They say everything from “I’m sleeping with your girlfriend” to “If you would smile and say hi to me in the hallway, it would make me feel good for the rest of the day.†These are just short quotes from letters anonymously sent in to senior Maggie Hollander for her W.I.S.E. (WISE Individual Senior Experience) Project. The W.I.S.E. program, run by Spanish teacher Marla Weiner, is an opportunity for South students to follow their passions and have real world experiences during their senior year. Students receive school credit for creating any project that they wish to pursue independently, like having an internship or participating in community service.
In Hollander’s advanced acting class earlier this year, the class had an assignment to write a letter containing something they wish they could say to a person in their lives (a crush, a parent, etc.). “It’s hard to put yourself out there like that. It did, however, bring our class together and allowed each of us to get to know others in a new and personal way,” Hollander said.
Hollander somehow wanted to focus building a community in this way within South. “For me, and my fellow classmates, [the activity] was about getting out something that had pent up inside, about writing down everything you never want to admit you need to say.”
The assignment inspired Hollander to center her W.I.S.E. project around anonymous letters on a larger scale and name it, “Unsigned, Sealed … Delivered?”
Hollander hoped to give all students at South the opportunity to express themselves, so she made a website for students to submit their anonymous letters. Hollander has since published these letters in a book and presented it during a W.I.S.E presentation block.
“I really believe in this and hope that it brings together and heals all those involved,” she said.
Senior Tara Gron decided to explore her interests by studying art rather than creating it herself for her W.I.S.E. project. “I’ve taken some art classes before and done camps during summers, but I think I enjoy learning about art more than doing it myself — mainly because I am not very talented,” Gron said.
Every Tuesday and Friday, Tara interned in the registrar’s office at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She worked with loans from other museums and individual pieces, and she also shipped art and created new exhibits.
Gron worked closely with a woman who set up the “Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance” exhibit that opened in March. She observed her co-worker organize the exhibit and deal with traveling curators, and Gron even saw the paintings being hung, a ceremony in itself. Five to 10 people who are specially trained to hold and touch art need to be present for the hanging of a single painting.
“Everyone is very specific with how they like things done so it sometimes takes hours just to hang up a few pieces,” Gron said.
Along with seeing new exhibits and paintings, Gron found her internship gratifying in many other ways. “Even though it is really annoying to have to commute into Boston twice a week during rush hour to do busy work, I have been surrounded by some incredible art and people that have taught me about the inside workings of museums.” She also found that she learned more about the “real” world. “Now I know exactly what to expect in a desk-job career,” she said. But Gron reaped unusual benefits of a desk job. “I’ve been lucky to see some really great pieces of art. It’s been really rewarding,” she added.
Like Gron, senior David Broyles’ W.I.S.E. project was focused on art — but in a different way. While Gron’s project focused on art in the professional world, Broyles’ project concentrated on expressing real life situations. Broyles worked on a pilot episode to a stop-motion cartoon called “Squirrel Alley”, which is about a group of high school students struggling with the upcoming prom.
Broyles used a claymation technique to produce his film. Broyles was already familiar with claymation, since he made a claymation version of the classic tale “The Tortoise and the Hare†in seventh grade. After he sculpted the characters, he photographed each frame with a digital camera, uploaded them and sequenced all of the frames together. Because this is a long process, Broyles put a large amount of time and effort into it.
“Any ambitious project requires hours of dedication,” he said. “If you don’t sacrifice your time for the good of the final product, you will ultimately be disappointed in the outcome.”
