Webb students experience colleges, wilderness during winter break

For some high school students, winter break is a time to recuperate and relax from the demands of class work, studying, athletics and fine arts activities. For others, it's a time to expand classroom walls, their minds and physical limits.

At least two groups of students at The Webb School have chosen to spend their winter break this week doing the latter.

Twelve students left Bell Buckle on Monday for a four-day whirlwind tour of 12 colleges and universities located across four different states. A group of 11 students departed Sunday for an Outerlimits canoe trip in Florida and won't return until Friday, Feb. 12.

The goal of the college tour is to introduce students to a broad range of colleges and universities that have traditionally been popular among Webb graduates, College Counselor Jamison Fee said.

"The trip is not meant to be inclusive," he said. "But it offers a good look at the type of colleges our students typically apply to."

Visits to The University of the South -- Sewanee and the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, Berry College, Oglethorpe University Emory University, Clemson University, Furman University, Wofford College, Davidson College, Wake Forest University, University of North Carolina at Asheville and the University of Tennessee were scheduled.

While these students investigated options for their academic futures, another group of Webb students participated in a canoe trip down the Santa Fe and Ichetucknee rivers in North Central Florida.

Eleven students, two adult chaperones and Outerlimits Coordinator Brian Wofford are spending the week camping in tents, sleeping in sleeping bags and cooking their own food, in addition to transporting themselves via canoe from an area near High Springs, Fla. to riverfront campsites near the cities of Lily Springs, Fort White and Branford, Fla.

Wofford offers weekend backpack/camping trips for Webb students throughout the year, as well as several weeklong excursions. He maintains longer trips, like the canoe outing, provide a higher quality of "wilderness immersion," enhancing feelings of self-reliance for the students and allowing them to gradually overcome increasingly more difficult challenges.

Regular classes resume at The Webb School on Monday, Feb. 15. That same day, Webb will host prospective students and their families for a Visitors' Day event.