The Lasts

We have reached the point in the High School Summer Program when people begin to speak of “lasts.” On Thursday night we had the last dance class and the last study hall; and today we have the last class, the last lunch, the last nighttime consecration.

Yet no one is getting too wistful, for now. At the conclusion of Thursday afternoon’s classes, students clashed with ferocious intensity in the 3-on-3 basketball tournament. Eight teams worked their way through a playoff bracket, culminating in a championship match won by the team of Fr. Sebastian (chaplain), Martin McCann (prefect), and Charlie C. (student).

Then it was time for dinner, study hall, Rosary, one last dance review, and an evening of iced-coffee drinks in the campus coffee shop. At 10:30 p.m., students returned to their residence halls for curfew, but the night was not over just yet.

While the ladies of St. Monica’s were enjoying s’mores — just after singing “Happy Birthday” to student Julie M. — they heard what one prefect described as “a clamor.” When they looked out their windows, they saw the men of the Summer Program, dressed in their Sunday best and bearing chocolates. The gentlemen then proceeded to serenade the ladies by singing “Red is the Rose,” Nat King Cole’s “L-O-V-E,” and “A Whole New World” from Aladdin, with the women joining in to sing the part of Jasmine.

We now enter the final day of the program, with classes on Euclid and O’Connor, plus one last lunch, recreation period, and Rosary — as well as the farewell banquet and dance — still to come.