Rowland Hall’s interim is a unique opportunity to bring unlikely people together on unlikely adventures. Through this experience, students from a range of friend groups, classes, and grades get to kayak, surf, hike, roadtrip, horseback ride, bake, and much more all while bonding with the hallway acquaintances you wouldn’t normally get to spend your time with. Interim is not only a needed creative break from APs and finals, but a good reminder that the most unexpected friendships can form from simply spending the time to get to know someone.

Oftentimes, freshman year can feel isolated and full of cliques, where even the smallest social mishaps can feel like the biggest event of the world. Freshman year can be full of disconnects and social hierarchy, and interim is an eye-opening experience that shows the futility of high-school social spheres. On interim, freshmen can begin to realize that people outside their usual circles are fun humans who are more than worth getting to know. 

My freshman year, I got to go down to Southern Utah. The trip began with a three hour drive down with 7 people crammed in a minivan with Beyonce blasting and students shouting about who gets shotgun next. Nevertheless, that car ride is where the bonding began. As we got to the motel centered in the middle of town between the Escalante High-School and the yummiest pizza joint in town, we were all exhausted and hungry from the exciting drive down full of laughing, singing, and conversation. Wendell Thomas and Brett Jackson, our chaperones, let us go out on the town (which seemed to have a population size as big as Rowland Hall’s high school) and our whole group, from freshmans to juniors, all went out to eat the aforementioned, delicious pizza. During the 4 or 5 days we spent together, we hiked up to waterfalls, down to gulches, saw some beautiful sunsets and stars, and even got a thrift trip in. Not only was the hiking fun, but the people made it immensely more enjoyable, something I was not expecting. Going into the interim, I was close to about two people on the trip. By the end of it, there wasn’t one person that I hadn’t had a good conversation with. My friends and I from this trip are even planning to get the freshmen year interim gang back together and go back down to Escalante and go backpacking. 

Interim is not only eye-opening freshman year, but it continues to be a learning experience with every year you do it. This year, as a junior, I went on my last interim. I went surfing in Southern California where we camped on bluffs by the beach and surfed for hours every day. From this experience, I can say that nothing brings people together like being confined in a campsite with 20 people. We played spikeball and volleyball, watched movies, played cards, and ate all our meals together. If you saw this group of people playing spoons all together at lunch on a school day, it would be deemed odd, but on interim, it is a given to be hanging out 24/7. On this interim, we did not get the chance to bond over a long, headache-inducing road trip, but instead we all flew down to California together. We flew down on Frontier Airlines, a different experience for most Rowland Hall kids who have become accustomed to the Delta perks of peanuts and free drinks. When we got to the campsite, there were about 15 tents all lined up on astro-turf overlooking the beach. There were 2 picnic tables pushed together to make enough seating for 20, and a space that looked like an outdoor living room with a white-wicker patio couch lined with black cushions that faces a TV hooked up to a laptop with hours worth of downloaded movies. There was a ping-pong table, skateboards, and spikeball; all any teenager could hope for. In this space, the 18 of us self-classified surfers got to spend all our free time together simply playing games and having fun. While we were surfing, that is where bonds were really made. On the first few days, there were big, scary waves (probably no taller than an NBA player) that we would have to surf, mind you, we were a group of mostly beginner-intermediate surfers. Getting thrashed around by waves, and getting pummeled by the sea only to catch a 5 second wave isn’t always the best feeling, and can often become frustrating. But, boy, can complaining bring people together, and more than that– success in your fellow surfers. Everyone talked with everyone; whether they were relating to each other over nearly-drowning during that last set of waves, or cheering each other on and finding true joy in others' success of catching and riding a great wave. Frances Hodson reflected on her interim experience this year; she shared, “during interim, I was put into new situations with people I hadn’t met. This allowed me to foster bonds across grade levels, social groups, and gender.” On this interim, I got to experience being one of the older kids on the trip and it was just as enjoyable to bond with younger grades as it was to get to know older grades my freshman year. 

Interim is a great experience for most, and it can introduce students to new social experiences. Through close quarters, great grub, tiring but rewarding days of hiking or surfing, and long drives and cheap flights, these interims allowed me to become friends with people I hadn’t before even said hi to in the hallway and helped me get even closer to the friends who I have known for a decade.