Generally speaking, teenagers have a tendency to spend their summers frolicking and philandering their time. However, some studious seniors decided to get a head start on their Capstone project.

Capstone is an important community service project that all seniors must complete. Students had the option to receive “Earlybird Capstone Approval” for their projects at the end of last school year so they could complete the hours over the summer.

Senior Matthew Giardina volunteered at Northern Virginia Training Center . It is a home that assists mentally and physically handicapped adults. He had previously volunteered there and worked on maintaining the groundwork of the facility.

“It seemed like a better idea [to do it in the summer] than trying to fit it in with AP classes,” said Giardina. “It gives me more free time in the school year and it’s one less thing to worry about.

Senior Sarah Schlichting completed her Capstone project over the summer with her friend Senior Yasmin Wassel. They collected $3000 worth of school supplies for the Lorton Community Action Center. Like Giardina, they have a schedule full of difficult classes, and decided to plan accordingly.

“We knew we’d be really busy with AP classes,” said Schlichting. “We collected at Giant and then my church.”

While this project took time out of the summer, Schlichting enjoyed the success that resulted after her hard work. It worked out for the best to do her project in the summer, since that is when school supplies are especially sought-after items.

“It was fun to see how many school supplies were actually donated,” said Schlichting. “We did not expect to receive as much as we did.”

Just as successful, senior Colin McGavin helped organize the annual Swim-A-Thon for the Beth Bryan Foundation with his friend senior Adrian Chadwell. Supporters paid to participate in relays and swim laps. Together, they raised almost $5000 going toward the American Cancer Society.

“We helped organize and advertise,” said McGavin. “We created Twitter groups and Facebook groups [to publicize the Swim-A-Thon].”

McGavin and Chadwell’s project took quite a bit of time to set up, and the summer was the optimal time to get it done, especially because the pool was open

“It’s a Capstone, [and] you wanna get it out of the way,” said McGavin. “It was a lot of hard work [preparing for the Swim-A-Thon], but the event had a lot of people and [was] a lot of fun.”