The Scholars class offered at Bowie is one that a lot of students are very fond of. The zero-hour class is immensely praised by the students who have been elected into it. There are a lot of classes at Bowie that you have to have teacher recommendations to be in, but scholars is very different. It’s a class that focuses on field trips to cultural events all over Austin and the whole state of Texas in general.

“We go to a bunch of different events,” junior Shawn Grimaley said. “We all start with a zero for the six weeks and work our grade up by attending these events.”

Living in Austin where the motto is ‘keep austin weird’, avoiding peculiar events around town in inevitable. The students have been to all types of events and don’t have positive things to say about all of them.

“It introduces me to different cultures and different forms of media,” junior Maura Evans said. “It shows me various ways of life and it’s just really cool to me to see the way the rest of the world works.”

The purpose of the class is to expose the students in it to different cultures and different cultural values and morals.

“There have been some super weird events,” Evans said. “But then again they’re just weird to me because I’ve never seen anything like it before. Since we’re so used to the way things are in America, it’s sort of like a treat to see traditions from around the world without leaving our city.”

One thing that makes the scholars class very unique is the grading system the class has.

“You start off with a zero in the class and then you work your grade up forty points at a time by going to the events,” Grimaley said. “If you aren’t able to go to the amount of events you need to pass, Mr. E will sometimes share your grade from the previous six weeks or semester to help you out. So the class isn’t really one that you have to stress about.”

Each event is worth a different amount of points. Some are twenty, some are thirty, and some are forty.

“The grading system is one that I’ve never seen before, but it works out pretty well for all of us,” Evans said. “I’m definitely planning to take the class again next year and I hope the students selected to be in for next year enjoy it to the same extent as me.”