Can you imagine spending 100 days on an island with no phone, far away from home? 

Molly Fredrickson ‘23 said, “I went to the Island School in Eleuthera, Bahamas.” The connections and network she made were some of her best friends now, and everyone she met was very genuine and always down to do adventurous things.

“For all 100 days, I had no access to the internet besides Google Docs and my island school Gmail account,” Fredrickson said. She experienced some restraints many of us teenagers would struggle with, such as “taking our phones as soon as we landed on Eleuthera was the best part about island school,” Fredrickson said. Keeping the student’s homesickness to a minimum, they “had a 20-minute phone call home every Tuesday night,” Fredrickson said. 

“I was a little homesick for the first week, I was like, oh gosh, what did I get myself into, but I got into a routine there and made my best friends, so it soon became amazing,” Fredrickson said. Her journey consisted of “swimming four miles, doing a 48 solo, meeting new people and living in a dorm with 29 other girls,” Fredrickson said. 

In the Bahamas, Fredrickson took on many challenges, including leaving her old life behind for a new lifestyle for her first semester this year. 

Can you imagine 48 hours alone? “In groups of twelve, we were each dropped off at a spot on North Lighthouse Beach with a tarp, bug net, bug spray and sunscreen, and a small bag of food. It stormed for 36 hours, I probably walked 10 miles with the amount I paced the beach looking for some entertainment,” Fredrickson said. Following a crazy solo adventure at the school, it ran as follows “We had eight weeks of academics, and three weeks of what we called “expeditions,” Fredrickson said. “We had two eight-day expeditions, which are camping trips,” Fredrickson said. The first expedition was “an eight-day kayak, where we’d pack our boats and kayak to different beaches for the night,” Fredrickson said. The school part of this crazy adventure she took was academically intense as well, “everything is an essay based at Island School. We had essays due basically every week in each subject,” Fredrickson said. Connecting the glorious ocean surrounding them to their classwork. The underwater discoveries in and outside the classroom consisted of mostly lab workdays taking morphometric measurements of land crabs, observing their behaviors in a lab setting, taking notes on their unique characteristics, and preparing for upcoming presentations and projects, Fredrickson said. Above sea level, they would “ go out into the field and see the land crabs in their natural habitat, and we’d set up cameras to observe their behaviors in their natural habitat. Sometimes we’d even have night classes where we’d go crab hunting to capture/ recapture crabs and see how much they’ve grown/changed since we last took their measurements,” Fredrickson said. 

Fredrickson’s decision was made pretty far in advance “I applied because I wanted the experience of going somewhere new and going completely out of my comfort zone of what I’m used to,” Fredrickson said. As she reflects on her experience after coming back to reality, “the past semester taught me a lot about being where your feet are, being confident in myself through everything I accomplish, even the little things, and how important it is to take risks,” Fredrickson said. She took risks such as night diving with friends and swimming 4 miles for an Island School tradition. Overall, “The first night was intimidating, and as the semester progressed, it got better every day, and I got closer with everyone. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything,” Frederickson said.