The Last Classes

Tired out by Thursday’s competition and contemplation, students on the California High School Summer Program awoke refreshed, starting Friday with Mass in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel and breakfast in St. Joseph’s Commons.

The programmers then made their way to the first class of the day, with another set of Euclidian propositions. In this final batch, they proved equalities and inequalities of angles with Propositions 16, 29, and 32. They focused especially on this last construction, which proves that the exterior angle of a triangle equals the sum of its opposite and interior angles. After much discussion, some sections created a proof of their own for the construction of a square, based only on the props they had learned throughout the week.

Program Chaplain Rev. Miguel Batres, O.Praem. (’08) offered the ensuing midday Mass after class, after which everyone headed to the dining hall for a lunch of delicious burritos. Next, students returned to the classrooms one last time for their final class of the Summer Program, only to find a surprise waiting for them! The prefects had left at each spot a number of parting gifts: a TAC water bottle and backpack, framed Summer Program group and section photos, plus a copy of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters.

The students took on texts from J. Henri Fabre and St. Thomas Aquinas, comparing the views of this biologist and the Church’s Universal Doctor and what, together, the two may tell us about Creation. There was no better way to end the week of rigorous classes!

Tonight should be amazing, with a farewell banquet and dance. Check back in at the Summer Program blog tomorrow morning for details!

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