Rajani plans on studying to be a veteranarian in the future, but right now she is focused on her immediate surroundings. The current events of the world have left her determined to learn more so she can help understand and resolve world conflicts.
I did a couple other summer camps, but I wanted to do something local this summer and I found Explo at Yale. What attracted me was the big variety of courses! I’m taking First Aid Training, Public Speaking, Pilates, and Terrorism.
I came to this program to learn something different and something I wouldn’t normally get to study in depth at school, like the Terrorism workshop. There's no textbooks in Explo’s classes — we debate, and we use the Explo’s ECDM conversation technique. It really helps our debates in our classes, to keep things organized. Today, our instructor proposed a question, ‘What can we do to tackle terrorism?’ He then followed the question with a speech from President Obama — his response to the San Bernardino shooting — and then we debated that. That lead us to bring up the upcoming election — Donald Trump’s views and Hillary Clinton’s views. The class is very current events-based. We also discussed the tragedy in France.
I feel like in school we do not have time to talk about the world issues that we will have to deal with because we're studying so many other subjects at the same time. I get to vote, not in this election, but in the one after that. I am taking these classes to educate myself about what's going on around me so I can form an opinion off of more than just textbook definitions. We see attacks happening in France and Orlando, but I feel like people who don’t go to Explo don’t get the chance to talk it out as much. They see it on their phones, they think about it for a little and think it's sad, but they do not really process what steps they should be taking to solve the problem. It was really amazing to have two people from France in our class and hear their point of view on the current events from a firsthand perspective. When I go home, I’ll definitely share with my friends and family that at Explo, I have explored a topic that I wouldn’t have normally, with people from around the world.
Rae Keyser