Imagine spending your whole life in a dungeon, cramming equations and philosophies into your mind, neglecting the sun’s inviting rays until the weekend arrived. While everything you learned had the potential to be very interesting to you if you actually continued its exploration in a more relevant setting, your fear of the unknown that those *cue the scary music* field trips entail is too much to fathom. You cringe at the prospect of your teacher uttering those two devilish words,” field trip”, since they will lead to the epic destruction of your academic prowess.

But would dedicating a single day out of our 180-something school year to a field trip really impair your academic achievement that much? I think not.

In school, a large chunk of what we learn is theoretical, and most of our in-school experiential learning is done in our science classes and electives. While I’m a huge fan of developing a strong understanding for ideas, I have found that through seeing these ideas in action, I have developed a stronger appreciation for what I’ve been taught in the classroom. My first ever real field trip was during my junior year, and I went with my SIRS class to the Field Museum to meet professional researchers in the fields we were interested in.

Through this field trip I was not only able to meet other students who had the same passion as me, Neuroscience, but was able to discuss and brainstorm ideas about my project with professors who were doing what I had always wanted to do as a job. This field trip not only reaffirmed my passion for research through the discussions I had with such inspiring people, but also allowed me to learn so much in a more relaxed and unconventional setting. I was finally given the opportunity to grasp as much knowledge as possible out of a situation without the worry of having to be tested on it later that week!

I could go on and on with such stories of incredibly nerdy inspiration, but I’m pretty sure we both have places to go after this, maybe even a field trip to attend. Long story short, field trips should be celebrated in every subject, as long as they’re actually educational in some shape or form. So no, I’m not saying you should attend EVERY field trip in the history of field trips, especially if you have several in one week, and even more so if one of them includes going to Chuck E. Cheeses or something. I think we can agree that that wouldn’t be extremely enriching to the mind.

I just think that this animousity towards field trips many teachers and students feel should be mellowed by a more positive perspective. After all, YOAHSO (You Only Attend High School Once).