Online Conferences Showcase Student Interests and Passions

You might think that all the student conversation in the classroom, the hallways, the dining hall and their houses might leave them speechless. Not so.

Milton Academy’s version of online chats is MiltOnline, a conference function available to all networked members of the Academy community. Recent examples of the virtual conversations: the Science-Fiction Club hotly debates the merit (or lack there of) of Matrix: Reloaded vs. Matrix: The Revolution. Notices are posted about an October discussion of the “the last great ‘–ism’: classism.” On Nov. 14, Speech Team captains urge members to let their mothers know what city they are jet-setting to that weekend. New faculty member James Mills, who most recently taught at a girls’ school in London, invites students to a model Congress at Harvard and model UN in New York. Wander around a bit more, and you’ll find an announcement that “Gaia,” a student-produced environmental publication, is going online (and saving a lot of paper).

Enjoy peeking over students’ shoulders as you read a few posts from this fall verbatim

Conference: French Club
Oui, on regarde beacucoup de films des differents genres...on veut les suggestions pour les films aussi, maintenant on pense qu'on va voir Trois Hommes et Un Bebe, Indochine, et les autres! Est ce que vous avez un film prefere?

Conference: All Activities & Clubs
Top 9 reasons why you should write for the Milton Math Journal
1. You absolutely love math; you cannot get enough of it.
2. You absolutely abhor math. If you had to choose between having a frontal lobotomy and doing a math problem, you'd choose the lobotomy.
3. You want to appease your math teacher for a passing grade.
4. All of your friends are writing for the journal (seriously).
5. Doing math is a great alternative when you are out of beer.
6. Your Mom wants you to write for the Journal.
7. Your Dad wants you to write for the Journal.
8. Neil wants you to write for the Journal.
9. You've been rejected from every other publication.
If you're convinced that the Math Journal is the publication for you, download the application from the "Mathematics Journal" conference in the publications folder, or pick up an application in the first floor hallway of Ware or between the double doors of the library. Please return the application by Friday the 19th to the "Completed Applications" folders at those locations. The application tells us how you will serve as a member of the staff of the journal. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact Neil Katuna (II) and Vincent Chan (II). Thanks.

Conference: Milton Writers’ Association
hello. conference. how are you doing? I'm fine, thank you.
Lets see if this thing works.
Ahh.
Ah. Mike. One. Two. Three.
Is this on?
Oh.Can I start? I would like a cheeseburger, some fries, and everything else except positive comments. I would like scathing remarks against the world and hate for bush and hate for hate for bush, I would like the bad part of your life compressed in a few four-letter expletives. Please.
I want to see if this thing works, this 'MWA' thing that that involves you guys meeting and discussing writing and phrases and other things that go bump in the night. I want lines of responses that say something, hatred or love or whichever side of the emotion spectrum you're interested in, just as long as it's not from the apathetic middle. Say something. I tried to tap this thing last year, knocked on the door, and all I got were some stagnant murmurs like sleepy hibernating bears in winter, dormant and lifeless. I didn't like that. Hopefully you guys were shining somewhere in the crossroads or in the library and I was blind enough to not see the things that were going on. Hopefully you guys were having steaming debates over equally hot cups of hot chocolate and tossing red-marked sheets of double-spaced times-new-roman around a large round table and talking loudly at the top of your respective lungs. Hopefully you were living underneath and enjoying this all and hearing the snow fall and writing with enthusiastic scribbles on torn pieces of paper, tacking up on your walls, words covering your walls, everywhere. Hopefully. I hope that you saw something lately like the dead poets society again and felt (maybe cheesily and with copious amounts with cliche) how it felt to do something like this, being a Writer with a capital W, you people with your inner group and your select beauty, you.
Hopefully.Perhaps it will be like that, different and new, this time.(Tell me everything that is bad with this, and I will thank you.)
******
It's like a button, in the ceiling. I could press it, and something else could happen. Something else. I spread my arms. I'm doing that lately. Wind blows, a person is near, a yawn escapes, the sky shouts. A silent hug.
******
We are all in our respective bubbles. Someone makes a comment, and laughter erupts spontaneously like a giant squishy puddle that everyone steps into and splashes in, glorious justified bouts of preschool montessori mudfights. I wish. Under lights, sitting at night, joined laughter floating on the air through open windows, dissolving into the dark warmth of the night.
I am sitting there, and a photo detaches and floats off to the ground. Just like that. Off. I examine the sticky stuff on the back and it is still there. Things have tolerances, and they snap. Like wood, she says. Words are more vocal. I wonder what that means. I put it back up, tightly this time, and then I suddenly see the curled corners of everything else on the wall.
Descriptions work like chemistry, the right pinch works wonders, the wrong one destroys everything. I wish I was a good chemist. Mixing things is hard, especially at night with the lonely lighthouses rotating for wailing beaches, whispering with silent sighs. I stare out the window, and all I feel is a giant roaring in my ears, and my hands shake. I spill.
Distractions come from left and right, but adrenaline rushes come with the cryptic yet transparent exchanges with true friends. Seeing through. Riding on the same wavelength, over dinner after a dusky sunday meeting. Speaking the same words with different phrases.
Scrabble. So many letters, so many words, so many lives. A million monkeys on a million typewriters, Shakespeare, someday, they say. So many eyes so many words so many things that flow. Someday, I will learn the secret of words, read in ancient palms of maple leaves and from the flickering shadows of light on grass and bark on a lazy spring afternoon, floating dust and warm breezes and white curtains and all.
********
reply. please. even though you're not on the group. reply and say, "hi" and end it with that and send it. Say two words. Anything. It's like getting pressed fall leaves in the mail, anonymously, on a winter afternoon.