By Tatiana ’21
One of the best parts of our Student Ambassador program is giving prospective students the opportunity to shadow student ambassadors for a day. This gives applicants an idea of how a typical day in the life of an HW student works as well as any of the spontaneous events that can happen that make your day more interesting. Sadly, the pandemic and subsequent stay-at-home orders have made true “shadow days” impossible so I figured I would share a day in my life as a Harvard-Westlake senior through this entry to somewhat makeup for it.
I started my Friday at 7:00am when my alarm went off. My first class would usually start at 8:30am but my teacher decided to let us work asynchronously so I did not have to officially be on zoom until 10:00am. I did, however, decide to start work early since I was already awake and ready for the day. Starting at 8:00am, I began a worksheet that was assigned alongside a video on the Biology of Skin Color and how it provides evidence for evolution—this was for my Honors Ecology and Evolution Course. I submitted the worksheet by 9:00am and then went to make breakfast. During my sophomore and junior years, I ate breakfast at school (my personal favorite meal being a breakfast burrito), but now that I am home, I am partial to a good bowl of cinnamon oatmeal topped with fresh cut bananas. I spent the remainder of the break between my first and second class reviewing the preparations I made for the in-class essay we were having in AP English Language.
I logged onto zoom and before we started our essays, my teacher informed us that they had altered the assignment to be a rough draft in order to alleviate some of the academic stress we are under. It is moments like that which remind me how grateful I am that my teachers notice and care about our feelings as students and as people. After that class, I had lunch from 11:15am-12:15pm followed by Physics. In those 75 minutes, we did an interesting lab on calculating work and power used to lift a gallon of milk. I recorded data myself and did all the calculations, but we were placed into breakout rooms with partners and our teacher dropped in periodically to answer any questions. My last class of the day was AP Statistics where we went over a previous quiz and reviewed our homework on the importance and uses of sampling distributions.
After getting out of school at 3:25pm, I FaceTimed my partner for my Statistics take-home test for one last review of our test before we submitted it. This partner test replaced half of the in-class test we took on Monday. It was another effort by my teachers to adapt to the online setting and to the academic challenges that students are facing.
Overall, my day was full of new information and well-planned breaks that I spent talking with friends over FaceTime, eating snacks, and hanging out with my dogs. I hope this day in the life helps someone get a glimpse into a typical day as an HW student. Although we are online, much of school remains consistent to the way it is on campus. Teachers and students continue to adapt to new settings all while holding on to the sense of caring that the HW community values so much.
