Mississippi HOBY 2007/HOBY overall

[HarlequinBoy]

Has anyone ever done HOBY before? If you don't know what it is you can Google it, but I just got back from Mississippi HOBY 2007 and it was amazing!! Basically it's a seminar for rising High School Juniors who write an essay and one person is selected from each HS in the state (well a lot of the high schools at least) and you go and have lots of speakers and panels, interact with other students, and do community service projects.

The speakers were OUTSTANDING and it really is a wake up call to what's going on in the world. A lot of the kids there said it was "life changing", I wouldn't go that far, personally, but it has made an impact.

It's an amazing seminar and the MS one was really interesting.. there was a lot to talk about since MS consistently ranks pretty poorly in education, etc. so we discussed how we can change that! We also talked about the media as an advocacy group or not.. how MS is recovering from August 05, segregation, and what we would like to change where we live.

ANYways.. we're asked to commit to 100 hours of community service and do our best to change the world. I just wanted to see if anyone else has ever attended HOBY.. or even knows what it is, lol.. AND if you have kids you should encourage them to write the essay and try out for it because it's wicked! And if you are a kid, well you should write the essay your Sophomore year and try.

Also it's really cool to see that teens really aren't bad overall, we learned that like.. only 2.5% or something of teenagers are troublemakers and the rest are basically good, despite the sometimes negative perception of today's youth.