Mason, whose favorite piece of history is "all of it," sat down to discuss how his class on medieval sieges has taught him about history's biggest lesson: learning from your mistakes.

My favorite course here is Medieval Mayhem. We mostly discuss the history of sieges and we learned a lot about the Romans against the Gallic Empire. I think all the information will really help us when we have our own siege next week. We’re building a huge castle that has walls, towers, a sliding door — all for the siege. When it happens, we’ll be battling the Battle Contraptions course and seeing if they can destroy our castle with trebuchets and things.

I also love the class so much because history is my favorite subject in school. I like learning about the past because, you know, a lot of people say it’s important so the world can learn from its mistakes.

I think it’s definitely important that you learn from your own mistakes, too. At EXPLO, it’s a good place to be able to do that. Nobody ever criticizes you if you make a mistake in your classes here. There are so many ideas that get thrown around from all the students all the time...all the mistakes are kind of a part of the process.

It’s definitely better to make mistakes here than in school because you don’t have tests and stuff that you only have one chance to do well on. If you make a mistake on a test, you never get that time back. Here, if you make a mistake, you’ll always have a chance to try again. Like, for example, wall ball here is taken pretty seriously. But if you are on the court and you get distracted and end up not paying attention, all your friends will let you re-do the point.