Have you met your KIPP Cousins?

It was like any normal flight: find your seat, place your backpack in the top bin, sit down, relax, and wait until you arrive at your destination. I was on a layover flight in Atlanta, two hours away from a summer program called July Experience held at Davidson College. A few seats over, I overheard two students discussing their GPA, school, and choice of colleges, while I closed my eyes and drifted to sleep.

Once I arrived in North Carolina, I was greeted by a smiling woman, Irma, with a distinct red Davidson shirt. She hugged each and every student as they arrived, and promised that we were about to have an amazing experience together. I conversed with the other students who were waiting for the shuttle bus until someone said the word “KIPP.”  

“Hey, I’m from KIPP!” one of the students exclaimed.  Turns out, the students I overhead on my flight were KIPP students from Atlanta!  One of the students from the plane asked, “You’re from KIPP, too?”   Suddenly, we were all shouting that we were from KIPP! Who knew that I would be waiting for the shuttle bus with my fellow KIPP cousins from across the country? We began talking about where we were from, our schools, and how KIPP has affected our lives so far. 

The first thing that caught my attention about Davidson – and North Carolina – was how kind the people were: our shuttle bus driver started a conversation with Irma about our program and where we were all from, and the Davidson faculty and R.A’s were waiting to greet us with welcoming arms when we arrived.  They even gave us an eloquent banquet to kick off the program.

At July Experience, students take two college courses.  Since I’m most interested in math and music, I picked What’s Happening in Mathematics and Listening to Fear. Even though this is not my first time taking classes taught by professors, it was my first time buying a textbook and realizing that the professor actually wrote it. I had an urge to get my music professor’s autograph since his name was on the front cover.  

I felt especially close with my classmates and professor in my math class.  One week, our assignment was to build repeating boxes by solely folding business cards (our lesson was fractal geometry at the time).  Making over 100 boxes took hours, so my classmates and I decided to build the boxes together. We left lunch early to go to the mathematics class in order to finish up our boxes.  We cracked jokes with each other while working on our boxes. Even our professor joined in on the jokes. 

For anyone who is interested in attending a summer program, I would recommend July Experience at Davidson College. Most importantly, I will never forget meeting my fellow KIPP cousins from California, Washington D.C., Georgia, and Texas.  

Even though the students could be loud and energetic (our ‘energizer’ was chanting our signature song “Hey Burrito”), I enjoyed the calm and peaceful Davidson campus. Everyone had the opportunity to shop around Davidson, attend lectures in actual classrooms, and study in the library – we really did get a slice of what it’s like to be an actual student at Davidson. In the past, I have travelled to different states in order to attend summer programs, and compared to the other opportunities, July Experience gave us more freedom, responsibility, and prepared us to be well-rounded college students.  

I still keep in touch with my KIPP cousins from July Experience.  Now, we just have to keep the “Hey Burrito” chant going on Facebook.