Reflections on Solo, Fall 2026

By Andy Jian, Outdoor Program Coordinator & Math Instructor

Straight off the heels of Farm Day, F26 embarked on the three-night, four-day adventure known as “Solo.”

For the uninitiated, Solo consists of students placed along a stream in the woods and forced to reconcile, alone, with the smallness of their existence. Or at least forced to attempt.

In the past, students have reported the full range of experiences, from “I stayed under my tarp, ate for boredom, and counted seconds,” to “I felt the weight of the world’s expectations lift in a brief moment of peace.”

Most students, regardless of semester or weather, report sleeping simultaneously very poorly and for very long. Some find the time transformational, some extremely unpleasant.

Fall 2026 seem to have made it back from Solo all in one piece, and generally lean toward the right in the mundane to profound spectrum of experience.

While it’s impossible to encapsulate 30± unique boredoms into one overarching narrative, I’ll still try:

I’ve never been a teenager in 2026 but, from the outside, it seems overwhelming.

Outside of the woods, they seldom have nothing to do. Much of human technology (combined with the college admissions process) in the last two decades has been in service of eradicating boredom from their lives.

While speaking to students before and after Solo, this theme came up the most frequently. One student said that she finally had the time to “actually watch birds and listen to the brook.” The biggest shared reward of Solo this season was in pausing their lives for a second to just catch a breath.

Between college stress, school, internships, sports, extracurriculars, and adolescent social lives, this group of high-achieving teenagers has never just sat there. Students reveled in being “gloriously unproductive” for four days straight, free from even the mental burden of thinking they should be doing something else.

One student I spoke to spent the entirety of Solo not even attempting entertainment––just trying to “experience stillness.” Of course, not all students shared this sort of mindset, but I found it more pervasive this semester than previous.

Many of the other students I spoke to had a built-up expectation of grand transformations that would happen to them on Solo.

Rather than a heel-turn, it seems like this Solo acted as a directional nudge. Given a few days extracted from their routine lives, students reflected on what they did or didn’t enjoy, what they do or don’t want for themselves.

One student told me that it was “time to think about [his] life goals and plans,” through which he “realized [he] has less of a plan and thoughts than expected.” For some, Solo offered the ability to get a view of their own lives from a static, semi-external perspective.

Some students, of course, despised Solo and the damp cold and the 10x10 landscaping tarp ‘shelters’ and the dark and losing their cooking utensils night one and the animals and the sounds of trees creaking and breaking around them and especially “being alone with just [their own] thoughts.” That’s fine too––at least they know.

Otherwise, the weather this Solo was, in my opinion, extremely fortunate: raining from around 6PM to 9AM every night, faint drizzles if anything for the waking hours.

Considering the nor’easter forecast boogeyman that weekend, I think we got by a little too easily. Students even had the luxury of reading outside of their tarps. Spoiled, if you ask me.

Faculty reported enjoyable though less private than expected Solos.

F26 have gone through the rite and emerged somewhat unharmed and somewhat changed.