One of the reasons we have a large teaching faculty with--in many cases--only two preparations and three total sections (each) is to retain focus on the role of advising. Proctor teachers have an average of four student advisees each. This week, we are guiding advisees in four-year planning, sketching out when--over the remaining trimesters in your career here--you'll take U.S. history, an arts major, and other distribution requirements. With a dizzying assortment of electives, the process would be challenging even if we did not have multiple off-campus programs running constantly. Here are Adam and Bo scratching out four-year plans over corn bread and OJ:

It all started thirty-one years ago, when--in an effort to marry college preparatory coursework to adventure-based expeditions--we sent ten kids out west on the first Mountain Classroom. Homework at Joshua Tree:

By over-enrolling the school by the population away each trimester, the program was self-funding. The success of Mountain Classroom immediately motivated creative thinking within the Language Department, and by 1974, we were sending sixteen students each trimester to our own programs in Spain and France at no additional tuition cost. Below, a group tours the Mediterranean town of Cadaques, where Salvador Dali lived and worked:

For the past decade, the fall Mountain Classroom program has been replaced by the phenomenally successful Ocean Classroom adventure: twenty students sailing a 130-foot schooner from New England to Puerto Rico, studying maritime literature, marine biology and ecology, navigation and the history of diverse ports and nations. Count fingers, and you'll know what birthday Eddie (second from left) is celebrating in the Dominican Republic:

Adam, in the top photo, is planning to study in Aix-en-Provence spring of his junior year; Bo wants to do Spain winter of his junior year and France winter of the senior year. Yes, you can do two!