Ruhi Khanna, a 9th grader, shared her experience with her first Flex Friday at IA.

8:46 am, arrive at school. Rather than energetic or enthusiastic for my first flex Friday, I feel tired of going to school. It felt unusual to be here on a Friday. Around 8:50, I meet with one of my friends in the hangar. I was astounded at how big the school was with fewer people. I was also introduced to other people, as most of the people in this school are still new to me. I stay in the hangar and work on my asynchronous work for about 50 minutes. After working on my homework, I decided to go to my teacher’s room to ask her some questions. The visit takes longer than expected, and I am stuck in the room till 10:12.  

After that, I head straight to my “Finch Fun” activity. In this activity, I learned about Finch robots and apps that control the movement of the robots. I got introduced to the basics of coding. However, the main goal of this activity was not to play with a robot, or just learn. The goal was to create a joust attached to the robot. Using that joust, the robot’s movements would knock a tiny rubber ball from a cup. While this task may seem simple, adjusting the joust to the robot and creating it so it would knock the ball off was challenging. However, with some trial and error, the process became easy. For the rest of the activity, we explored with the robots further. 

At 11:48, I arrived at the auditorium with another of my friends. We listened to a thorough explanation of IT at IA. We got the student’s perspective, introduced to the IT clubs at IA, and introduced to IT requirements. We learned the process and steps a student should take if they want to go in the IT field. The explanation given cleared the doubts I had about IT and made it easier to plan my future here. 

Sometime later, it was lunch. I had spent the rest of my lunch with the friend I had met in the auditorium. We ate, laughed, and talked the whole time. We also moved around a lot in the one-hour period we were given. The freedom given at IA is nothing short of spectacular, as we changed our seating every five minutes without a single person asking what we were doing. The hallways were also much emptier, and the school was spacious.  

1:40 pm, it was time for the wellness activity. I continued spending my time with my friend. We decided to choose bracelet making. I learned how to make various kinds of bracelets with only string and no beads. However, I was told my bracelet looked like a disaster, as it was my first time making it. This activity let everyone unwind, as no one was obligated to make a bracelet and were free to do what they wanted. 

Lastly, it was time for my first-year experience. We played distinct games; from mafia, to uno, and rock, paper, scissors, shoot. We had learned about other people’s opinions and argued, agreed, and were neutral with them. We were introduced to new people in the room and to our mentors. I had seen an array of personalities and people there. While the crowd were mostly new to each other, there were still various people that knew each other, including me. While the experience was entertaining, it was also tiring, as most people wanted to go home at the end of the day. And when it was time to go home, I reminisced about my first IA Flex Friday, about how different and unique the school and my experience were.