My McCandless Project
This project had quite the variety of choices to pick from. I settled with project: Any day of the week, walk a completely different path to each class. Don't tell anyone ahead of time that you are doing this or why. My prediction of my experiment was that I would be late to most, if not all, my classes. The day I did it, I told Mrs. Belden, that if I would be late to class, not to worry. She knew exactly what I intended to do.
The experiment was not as bad as I thought, all of the different paths I had taken seemed to work and in only one class was I late, but for no more than 3 minutes. People seemed skeptical as they saw a new kid walking through a hallway he was completely new to. And the only teacher I had react was my biology teacher, noticing that I was late to class. After asking why, I only said "just doing a science experiment".
During the first new path I had taken, it was only logical that I would be anxious. Imagine me, who has never been late to school before, let alone a period! My mind was racing. Planning a strategy with nothing short of militaristic precision. I arrived at the first class of the day, and my mind began to ease. I had made it with minutes to burn. After having the exact results on the second and third class, I began to feel a little....cocky. Then the fourth class had come. I was happily strolling through the hall with the class room still quite a ways to go, but I was not worried as it surely would not be a total disaster, right? Before I knew the bell ringed and I was still nowhere near. I acted out of impulse and sprinted all the way to the class. Luckily the teacher had not started the lesson yet. I quickly acquired the class work, took out my homework and pencil, and sat down in my designated desk. I learned that day that I should never take anything that lightly, the teacher continued her explanation to that night's homework and the class resumed normally. All of the classes after that were not difficult to get to.
I was not surprised at the reaction of the people on hallways, as they were not expecting a new kid among their ranks. I WAS surprised at how lightly I took this at the beginning and swear I will never do it again, this is also not the first time I have taken something lightly and got burned in return.
I think that this project is a good idea, because it gives new readers (like myself) a chance to feel how Chris McCandless felt towards something completely alien to them. And we there they get awesome results or learn a valuable lesson the hard way, nevertheless, it is still a good educational experience.
-Andres Felix
