlwind of activity, and in just one short week, commencement will arrive. You’re trying to soak it all in before it’s over, and with dreams of tomorrow morning’s coffee, you drift off to sleep.