BETHEL — Since returning from their trip to the University of Maine in Orono, about 45 Telstar Regional High School freshmen are giving more thought to their futures. 

On Dec. 8 after school, the Telstar Freshman Academy left for the university to visit the Emera Astronomy Center, the Advanced Structures and Composites Center, the Innovation Media Research Center and the Foster Center for Student Innovation.

Students also ate at the Hilltop Dining facility on campus, and met with an admissions counselor, who impressed upon the students that “the better (they) do in high school, the more money (they’ll) get for college,” said chaperon Norman Greenberg, professional educator at 4-H in cooperation with the Freshman Academy.

“It was most memorable for me to talk to the admissions counselor,” said freshman Katherine Haley. “I was afraid I might not be able to go to college, so it’s good to know it’s going to be easier than I thought to get scholarships.”

Haley, along with students Jaxen Call, Grace Van Boskirk and Emily Fraser, said that the trip definitely made them want to attend the University of Maine and also got them thinking about their futures a little more.

“I made a college binder where I’m going to put everything,” Van Boskirk said. 

For Call, the most enjoyable part of the trip was the Advanced Structures and Composites Center, which only amplified his goal to become an engineer.

The four freshmen agreed the food at the university was better than they thought it would be, and would be a major perk of attending the college.

“It was a really fun trip,” Haley said. “Everyone came home with a lot of stories.” 

It was obvious that the students enjoyed the trip, Greenberg said. 

“They got the opportunity to be independent,” he said. “They were given trust and higher expectations in a less-restrictive environment.”

For Greenberg, the most enjoyable part of the trip was to see the students making connections between their lessons and the real world. In the Freshman Academy, the students were given a project to identify a real-world problem and come up with a solution using renewable energy. At the Foster Center for Student Innovation, the students were walked through a project happening there that was exactly like the one they had been working on.

“It was a perfect match,” Greenberg said. “So I think it really drove the point home to them that what we’re doing is important and valid and relevant to the real world.”

emarquis@sunmediagroup.net