On Feb. 14-21, a group of seniors in AP Economics teacher Michael Clark’s classes participated in the high school Close Up program to Washington D.C. and New York City.

According to Close Up’s website, their mission is to provide high school students and educators with an inside look at democracy in action. The idea is to use the capital as a living classroom, where participants can get a “close up” view of government. Senior Lauren Li decided to go based off of Clark’s promise of endless fun.

“It was really, really busy,” Li said. “They scheduled everything down to the minute, and we’d be doing stuff until 10 p.m. every day, but it was fun.”

In D.C., the seniors were split into big groups with other high school students from all across the nation.

“We went to all the monuments and some museums and we went to the Capitol,” Li said. “And at night we would do workshops and talk about current events and social issues that were important to us. It was mostly government related stuff and about how to be an effective citizen.”

The seniors also got the opportunity to meet with Washington insiders. However, Li was rather disillusioned by the layers of complexity to getting one’s voice heard in Congress.

“We were originally supposed to meet with our representative in House, but he wasn’t there so we had to talk to our representative’s representative,” Li said. “They told us ‘if you want to speak out on something, you’re probably going to call one of us, and we have to do paperwork and get it to him, and he may or may not care.’ Stuff has to go through so many people.”

At night, the groups took part in “activities, discussions, and debates to reinforce what they learned and experienced that day,” according to the Close Up website. They were also able to enjoy nightly socials and a banquet and dance. Then, the program moved to New York City for the final three days, where the seniors got to see the sights and tour the city.

“We went to a lot of different landmarks: the Top of the Rock, which is the Rockefeller Center (it’s like 69 floors high), the new 9/11 memorial, Times Square, Central Park. We also ate dinner in Little Italy and got to see the School of Rock on Broadway. It was much more fun than D.C.”

Clark believed this year’s trip was one of the best he’s ever had, in part because this was the first time he’s taken a group to both New York City and Washington D.C..

“I don’t think I’d ever had a group of students that asked so many questions and participated so actively in the Close Up trip, so I was proud of the students,” Clark said. “I think they really learned a lot by experiencing all those things firsthand.”