As it turns out, good colleges offer good pre-college programs. This summer, I was lucky enough to be accepted for enrollment in the Summer@Brown Pre-College program, and I look forward to attending in a few weeks. The program I’ve elected to take is the 3-week course “Introduction to Law, Mental Health, and Adolescence” I was also looking at a six-week course on game theory and economics, but the program encouraged me to only enroll in one program at a time due to the intense workload.
I chose this course because it felt incredibly relevant to my interests in the Juvenile Justice system, and the current growing societal awareness of mental health problems and the ways in which they affect people, especially teens like me. I look forward to carrying forward what I learned in the ACLU Youth Advocacy program last year regarding the role of the younger generations in pushing for societal change in the legal system, and learning about the experience of those who are currently moving through the Juvenile Justice system – arguably those that would most benefit from the changes the ACLU works to promote.
As much as the course is interesting, I can’t deny my excitement over finally being away from my family dorming on a college campus for three weeks. The prospect of being on my own is scary, yes, but the feeling of freedom that seems to be offered more than makes up for my anxiety. Hopefully I get along with my roommate and hopefully they also have sleeping habits just as messed up as mine. Providence also seems like a fun city to be in, so I’m going to try to visit it once or twice on the weekends.
Also I hope I have time to both participate in campus activities and read Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. That play seems so crazy delightful that I might end up annoying my roommate if I read it too late at night.