Submitted by Mary Scott Ambler

Governor's School was not a place, it was an experience. Four hundred sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen year old kids were collected from across the three geographic regions of Virginia to participate in an honorary enrichment program. The program brought these students together to teach them in the discipline they applied for. Little did each of us know that while we were together, we would not be focusing completely on our area of study, but on the new community we formed as a whole.

The community was as diverse as the geographic areas from which everyone traveled. Each student was as different as the art they came to study. In reality, because we all were there to study the same general topic of art and humanities, it means that we had more in common than we realized.

Throughout the four weeks, the teachers discretely and cleverly taught each of us that our different studies really had more to do with the others than we thought. For example, during my piano studio class one morning, our creative teacher told each of us piano students to scrounge up paper and pencil, something we all had brought, but never had thought we would need. Our instructor told us to listen to a piano piece, and write a story that the music created in our minds. What was she thinking, having piano students working on a creative writing piece, as if we were at Governor's School in the program for humanities?

In fact, it was through mad methods like this that we students began to understand the larger picture of Governor's School. It wasn't about truly immersing ourselves in our own private study, but to connect our interests with those of others. Soon enough, we understood that it was not all about connecting classroom subjects either. By mixing four hundred people, you're bound to sit next to someone new every day. That someone new is different than you, and different than the new person you sat next to yesterday.

For an environment where topics of classroom discussion were about visual and performing art, and the humanities, religion came to be a subject that was brought up more than I had expected before I left home. Part of the reason it was brought up was because on our weekly schedule, our one day free from classes was Sunday. On Sunday's schedule block, under the bold words "free time", were the words "optional religious services" in parenthesis.

Almost as soon as schedules were handed out on the very first day, the day when the only person you semi-sort of knew was the picture of your dog you brought along with you, your luggage, or your roommate, I heard talk of a student-led nondenominational service for Sunday's "free time".

That same first day at our first nightly hall meeting, somewhere between rules, and what not to eat at the campus dining hall, was the announcement that if you wanted to attend Catholic service on Sunday morning, you should sign up with your Resident Advisor. Immediately I thought, "Wow, that's really good that they offer kids of that religion a chance to go off campus in order to keep going to church service."

The next morning in piano studio, I met the other eleven teens I would be studying with for the next four weeks of my life. Visually, you could see the diversity in the room. As for the mix of sexes, it broke down to five boys and seven girls. Racially, you could count that four of us were from Asian backgrounds, two were African-American, and the rest of us were basically just American looking. It didn't take our group long to feel comfortable enough to open up to each other. Religion was actually the first topic about diversity that came up. As we went around the room, sharing what type of music we enjoyed playing, the genre of "church" and "gospel" let us in on about four peoples' religious backgrounds. Another boy had a very Jewish sounding last name, so a curious someone asked if that was his background. So, we figured out someone else. That diversity was just within our piano studio of twelve kids!

However, among four hundred kids, you are always meeting a new face and starting a conversation. Among my hall mates, the twenty-four girls I met and loved within a period of twenty-four hours, there were several that woke up extra early each Sunday to attend Mass. Also, many of us ended up attending that nondenominational service that actually got pulled together for the Sunday after that first day I heard about it. Led entirely by students, there were more attendees than I had expected, and everything went smoothly. It ended up being a time to share favorite spiritual passages, or even stories about how religion had influenced our lives. Some stories were so emotional that we ended up crying together for someone we had just met.

Not only did we have the opportunity to attend services on Sundays, or Thursdays, or whenever students scheduled them for, we had another chance to discuss religion. As a dinner discussion group idea emerged, one of the first to form was one on the topic of "Religion in Today's Changing World". We found that by discussing this broad topic, many participants decided to share what religion they followed. Among them were the ones that usually I only learn about in a social studies class. Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism, Christianity, and Judaism, were all brought up during conversation.

This enrichment program not only led me to find my way in my art, but in my entire life. Finding a better you on the inside is what they should really advertise about this honors program. Unless of course they want us to figure out for ourselves the program's goals are to expose us to a diverse new family. Religious differences at Governor's School were really a true representation of our country and the world. However, the way our differences were viewed may be different than how they are sometimes accepted. Instead of segregating into various religious or even ethnic groups, as people sometimes will do, we were forced to interact. Everyone participated equally, and even if we had not been forced to work with people different than ourselves, we would have wanted to.

Religious pluralism was openly evident at the four week long Governor's School program. One day as a group of us were gathered around the game tables in the common area, we saw a fellow student praying and meditating across the lake from us. This started a respectful conversation about different religious customs and practices.

In the same way that we discovered how our independent disciplines interact with others, we figured out that in the same way, people different from each other, religiously or ethnically, need do interact and combine to make something better. I doubt that anyone changed their basic religious beliefs while at the program, but I know that even I came away knowing more about beliefs previously foreign to me. Not only did I learn about them, but I learned to respect the beliefs and my new friends who held them.