Revell Writing Contest-Podcast-Emerson Leger, Ella Kaplan, Jaelynn Bucinell

The podcast episode discusses the topic of 8 p.m. check-in at the Hill School in Pennsylvania. It is a long-standing tradition that allows students more time for activities as the days become longer in spring. The community benefits from this extra time for outdoor activities and J-Ball. The history of 8 p.m. check-in is explored, with insights from staff members and students. While some students appreciate the extra time, others find it challenging to balance their workload. Overall, 8 p.m. check-in serves as a time for social connections and relaxation for the Hill School community. For the three of us, my friends, Ella, Jalen, and I sit down to discuss events at our high school, the Hill School, located in Pennsylvania. Today we will be talking about 8 p.m. check-in and what it means to the Hill community. As spring arrives, so does 8 p.m. check-in, a time which is greatly anticipated by students and faculty all year. 8 p.m. check-in creates time for more activities as the days become longer, including spending time outside and J-Ball. As students of the Hill, our goal is to hear the voices of students and faculty alike on this yearly shift and dig deeper into the history of this special time on campus. In order for our viewers, and even us in general, to get a better background on 8 p.m. check-in, we decided to speak with Mr. Nelson. Mr. Nelson is a third-form bio-teacher, the Varsity Girls water polo coach, and the devoted husband of Mrs. Nelson. He will be retiring at the end of this year after 44 years of working at the Hill School, which we thought made him a good source. We asked him what 8 p.m. check-in was and how the community benefits. So 8 p.m. check-in in the spring is a long-standing tradition. It's awesome, allows kids more time after dinner, play J-Ball or watch J-Ball or do whatever you like to do as the weather gets nice. I think it still allows students plenty of time to do their work in the evening. ♪♪♪ Wanting to make this podcast about 8 p.m. check-in, we realized we did not know the history of when it started, so we decided to ask Mr. Lou Jeffries, the Hill School archivist. As we walked into the archive room, we saw many old yearbooks from students past, knowing we'd come to the right place. Mr. Jeffries was able to share his thoughts on the matter. ♪♪♪ I don't have an opinion on it that much because obviously, you know, one of the things about having a boarding school or even a day school, though it's more limited in what they do there, is that there's a need or a desire to keep track of people at all times. What Mr. Jeffries is referring to is how check-in, a system established to keep track of students to prioritize their safety, can sometimes feel more of an annoyance given how many times a day a student has check-in, especially with three check-in times on the weekends. Therefore, as students become more agitated and ready for summer, the spring term is a time for the administration to loosen up but still enforce a safety measure, hence 8 p.m. Mr. Jeffries adds how this parental style of the administration still is enforced in the spring term. This is the kind of what I call the loco parentis thing, which is that the school and the administration and so on has parental authority over you. If something goes wrong, they can get sued and it's happened. Mr. Jeffries was not the only one who sees the reasoning behind 8 p.m. check-in. Lucy Liu, a three-year boarding student from Shanghai, China, who is a part of the Student Philanthropy Council and Honor Council, was asked about her thoughts on the matter as a student perspective. Personally, I don't like 8 p.m. check-in, but I do understand why people would like it and also spring is such a nice, spring always has nice weather outside and for that extra 30 minutes, I would always watch my friends playing J-ball on the quad. Personally, I am not a huge fan of 8 p.m. check-in and this is because as a junior, I had several AP exams to prepare, but it is really difficult to concentrate when everyone else in the dorm are chatting in the common room, so I always need to go to the library to help myself focus. However, I can totally understand why people might find 8 p.m. check-in as a good thing since it is always great to enjoy the spring weather with friends on the quad or in the garden. I also spend time to watch my friends play J-ball games at the pitch or even far field. J-ball is a long-standing spring tradition here at Hill. Think of it like baseball with a tennis racket instead of a bat. Her purpose is, I won't go into too much of J-ball as her focus here is on 8 p.m. check-in. An investigation led us to Mrs. Nelson, long-time CU Art teacher here at Hill and the wife of Mr. Nelson. She has known Hill her whole life with having grown up here on this campus and then returning to teach later. Mrs. Nelson gave us information on the history of J-ball and 8 p.m. check-in. Yeah, it's really interesting, you know, when spring term comes around, everybody gets so excited about J-ball and sometimes I get questions from students. They ask me, J-ball, what does that stand for? And I tell them the story and it's J for javelin, so we've got actually the correct name is javelin ball, and then why javelin? So back in the day, and I'm thinking that javelin ball started somewhere around the late 60s, but I'm not 100% sure, but that's the feeling I get with it. Sometimes with the late 60s, things started to loosen up a little bit. Maybe some of the boys, of course, it was all boys at that point, got a little restless and I thought, well, maybe we can extend the study hall check-in time, have an activity for the students, and then what would it be? So the boys, of course, it was all boys then, invented this game, and I don't know where it came from. It might have been from some other school, some other playgrounds, but we had a tennis racket, we have a tennis ball, let's play baseball with those two items. And so at that point, what's now the soccer pitch was the track, and the soccer field was within the track. And so when we had spring track, the javelin field was over way on the southeast corner of the campus. So when the boys played javelin ball, it was on the javelin field, so pitching that javelin all the way over towards that scoreboard. So that's kind of the story that I tell. Maybe some facts, some kind of mixture of myths, but that's what I know. J-Ball is not the only way that students and the community use this later check-in. Yvonne Bao, a fifth former here at Hill, talked about the other beneficial ways that APM check-in serves to her. Because of APM check-in, I had more time to hang out with friends after dinner, because now I have theater tech, meaning that I don't have a lot of time in the afternoon, but that exercise unit has really given me a lot of time to relax and get prepared before study hall. APM check-in is also a time to let off some steam and hang out with friends if you choose not to pursue the studio's route. Colin Wang, a fourth former here at Hill, talked about how he uses this time to be a bit more social. Because of the APM check-in, I usually play Frisbee and football with my friends on the pitch, or when I have homework to do, I usually use that time to do extra homework and study for my tests as well. While APM check-in benefits boarders, let us not forget our day students. We talked with fifth form day students Josh Bala and Anthony Grosso, who shared how they spend an APM check-in and what it is like for day students. Josh Bala lives on campus because he is a faculty kid, as his father Chris Bala, a Hill alum, works in admissions. His experience is a little different than that of Anthony Grosso's, as Anthony drives to and from school. So with APM check-in, so I am a day student, but a little different. I live on campus, so I kind of have the boarding life, so with APM check-in, definitely able my friends, and yeah, enjoy J-Ball, and go to the grill, and stay later in the dining hall, but again, I am challenging myself with when I am getting my work done throughout the day, and if I am building it up, until 8 o'clock, and then whether I am staying up later, or if I want to go to bed a little bit earlier, that depends on when I am getting my homework done throughout the day, but I would say that is probably one of the only challenges with the 30-minute push. So yeah, I do get home later, which means I have to find time throughout the day to get my homework done, so that I am not up too late at night, so that is a challenge that I have to overcome as a day student. So with APM check-in, as a day student, it gives me more time after practice to be able to enjoy meals with my friends, go to the grill, and then get ready for J-Ball, because we are the best J-Ball team on campus, the franchise. So yeah, I really enjoy APM check-in, and it allows for a lot more social connections around campus. Thank you for listening to this podcast episode. We hope it helped you understand the history of APM check-in and what our community uses this extra 30 minutes for. No matter if you are a teacher, boarder, or a day student, APM check-in benefits the community in numerous amounts of ways. Thank you for listening to this podcast episode. We'd like to thank everyone who was involved, from the teachers to the students, and for Mr. Schwartz for making this project possible. We hope you have a good rest of your day, and stay tuned for the next one.