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Yappers Charlotte O'Brein, Madison Smith, Will Kasper, Jacob Luna, Bree Scroggins and Joanna Scroggins sit in the dugout, before they go to the kick ball game during the YAP main event.

YAP counselors Garrett Howard(left)and Ryan Thompson (right) release camper Alexandra Gonzalez down at Mt. Aggie.

High school freshman Michelle Lee performs a birthing porcedure on a medical school practice manicane.

Extreme Yappers

The teens of YAP week three work and play hard in College Station.

By: Alexa Turcxynsky, Amanda Martimez, Lindsay Thompsom, Catherine Schenck and Alexa Hart

Posted: 7/31/08

From baby birthing to mock crime scenes, the Youth Adventure Program, YAP, is getting teens hyped up for learning. For the past 15 years, both the counselors and the students have enjoyed the experiences that YAP brings. Out of the five classes offered this week, each student chooses the one that interests them. Photojournalism, criminal forensics, medicine, engineering, and attending Texas A&M are among the classes available.

HOWDY!" This short word is well known to the Attending Texas A&M class "TAMU." People can often hear them screaming it off the top of their lungs to everyone they meet on the street. This class helped the upperclassmen in high school get ready for the college experience. While touring the town and experiencing the traditions, the students got the feel of campus life. "The atmosphere in the town and being able to say howdy to everyone brings the campus alive," said Travis Schott, a high school senior, from Houston, Texas.

The students in the forensics class learned about the different aspects of a crime scene. This week, the class learned about how maggots affect the decomposition of a body. YAP student Salem Harry said that he enjoyed the cycle of how the body breaks down from how a fly lays eggs and produces maggots. Harry hopes to one day take up a profession in criminal forensics; others in the class are also considering this career.

The engineering class worked challening engineering projects throughout the day. They got to study different fields from mechanical to nuclear engineering. "Getting dirty is pretty cool," David Guevernator, a student in the class, said. "Plus you get to build stuff." One of their lessons included creating a mixture for their own concrete.

The YAP students attending the medical classes got an intense introduction to medical procedures. This week's agenda included baby delivery, suturing body parts and dissecting the heart and brain. Madison Malone, a student in the summer program, said, "My favorite thing in the class is suturing the arms and legs."

"The journalism class really helped to understand what it feels like to work on a real newspaper," sophomore Ryan Fletcher. Students attending the Photojournalism session got a taste of a genuine newsroom experience. Throughout the week, they interviewed, wrote, edited, designed, and edited again to produce an insert in The Battalion. The hands-on work done by the journalism students gave "yappers" a feel of the process of news writing, as well as producing a newspaper. "This is a great opportunity, because it gives you experience," sophomore Savannah Survil said, "and in the world of journalism, experience is everything."

Not only are the "yappers" spending time in the classroom, they have the opportunity to run around Bryan and College Station as teams in this year's Bazooka Joes Bubble Gum Bedlam. This year's theme, "Just Chew It," kept students busy with different bubble-gum inspired games and team events during the evenings. This year's main event, Bazooka Joe's Bubblegum Bedlam, took students and their counselors on a frantic race around the city engaging the teams in activities that were rewarded with bonus points. At the end of the race, students finished by sledding down Mount Aggie. The Wacky Olympics is another favorite of YAP students. Whether the students are knocking down Mr. Bubbles or crawling on all fours in crab soccer, "the students always have a blast," said counselor Liz Angrove.