A mass of headpone-wearing teenagers move in and out Bowie High School every day, filling the hallways and sleeping in class, but a few freshman are having to think about what all the little things they do every day, who they are, and what makes up their existence, becasue of a unique geography project.

“The project made me think about the monotony of my day, when it asked what kind of food I eat, it made me realize the amount of monotony you have to go through getting ready for school,” freshman Jake Brien said.

The “Culture Me Project” is designed to help students, mostly freshmen, get a better understanding of their own culture, as well as those around them. The project has been in the works during the fourth sixth weeks, and students were challenged to look at the ABC’s of culture and immerse themselves even deeper into their own personal bubble.

“We assign the ‘Culture Me Project’ to help the students understand how culture works by exploring how aspects and culture are part of their own life, and how they can reflect and perform their own culture,” world geography teacher Nicholas Stamper said. “So we have them look at in regards to themselves, and it helps make them start to look for it in other people.”

Many students enjoy this task, because it gives them a reason to talk about the person they know best- themselves.

“It was a lot of fun,” sophomore Trinity Campos said. “Culture’s just always fun because it helps you know more about the world.”

The teachers, however, have gotten mixed reactions from some students, mainly because some are more open than others.

“Some of them really like it, some don’t; some really actively don’t like it because they don’t like to write about themselves, which is fair,” Stamper said.

The project challenges the students to think about their everyday life on a deeper level, and discover what routines they have assigned themselves to.

“It was challenging in having me think about what I do every day and how it’s the same and like ‘wow, I’m gonna be doing this for a while,” Brien said.

It’s a project that many students remember and discuss with past teachers well after the fact. It’s concrete evidence of what students thought of themselves when they were freshmen.

“It is one of the projects that I have students come back years after they graduate,” world geography teacher Karl Lauer said. “They’ll remember doing that ‘Culture Me Project’ and say things like ‘I still have it, and I can’t believe what my culture used to be,’ which is why we have to do it really, so that they can see that culture is dynamic.”

The teachers enjoy grading it as well, because it gives them a window into the lives of their students.

“It kinda gives me a deeper look into the culture of my students and how diverse the classes are and how different everybody is,” Lauer said.

Many students remember doing the project as the go into higher grades and change as they grow older and walk through high school.

“I remember having to learn about myself and having to print out pictures that worked with what I was talking about and it was cool to get to learn more about other people because they would talk about it with me, and we all got to talk it together which is awesome because that’s always fun,” Campos said.

The freshman this year are also interested in the project, and how different it is from other projects assigned in their other core classes.

“It’s a really unique project from other things that I’m used to doing in this sort of class and it seems like something that will have some value in the future,” freshman Stephen Do said.

Something that many of the teachers find interesting is how different all the students are from one another.

“Every single project is different, some students are artists and they express their culture that way, some students are good writers so they write more than others, you really can understand what different kids enjoy about the culture,”  Lauer said.

Many students enjoy getting to see the lives of other students as well.

“It was cool to get to learn more about other people,” Campos said. “I thought it was interesting because their were so many things about other people cultures you didn’t even know happened or existed.”

World geogrpahy is a class dedicated to learning about the differnt cultures of the world and the diversity. This project allows the world geography students to express their own unnique background.