No Tests, No Grades, Just Growth

By Brianna Renn

Louisville Male High School

 

I received a letter last May that pulled two contrasting emotions from my body. As I listened to my father reading the letter, purposely skipping over the accepted or not accepted part, I was full of anxiety.  If accepted, five weeks of my summer would be completely ruined. If not accepted, I would lose the benefits of scholarships, along with spending time with friends who were accepted to the program.

Finally, my anticipation exploded. I snatched the letter from my father’s hands and I read, “Accepted.” The mixed emotions led me to jump with glee and pout with doubt on being a 2008 Governor’s Scholar.

At the beginning, I pictured the Governor’s Scholars Program as a summer school full of grades, work, and absolutely no fun. Imagining a program that would take five weeks of my precious summer away did not sound appealing to me. However, many of my friends said great things about the program and I did not hear one negative comment from any former Governor’s Scholar.

By mid-June, I was arriving at the Bellarmine University campus in Louisville for a five-week program that would help me grow as a student and a person. Now that I have experienced GSP, my feelings and emotions about the program have changed immensely. It was nothing that I had expected it to be, only 10 times better!

My Focus Area of study, Journalism and Mass Media, allowed me to travel to the Courier Journal and the Wave Three Television Station. This was a once in a lifetime experience because I got a behind-the-scenes look at two of the state’s biggest media outlets and met well-known journalists like John Belski, Dawne Gee, and Bill Luster.

In my General Studies class, the object was to define the word “creativity,” and agree upon a definition as an entire class. After trips to art museums and studios in downtown Louisville, and an immense amount of researching, interviewing and debating, the class produced an agreed upon definition.

One of the best parts of the program was meeting other scholars from across the state and forming an “intellectual community” on campus. Here I noticed that there was a mutual respect among the scholars, who were able to have passionate conversations about important topics without losing their cool. Moreover, scholars did not judge anyone based on their race, sex, or religion. It was a stereotype-free environment and fertile ground for creating relationships.

The odd thing is that we experienced such a tremendous amount of education and personal growth in a program that had no tests and no grades. Learning was fun.

As I look back to that day in May when I received my acceptance letter, I see myself as very naïve and ill-informed about the GSP. For most of the scholars in the program, this was the highlight of their lives, and now I realize why. The Governor’s Scholar’s Program is designed to create role models of academic excellence.

It sure did for me.