September | 2020 | On the Courtyard

Julia Eells, our head of school, started a current events club when I was a freshman. The group started because a few students wanted to discuss what was going on in the world outside of an academic setting. Julia herself is a news junkie and she values hearing students’ thoughts on the current events. I joined the group because I didn’t yet know how to engage with the news but I wanted to become educated. Despite not being a morning person, I committed to attending meetings on Friday mornings before school started. At the start of each meeting, Julia would sneak us into the teacher’s lounge to fuel up on coffee and tea before a fierce conversation at 8:00 in the morning. After settling around the wooden round table in the Jackson Street Lounge with our backpacks and sports bags stuffed in the corners of the room, we’d begin our discussions.

At first, I was quiet, intimidated by the wealth of knowledge that other students had. But over time, I found my voice. We talked about everything from the Kavanaugh hearings to Brexit, as well as current events within the UHS community. What I love about the group is that you can disagree with a classmate about healthcare but then five minutes later walk with them to Spanish class at South Campus, chatting about what’s for lunch that day. Though the conversations can get heated, at the end of the day, we recognize that we are part of a tight-knit community of current events lovers within the greater UHS community. In our distance learning model, we’ve continued to have weekly current events meetings. Now, we start at 7:30, which means that I really have to sacrifice some sleep to attend. But these meetings have genuinely become the highlight of my week, and I can see that many of my classmates feel the same way, so I’m willing to do it. Our group has now grown in size to 40 members and it has been strengthened by every new voice.