Every year we lose a hand full of students at Rolla High School so they might open their wings and fly to college. But two people from Rolla High School, Jessica Beetner and Reid Hoss, were able to leave for a three week long camp at Columbia, Missouri’s school, Mizzou for a memorable experience.

“I went to the Missouri Scholar Academy (MSA) in Columbia, Missouri for three weeks. I majored in philosophy and minored in Sociology while I was there. I also took some Physics classes while at MSA,” Beetner says.

While at Missouri Scholar Academy students from all over Missouri chose a ‘major’ and a ‘minor’ subject they would later graduate in. The subjects varied in subject matter letting student meet other students who had the same interests.

“My major was sperm and oocytes. It was like a biology class where we learned how animals develop in the womb, we got to go to the MU pig farm and see piglets be born, and then we got to rectally palpate a cow-basically we got to put our arms inside a cow and see if she was pregnant. We got to dissect cow uteruses, [and] see how it all worked, which was really cool. My minor was a math class, which was like super high caliber math questions to prepare us for the ACT, and it was also really cool,” Hoss says.

Being at the camp was a lot like being in college like staying in dorm rooms and going to classes for more than an hour.

“It was definitely more of a college experience. It was very independent they let you go out on your own, you would go to your major and minor classes for a couple hours a day. Then they would have different opportunities to do physics classes, dissections, and labs.” Beetner says.

Every student’s day was different depending on which major and minor subject they chose, Reid takes us through his day by day routine:

“At MSA, once we picked a Major and a Minor, and we went to classes each day. We started the day off with, obviously, breakfast, then went to classes for our major for three hours. After that, we went to lunch. Then we went to ‘big group’, which was basically describing what your day was like. We had special programs; like there was an artist from Nigeria, and we got to make Ugandan beads, and at night you could go watch the stars from the telescope program, which was really cool. There was probably about two hundred offered programs at the academy.”

“After the big group, we went to our minor classes for an hour. Afterwards we had Personal and Social dynamics (PSD), and we talked about how we use our gifts for other people, not just for ourselves, and how we can build community in our schools and towns. After that, we went to dinner. Then we had our evening programs-like just watching the stars in the quad, or doing whatever. The way the dorms were set up where you have one floor is called a house, and there were two RAs. So they break up forty people on a floor, and twenty go to each RA, and you all do debriefs at night and talk about your day. After all of that, it was lights out.” Hoss says.

In order to get into the program, teachers nominated students from their school to be funded to go to MSA, Reid and Jessica were chosen and were able to stay on Mizzou’s campus for three weeks, to have a wonderful college experience.