At the beginning of this discourse, I painted a stark image of the first day of school. In addition to the notorious return to “the swing of things,” social interactions demand an effective way to compare summers by analyzing the wealth, intelligence, and likability. The rest of the year has followed suit with similar themes of history, psychology, and existentialist philosophy. Now I am left with one more article to brighten things up a bit.

If we take a look at the upcoming summer, there are 12 weeks. Somewhere in these 12 weeks of summer, Americans will observe the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. In celebration of this event, my classmates and I worked to have Dr. Judy Lubin speak here, an expert on high-powered rockets, inspiring the wonder and inception of a rocketry Cookies elective to build our very own rocket. Why not?

Regardless of whether you are a second grader, graduating senior, or senior citizen, please dedicate these 12 weeks to your inner child. Even progressive educational institutions like this one fall into the trap of what I call “childhood erasure.” A school cannot stop societal barriers from caving in and limiting your ambitions as you age. I suspect that effect is only exaggerated in your early adulthood. So I hope you take a moment, now and then, to acknowledge that school was not supposed to just be about parametric equations or semicolons, but rather it’s about creating connections, discovering your place, and most of all, learning how to think and function in Western civilization—how to contribute talent, solve problems.

Despite meticulous planning, the two days of rocket-building were full of unexpected problems. Among many other scares, we broke the first parachute and had to create a special adhesive with silica powder for the fins, which we had already almost misaligned. After applying vinyl wrap of a color similar to British racing green, we decided to name our prized rocket Flora J1, in honor of Flora J. Cooke.

Then on May 18, we set out on a bus for Kansasville, Wisconsin at 7:00 a.m. When we got out of the bus two hours later, the launch range met us with endless desolation—open fields of grass and gravel, not a single building, table, or chair in sight. Things livened up, though, when more rocketeers arrived, who varied from eight-year-olds to senior citizens.

These people had an unfailing, innate inclination to piece something together and see it blast into the sky with breakneck acceleration. In a modern world often labeled superficial and plagued with self-interest, this experience brought me a great deal of long-needed joy.

At the range, there was also an announcer, with an impressively American radio voice, who counted down our rocket when the time came. When he reached “one,” there was this alarming fizzing sound, followed by a long pop, but the blue-yellow fumes and resounding gasp said it all.

The rocket shot up in a matter of seconds. After losing sight of it, I was convinced that it wasn’t coming back. The spectacle of it made me cackle and my eyes water up. Later, I spotted the British racing green in the sky, although the pervading sunlight hurt my eyes to look. Flora J1 had separated into two stages and was spinning around violently like a helicopter blade.

Having packed the parachute myself, I hoped to God that it would open up at any moment. Then, “We have an event,” the announcer said. The yellow tarp brought the rocket a graceful landing some 800 feet away. The stereo system switched back to playing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Our spirit was too strong to stop there, so we launched the rocket again, this time with a motor three times as powerful, an idea that one man at the range called a “suicide mission.” The second launch was successful, though, dwarfing our first.

Then we pulled out a tracking device which looked like a cross between a police officer’s speed gun and some contraption from Ghostbusters, for there was no sign of where the rocket went. Certainly, I was proud of our launch results, but little did I know that the hardest part of the journey was still ahead, also the part that made it worth it and fun.

An hour later, when I took my first step into a nearby bog to which the tracker had directed us, my knees were underwater, so I rolled up my pant legs. The mold floating around had an insufferable stench, and we could not see one another because the swamp was full of reeds that were taller than any of us.

However, amid these marshes, a funny thing happened. We started telling jokes. One of us began to hum a song, and then laughter spread infectiously. Indeed, in that swamp, I learned more than I ever could in a classroom. If you are in the bootless pursuit of something you authentically desire, knee-deep in swamp water, perhaps you can make any seemingly arduous, Sisyphean task an enjoyable time. Nothing disturbed our transcendent inner satisfaction that day, and minute by minute, reed by reed, ping by ping, we strategized and laughed our way through the marsh until we could smell the gunpowder.

At the end of our expedition, we reconvened by the nearest road with the rocket. We sat on the side of the highway with the rocket, and now the challenge was finding our bus ride home.

Two months ago, I listened to a podcast where the host attempted to describe everything humanity does not understand or longs to understand, like what existed before the universe, how chaos theory works, the selective advantage of love, if God exists, what consciousness is, if we’re alone, and so on. Then the host said that these questions of metaphysics and well-being are folly.

Perhaps many of the questions I have asked this year are folly as well. The host explained that our pondering of these mysteries is akin to if an ant by the highway tried to understand its use. When I step back, I find that almost every thought is. However, if you know what you don’t know, you will never run out of questions. So if you remember one thing from this article, it is to unleash your imagination during the summer, for your own sake. Who knows when you will have that freedom again? So then, ask yourself: Will you go outside to be the ant by the highway during these 12 weeks, or are you still part of the colony?