For the last few years, freshmen have participated in seminar. The graduating class of 2026 was the first class to have seminar, and the class of 2029 continues this tradition three years later. Freshmen Grace Karam and senior Miles Ingram shared their opinions on the value of this activity.

Karam mentioned how helpful seminar was for getting to know about opportunities, as she learned about the Science Research program from it. She also discussed how helpful it was in introducing her to “the community service program, how midterms would work and some of the courses in our school.”

However, Ingram had a different experience. He shared seminar was “only really useful for getting to know my counselor.” This may have been because it was the first year of the program; there are now many things to do and learn during seminar.

For both seminar classes, they met every other week in similar locations. Common locations were the College and Career Center, G121, B1, the auditorium and some other A building classrooms. Karam shared she often had a consistent room, differing from Ingram’s altering locations based on the week.

Senior Miles Ingram also shared there were often mindfulness and breathing activities at the start of meetings. He stated, “The PowerPoint that they would make for us would always have a mindfulness activity before whatever else we were working on that day.” In this past year of seminar, there were not a lot of mindfulness activities, something that definitely could be brought back to next year’s seminar.

Overall, seminar is very helpful, specifically with interacting with your school counselor and learning more of the many opportunities this school offers. Seminar has stayed pretty consistent over the years but has definitely adapted to better meet the needs of freshmen, helping to give everyone equal opportunities.