By: Katherine Waters, Staff Writer

This summer, I was working for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.  I was a counselor at a camp there. One day, we were sitting in training and we were learning about different types of mobility aids for people of low vision and people who are legally blind, which I am, and I learned that I have options. I don’t have to trip and fall, and I don’t have to be ashamed about it. It really changed the course of my life. And instead of trying to be ‘normal’ I can be myself and still be successful.–Holly Stevens, sophomore

When I was doing my Girl Scouts Gold Award, I ended up making an outdoor music classroom for a school that catered to kids with learning disabilities. It was a lot of fun, and it only took me two months to get all the paperwork through and get it made. And I’ve worked with special needs kids before; we had a Down syndrome Brownie troop for girls around the age of seven and eight. I actually picked up sign language because one of the girls was mute, and I didn’t want to have her parents keep coming over and interpret what she wanted, so I took up sign language and had two years of it at school.–Grace Allen, freshman

I studied abroad in London last semester and it was so weird going from the 1600-person campus where you know everybody to a huge metropolis where you have to do a 30 minute commute to class. It was crazy, but at the same time I loved it. I want to live in a big city, and I love the vibe where there’s always something going on and there’s so much to do. I’m an anglophile, and I want to live in London at some point in the future, so it was kind of a trial run for me to see if I really want to live there and if it would work for me. –Katherine Schwarzentraub, junior