2016 School Magazine

HARVARD

Along with three of our Girls Grammar sisters, we boarded a plane, terrified yet ecstatic for what our month in Boston would hold for us. It's safe to say that the month we spent at Harvard was by far a life changing experience. Every day brought a plethora of things to do, see and try, whether it be spontaneous or organised in a group. We spent the month at the stunning Harvard Law School campus, in a small section known as Dane Hall, visiting Salem, Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, the breathtaking Harvard Stadium, Boston Common gardens and many other landmarks around Boston over the four weeks. The diversity among the 52 students in attendance of the newly created 'College Experience in Boston' program, left us with a huge variety of personalities which provided indulging and interesting conversations, with endless topics to discuss. Majoring in medicine, we learned copious amounts, about the heart, blood, different specialties in medicine and much more from our incredible teacher, Dr. Rob Koch, and even took our blood types, dissected a heart and investigated reflexes in the human body. This spectacular experience left us with life long friendships, a new found love for baseball, and incredible knowledge about the human body and different ways to succeed in the medical science profession. ANNABELLE STUBBS (11R) AND BROOKE HEILIG (11R)

UCLA No matter how much preparation I could have gathered prior, I never would have expected to come back from the best month of my life complete with lifelong friends from all over the world. One other Brisbane Girls Grammar School student and I were the first students from our School to have the privilege of attending the Los Angeles Oxbridge course at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2016. For someone who has had the opportunity of visiting the United States previously, I was excited to be able to live within Los Angeles and experience student life and everything that came along with it. I chose to study Acting, and Entrepreneurialism: Beyond Silicon Valley, two contrasting subjects that I engaged in and enjoyed throughout the month. Being based in LA, I found these subject choices were perfectly fitting. For example, my acting teachers, Amanda Jaros and Laura-Jean Salerno, were real working actors who had auditions for commercials and major feature films while we were there! In acting we looked more at the Hollywood side with television, films and commercials. This was a style very different to what I have experienced at school. Entrepreneurialism was

very different and we had to create our own business in groups. My group's business Bone-Appetite was based around the idea that here in Los Angeles, people will buy anything for their little lap dogs, although our idea seemed comical to the rest of the students, our sales pitch was voted the best out of the class by our teacher and guest Virtual Reality entrepreneur. Outside of class we were able to participate in multiple activities across the city. We were fortunate enough to visit a Dodgers game on Fourth of July, shop down Rodeo Drive, get a tan in Malibu, embrace the amazing atmosphere in Venice Beach and for me especially, spend a magical birthday at Disneyland. This experience is something I will never forget and the knowledge I gained over that 'summer' will stay with me throughout my life. More importantly the friends I gained from the experience are lifelong and even now, a good month and a half after my trip I still get to talk to them every day.

TIANA VILLAESCUSA (11H)

CO-CURRICULUM / 111