All freshmen got to participate in the STEM Summit on Friday, November 4.

  The purpose of STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering, and math, is to introduce freshmen to new career options that they may not have given a second thought about pursuing in the future. It shows students that science and math related jobs are not all dull.

  Although freshman Lilly Denis was expecting the day to be boring, she found it to be more exciting than she thought.

  “I was expecting it to be a lot of lecturing about our future, and what we should be doing with our lives, but it was more hands on and interesting,” said Denis.

  Freshman Natalie Thomas had a similar view.

  “It was more fun than I thought it would be because I thought it would just be them talking the entire time, and instead we got to have hands on activities,” said Thomas.

 There were many activities that day that ranged from biology labs to electricity experiments.

  Freshman Eric Schwanke enjoyed the physics station the most out of all the activities. There were different experiments that showcased how physics worked.

  “I really enjoyed the physics section because it was something very fun that still taught us something, and I learned more about how physics works,” said Schwanke.

  Denis’ favorite station was the relay race, which was definitely a popular station among students.

  “I liked the relay race because you had to work with your teams to finish different tasks at a certain speed. And you had to do it fast to win and it was fun,” said Denis.

  There were some activities that students found less interesting. Thomas had a strong opinion about which station was her least favorite, and it was certainly one of the less popular stations.

  “My least favorite part was the people talking about their jobs because I don’t really care,” said Thomas. “And, there were two people for every career, so we heard the exact same thing twice.”

  Denis had some ideas for how STEM could be improved based on the activities that were not as liked by students.

  “I think that they could have taken away one of the career lectures where they just tell us about our jobs because we don’t really need more than one. It was more than one of the same person for each job, and they just said the same things, so we had to sit through the same things twice,” said Denis. “I think that they should have showed us or demonstrated more of what they do in their jobs, so that it would be more hands-on and interesting for us. I think that way we would learn more and we could really see what that job is like.”

  Overall, STEM was a positive experience for most students, and they all had more fun than they expected with the hands-on experiments.