If we were the misfits, the island of misfit toys quickly became the swing set. Halfway between the houses and the LRC (gym, rec center) was this simple silver and red swing set that had been built for the staff kids. It was like the one's you find in playgrounds: four black seats hanging from a metal bar in a little area filled with wood chips. It was nothing special, really. It was just a place that we all gravitated towards. As a result, a million friendships were formed on those swings. It's hard to believe, in hindsight, the magic of that one, little place.

My time spent at the swings was truncated with the beginning of classes. That first Monday kicked off with a double block of Spanish with Ricky Jimenez. He was not the worst teacher I have ever had, but it was hard to keep up with that man's train of thought, and that much was evident from day one. It was followed by Introduction to Research Methods, also a double block, then lunch. By then, I was walking around, wide eyed but half-dead. It seemed like there was too much to take in, too much to understand, too much to digest. I was only halfway through my first day, but I probably would've felt better if I had been flattened by a steamroller.

After lunch came the real kicker, though. Bio. Jill Graf's infamous Biology class. I just gaped at her the entire hour. She was going on and on about the things we would be learning, about what she had done before coming to Conserve. She'd been a dentist, a coroner, and a college biology teacher. How the hell did she end up in northern Wisconsin, lecturing a bunch of high school freshman on trees?

English was mostly a placeholder between Bio, the intense, and World Cultures in Contact, the awesome. It was taught by one Robert Hunter, a well rounded and kind individual who would turn out to be a fountain of knowledge, more or less. He was chipper and intelligent. The topics we covered were intriguing. Our "textbooks" were Jared Diamonds' "Guns, Germs, and Steel" just because it