• To provide time for students to explore opportunities for learning which are not offered in our regular academic program.

• To offer courses which require intellectual involvement, although not necessarily in an academic setting.

• To face challenges and explore learning in contexts (the community beyond OES, the wilderness, other cultures) which are different from our normal school lives.

• To offer students and faculty five and a half days in which to focus energies and efforts in one or two areas.

• To provide a change of pace; the opportunity to collaborate with students and faculty in exceptional and refreshingly new circumstances, and the opportunity to work with an unfamiliar cross-section of peers and adults.

• To give students and faculty the opportunity to learn and teach in new ways, broaden perspectives and horizons, and to expand our knowledge of ourselves and each other.