By Nirupama K, Year 12

On the 7th of March a group of us headed out to Harrow School to commence the Lower Sixth Symposium. We were all very excited about this opportunity to delve further into subjects that we were passionate about with new people who had different perspectives and points to offer.

When we got to Harrow we sat down in our groups and introduced ourselves. The atmosphere was very lively but also very welcoming as we started our conversations and got to know each other.

Ms Copin started the event off with an inspiring talk about the programme and gave us a guide to how it was going to work and set us some icebreakers to help us interact more. The questions were really interesting and allowed us to get to know our team members much better with questions ranging from superpowers to music tastes.

Then the big moment arrived. We were all given our questions that we were to produce an essay and presentation on and our research materials. We immediately got to work and started brainstorming, summarising articles to find arguments we could discuss in our project. It was really nice that we could all work together because it meant we were so much more efficient and in the process we had a lot of fun sharing our ideas. We moved to the comfort of the library, which was a delightful place to work in as it added to the atmosphere of the event. In the meantime, the photographers and videographers worked hard to capture the moments of the day and we did little interviews to summarise our initial thoughts.

We also held an online meeting with our external mentor to ask for some advice as to how she would go about answering our question. Dr Rawal was very insightful and she set us on the right path for our project. We allocated tasks and set goals for our next meeting feeling very content with the work we had done so far.

After working for around two hours we decided to get some fresh air so the Harrow boys gave us a small tour of their school. The building is beautiful and it was really nice to explore areas of it.

We ended the night off with dinner at Lokma’s in Harrow, but instead of sitting with our groups we moved around and sat with new people. While I would usually be awkward in these situations as an introvert, the Harrow boys were extremely friendly and approachable and we had wonderful conversations about anything and everything. It was really lovely to hear the chatter amongst the restaurant and to see everyone get along so well and the food was amazing as well.

While it had been a long day it would have still been nice to get to know them even better and I very much look forward to our next meeting with our counterparts.