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Life skills: From job interviews to meditation
 Upper School students normally meet for the News assembly on Wednesdays, but today they attended life skills workshops of their choice. The workshops gave the girls an opportunity to learn a variety of skills, from how to write a résumé to how to sew, ensuring that the education they receive at Chapin goes beyond the classroom. What follows below are accounts of three of the workshops.
Sleep and Meditation
Save for the subdued, Eastern-tinged thrumming of stringed instruments and the rhythmic tap of fingers on drums from a stereo in the corner, the Black Box was a sea of quiet. Students, lying loose on the floor with their backs to yoga mats, closed their eyes against the only light in the room, the dim glow of an exit sign, and fully relaxed their bodies and minds. Their teacher, Ms. Hines, encouraged them to clear their thoughts by accepting whatever ideas or images happened to come to them, but to let those thoughts slip away instead of grabbing hold. She urged them to allow their consciousness to become like a clear pool, the ripples of thoughts and distractions slowly dispersing and then leaving altogether.
Ms. Hines’s workshop was designed to help a hardworking, often pressured group of Upper School girls to relax, focus their thoughts and generally be more productive. She offered them techniques and affirmations that they could use at home on a nightly basis, from deepening the flow of their breathing to dispatching the persistent thoughts of an active mind. When the girls stood to leave the Black Box, after 45 minutes of intentional and practiced relaxation, they were better rested, healthfully oxygenated and ready to face the remainder of their day.
Job Interviewing
Make sure you use the name of your interviewer at the beginning and end of your interview. (Using a person’s name in this way actually “releases endorphins.”) What about your handshake? It should be a firm one “with three shakes” and, of course, don’t forget to make eye contact. To your interview, bring both knowledge of the organization and three references.
In a session on job interviewing, Tina Herman, director of admissions, offered these and other useful tips to 17 Upper School girls. Miss Herman was aware that few members of her audience had yet had a job, so she told them that their interviewers would be judging them on their “qualities as people” rather than on their experience. She also had “three golden rules” for the future interviewees: Be your most conservative, simple self in dress. Deliver information about yourself in a lively way through illustration, or “storytelling.” Never fail to send a note of thanks, preferably handwritten and not e-mailed, expressing not only your appreciation but also your willingness to supply more information if needed. She drew the session to an animated close as the students, assuming the roles of interviewers and interviewees, enacted some of the excellent advice they had received.
Lamp-Wiring
A lamp that won’t light need not be a lost lamp. “Sometimes you’re rummaging through an antique shop, and you find a great old lamp that just needs rewiring,” art teacher Duane Neil said to the students. With this thought in mind, Mr. Neil led the girls through how to make a lamp. In front of each pair of girls was a piece of electrical wire, a plug, a light fixture, an X-Acto knife, a colored paper bag, a paper cup and a piece of cardboard. Who knew that light could be made so simply?
First the girls learned how to split and splice wire, then to attach it to the plug and the light fixture, and finally to complete their lamp by housing their lightbulb in a cut-out paper cup and adding a lampshade — in this case, the colored paper bag. “It works!” one pair of girls said as they saw their lamp come aglow. Mr. Neil noted that “it’s empowering for these girls,” adding that they’ll never have to rely on anyone for this task but themselves. And while it’s a practical pursuit, some students immediately saw its creative possibilities, cutting designs in their paper bags with the X-Acto knife. It wasn’t long before an entirely original set of lamps lit up the room, adding to the light of the faces that beheld them.
Click here to see a photo gallery of the lamp-wiring workshop
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