While most students completed their May Project from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, seniors still found creative projects and opportunities to pursue.  

May Project is a yearly tradition where seniors spend three weeks in May completing a project of their choice and presenting to U-High classes in other grades.

Meghan Hammond worked with Vanderbilt University’s social media team to promote their events and commencement after becoming interested in social media while running an Instagram account for a group earlier in the year.

“I just got really interested in how social media could be used to promote a brand, as opposed to just getting good at posting on Instagram,” Meghan said.

For their May Project, Eliza Doss and Alexis Chia researched fashion trends from the last 60 years, the environmental impact of fashion, tried on old clothes, upcycled various articles of clothing, and shopped at thrift stores. While Eliza had previous experience with thrifting, Alexis was new to the experience and was surprised by it. 

“I would really recommend it. I found some clothes going for $150 normally that I got for only $10,” Alexis said.

Also motivated by recent trends, Nick Levitt and Freddie Tang decided to analyze the data of the Reddit communities’ opinions on stocks and compare it to market activity. The two were inspired to learn more by the wild fluctuations of several stocks caused by Reddit communities earlier this year.

“The goal was to see if Redditors were making good investments or bad investments,” Nick said.

Sana Shahul was a crisis manager at National Runaway Safeline. She managed live chats on Mondays from 8 a.m.-10 a.m. and messaged a total of around 12 people who were thinking of running away from home. 

Through the process, she learned how to be more empathetic and how to deal with a lack of closure, as NRS does not follow up.

“[I was] being really mindful about what I’m saying and how I’m saying it,” Sana said. “It would be nice to say like, ‘Don’t do this,’ or ‘You should do this,’ but that’s not how it’s supposed to be and that’s not what we do.” 

Despite initially being unsure of what he wanted to pursue for his May Project, Harrison Gray decided to recommission his family’s 42-year-old, 22-foot Catalina boat. 

“My family’s boat was just sitting in our yard, land-locked,” Harrison said, “and so instead of recommissioning the boat over summer, I thought May Project was a good opportunity to do it.”