After months of planning and four amazing days during which small groups of students spent time with one or two faculty members, Project Period is over. Throughout the week, Project Period Coordinator Patty Pond helped capture student reflections on what community means to them. You can hear a few of these snippets in the video below, but if you were present at Proctor's 3rd Annual St. Baldrick's Event, you felt the Proctor (and local Andover) community in action. 

7:30 a.m. Day three of Project Period and it is raining with a light skim of snow on campus. A freezing rain advisory issued by the Weather Channel is in effect until 9:00 a.m. The lights are on in the Community House where Patty Pond coordinates, supports, and cheers on the various groups as they come and go on campus. Soap Making, Conquering Childhood Cancer with St. Baldrick’s Foundation Event, Backcountry Medicine and Leadership, Maple Sugaring, The Lakota Way, Mono Prints…and so many more. Why do we do this?

For the past 30 years, Project Period has been a critical part of Proctor’s mission to deliver hands-on, experiential learning to its students. The four day, immersive small group program kicks off the Spring Term each year. When you ask alumni their favorite Proctor memory, more often than not, a Project Period highlight emerges. But this program does not just ‘happen’, it takes faculty time, energy and passion to be the transformative experience it is.

As a boarding school in rural New Hampshire, we often hear people talk about how we must live in a 'bubble'. While our campus in Andover, New Hampshire is safe, secure, and filled with good people, at Proctor we refuse to live and learn in a bubble.

The period of learning that we are in now, Project Period, affords the opportunity to step (ease?) into the spring term with a singular focus.