May Project to go forward under stay-at-home order
Macy Beal
Alyssa Russel, a member of the class of 2019, shows her May Project, which was to work in a production of “Wicked” in Peru, to fellow class member Henry Cassel at the 2019 May Project exposition. The class of 2020 will be executing their May Projects at home.
April 7, 2020
With school closure and mandatory social distancing, May Projects must be completed at home, according to an email sent by May Project coordinator Mariah Bender to seniors and their families on April 6.
Seniors must ensure that their proposals anticipate the challenges, are well planned, feasible, and can be completed at home and presented remotely.
The email stated that seniors must indicate by April 20 whether they will keep or change their original May Project proposals or opt out of May Project and attend classes. Revised proposals are due April 27.
“We decided that it would be possible to do May Project so long as students were able to change parts of their project and really take advantage of some of the online resources that we do have available to us through the university,” Ms. Bender said.
Assuming school closure remains in effect, May Projects will be presented remotely via Zoom or Google hangouts, according to Ms. Bender.
We decided that it would be possible to do May Project so long as students were able to change parts of their project and really take advantage of some of the online resources that we do have available to us through the university.
— Mariah Bender, May Project Coordinator
Senior Tom Ben-Shahar originally planned to learn how to skateboard and meet the skate community while filming a documentary of his experiences, but with social distancing, he will need to rethink his project entirely.
“It sucks,” Tom said. “I was really excited to skateboard, and I’m sure a lot of people were really excited to do the projects they wanted to do, but I think it’s an interesting challenge to come up with something that is fun and interesting and worthy of May Project but also inside.”
Tom said he is thinking about writing his own guitar song instead.
Senior Juliana Li, along with seniors Donna Tong, Jeremy Ng and Danesh Patel, had secured an internship at Ariel Investments to learn about finance and behavior.
“We have to reach out to our sponsor and see if he can accommodate possibly switching our internship online,” Juliana said. “If that doesn’t happen, we would probably have to come up with another May Project.”
Juliana said her backup plans are studying how COVID-19 has affected global markets and reviewing movies.
Reflecting on the situation, Ms. Bender said, “I think it’s important to know that the Class of 2020 is incredibly resilient and patient and that I’m hopeful that they will be able to retain some of the same excitement for their new projects.”
