What We Don’t See Coming
Nobody is ever truly prepared for dealing with tragedy; you certainly don’t expect it with a week left before graduation. You never know when tragedy can strike, but the reality is that it can happen anytime. For most high school seniors, the last days of the school year are spent doing the senior project. However, this last year, that’s not what any of my classmates got.
The senior project isn’t anything special and it’s not particularly hard, but you need to pass it to graduate. The assignment was to intern at a company and work with a mentor to get real life experience in that field of work. People can get mentors of any kind. A few people got internships at hospitals, others got internships at local businesses, and some people worked with the police forensics division. I got my internship at a farm
The farm I worked on was small. It didn’t have a lot of land, but it did have quite a few animals. There were roosters, dogs, cats, rabbits, goats, and sheep. Each animal had its own enclosure or place to rest or lay eggs. Every morning I would park my car and walk through a herd of noisy roosters to get to the dogs that were happy to greet me everyday. On my way by, a cat usually poked its head outside the shed door to see what was going on. After greeting the dogs, I would walk by the smelly rabbit cage to the back of the property where there was a small pasture for the goats and sheep. The sheep tended to stay with their family, but the goats were more curious and would trot over to say hi. It was always fun to see the animals.
The overall goal of the farm was to educate. If you visited the farm, like the girl scouts and college students that did, you can learn all about the animals and the unique buildings on the farm. Each animal has a purpose on the farm and all of them contribute to the maintenance of the farm. For example, the goats and sheep feed on the grass of their pasture, doing the job of mowing the lawn for you. Besides the animals, there were also many opportunities to learn about green technology. Green technology is an important part of the farm as well. Green technology is all about recycling and repurposing materials so that the overall cost of energy to maintain the farm is low. For example, the roof of one of the living spaces was made of compost and hay. The compost added structural support and the hay absorbs water so that the plants at the base of the building don’t drown when it rains. Also, all of the wood used for the housing was wood thrown away by local wood mills and other farmers. All of these interesting facts, and much more, were things I learned while working on the farm.
There’s another part of the senior project as well. Not only did I have to intern at the farm, but I also had to make a presentation about the farm to my teachers. The presentation was supposed to include all that I had learned and what the opportunity meant for me in terms of a possible career. I am not particularly interested in farming, but the presentation isn’t hard to make. However, I was only halfway through my internship at the farm when catastrophe rapidly struck like a flash of light. Four seniors driving a car lost control and crashed into a tree, killing two.
The people that were in the car went to a different school, so I didn’t know them well. However, one thing that was scary was that the kids that died were captains for their sports. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but I found out later that I had shaken the hands of the two a week before at a lacrosse game. I shook the hand of a dead man and I suddenly felt a feeling I had never felt before. The feeling of losing someone you know is a feeling I’ve experienced before, but I’ve never shook a person in the hand and then seen their obituary in the news a week later. I was surprised. I was awe struck. I was mortified.
To make matters worse, my mentor was a teacher at the school where those seniors went. This made her completely unavailable and, again, I was only half way through my internship, so I had to find a way to finish it. I talked with my teachers and we decided that the best course of action was for me to continue with my project alone. Basically, what they were asking of me was to finish the entire project in half the time. Researching green technology was the only way I would be able to finish on time to graduate. Research papers were never an easy part of high school. Often I try to include too much information and I end up having to delete everything the day before it’s due and start all over. But now, there was no time for mistakes, I had to get it right the first time.
My research took me to a couple parks several miles away and to a farm that was a couple states away. The parks featured little rotundas that had pamphlets about green technology and recycling and shared some of their projects going on. I interviewed a person from the farm and found out many interesting and peculiar facts. The interview itself was a new experience for me and it wasn’t a comfortable experience, even though I was sitting in the most comfortable chair in my house. Nonetheless, the interview had to be done. Overall, I ended up gathering lots of information about both the farm and the parks, which gave me everything I needed for the paper.
When I eventually got to the writing process, I had only the night to complete it. I remember frantically sorting through all the facts and notes I took on an attempt to get organized. To write effectively, I needed to make an outline so that my thoughts could be structured. I quickly came up with a plan and by the time I actually started writing it was already ten P.M. By reaching far into the depths of my mind, I was able to layout everything onto paper at breakneck speed. For each park and the farm, I had to present the important pieces of information, explain it, and explain why it’s significant. I don’t remember very much about writing the actual paper, but I remember looking up at the clock and seeing eleven P.M. and then looking up again what I thought was a few seconds later and seeing one A.M. Time was flying by and I needed to finish up. Eventually, I did. All the strenuous work I put into this project finally came to its conclusion, and I was ready to go to bed.
Looking back at the experience, I can’t believe what had happened. The students who died had their own colleges to look forward to, new places to see and new people to meet. Forever their families will be stuck at home with this tragedy always in their minds. I never want to be in the same frenzied situation this event put me in. I do always feel very fortunate that my life gets to continue on the way it has been, full of happiness, hope and prosperity. I just hope that our lives will not be disrupted again by what we don’t see coming.
See My Reflection Here