Volume 58, Number 4 Monday, May 16, 2016MAY 2016 ISSUE

Sectı

ons

EVEN

TS

News & Opinion ........ 2Tech & Sports ............. 7 Features ...................... 9Arts & Entertaint. ..... 11Food .......................... 12State of Sound ........... 13Farewell ...................... 14Seniors ........................ 20

Established 1959Bosphorus Chronicle

Robert College’s Hidden Second Library: Önder Kaya

By Tayfun Gür,GUEST WRITER

M. Miraç Süzgün & Ezgi YazıcıSENIOR EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

BC: Firstly, since the student body usually gets to know you in their junior or senior year with history classes, can you briefly introduce yourself to us?

Of course. I was born in Istanbul on the 13th of December, 1974, born and raised in Aksaray, Fatih. I say this very often, my future students will learn the term suriçililik, as in being from the his-torical peninsula that is surrounded by the walls of the old city that was con-quered by Mehmet the Conqueror. I’ve been in this profession for sixteen years and have been a history teacher here for about ten years. I have a somewhat long-distance relationship with the English language but I can read Ottoman script.

BC: What started your interest in history?

My interest in history goes back to primary school. Actually, my grades in the elementary social studies class “Hayat Bilgisi” were lower than average. Then in third grade, we started learn-ing about Ottoman history, and my up-stairs neighbour’s daughter gave me some old history magazines. They of-ten involved the very neighbourhood I grew up in, with its old mosques, ceme-teries, buildings… As kids, we had spent our days kicking balls and playing tag among them. I think it was for this rea-son, combined with my disposition to look into things in detail, that my cu-riosity for history was formed. By the time I was in high school I already knew

what I wanted to study, and I went on to study history at Marmara Universi-ty. In truth, teaching wasn’t something I considered too much, I was thinking in-stead about staying in academia. But I realized I could do the teaching and the academic work together, and also that I actually liked teaching. It is a nice pro-fession to tell people about things, to help them shape themselves, and I am content at the moment.

BC: You already mentioned Fatih even before we asked, so what is your neighbourhood’s importance in your life, your personality?

I grew up in Fatih right in the middle of its breaking point. I was six years old on September the 12th, 1980. The 80’s in general were the Turgut Özal period, so interestingly there was a lot of prog-ress and growth on many fronts, yet it was also a time during which the suriçi got emptier. In the first years of the re-public, suriçi was a place where the elite people of İstanbul lived. From there on though, there have been some cracks. Following the Varlık Vergisi (capital tax) of 1942, the events of September 6-7, 1955, and the like, the non-Muslim population living there started to move out. They were replaced by the immi-grants coming in from Anatolia, who formed their own ghettos, and what was called the old İstanbul culture started to dissipate little by little. I was born just in time to catch up with the last remnants of it, we had our old neighbours, aunts and uncles, very cultured and thoughtful people. To this day some of them bake lokma at home and bring some over to us on the night of Kerbela, some restau-rants are closed throughout the month of Ramadan because their owners view it as bad manners to stay open, there are others who call me on every kan-dil (holy nights of Islam) to ask how I am doing. I mean there are many inter-esting people, it is one of the last places where that old neighbourhood culture is left. Playing tag, hide-and-seek… I re-member we used to curse when an An-adol passed the street every 10-15 min-utes. These days maybe 20-30 cars pass the same street every minute. Of course change is inevitable, what we call “be-ing from İstanbul” in the old sense of the words is something that is only left in movies and old sayings now. It’s all but gone.

BC: You focus on the history of İstanbul and the minorities in Turkey. How did you decide to focus on these areas?

I actually did my master’s thesis on Medieval history and the Ayyubids,

my interest in popular history start-ed 14 years ago when I was working in the Şişli Terakki High School. Back then the journalist Murat Bardakçı had a history supplement for the newspaper Hürriyet, and I started writing some ar-ticles on popular history there. Then I realized I was leaning towards the sub-ject of İstanbul, since there is just so much material to be found there. The cemeteries, türbes (tombs) of sultans, this and that, they’re all over my neigh-bourhood.

I am also a person who is interested in cultures outside of the one I come from, and in time this was reflected in my cir-cle of friends, among whom there have been ones of Jewish and Rum (Greek) descent, Catholic Armenians and Gre-gorian Armenians. I’m interested in learning about their ways and eventu-ally got curious about their history as well, that is actually how my 2002 book

A New Tradition

in BC:

“SENIOR

SECTION”

—————

Please see

page 20.

RC Orchestra Concert May 26 - 28, 2016

Fine Arts Festival (FAF) May 28, 2016

Graduation June 28, 2016

Tanzimat’tan Lozan’a Azınlıklar (The Minorities from the Tanzimat to the Treaty of Lausanne) was published. I try to balance my personal works with the popular history, I go to symposiums, write for magazines. I’ve written for Ra-dikal and the magazine called Mütefer-rika. My articles about the Jewish com-munity are published in the newspaper Şalom. The ones about Armenians, Rums, other minorities are published in the Paros magazine. My travel writ-ing in Gezgin. Recently for instance, my family is from Ordu, so I asked my-self why don’t I write about Ordu?And now I’m doing so in a magazine called Kuzey Yıldızı. Of course, this isn’t a very systematic method, you end up having some knowledge about everything but a deep understanding of very few sub-jects.

——————————— continued on page 5.

Önder Kaya

Önder Kaya Looking Good

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE NEWS AND OPINION2

Lise Live XXXIII

By Nisan ŞeleSTAFF WRITER

The lights of the theater darken, an-ticipation fills the air, and Ms. Hope-Brown enters the stage to graceful-ly start one of the most exciting events in RC: Lise Live. If there is one event guaranteed to sell out as soon as the tickets are available, it is Lise Live. Ev-ery semester students can hardly wait to hear their friends sing on the theater stage, and the wait is worth it.

Lise Live XXXIII took place on April 21st 2016, with a packed audience. In-stead of sticking with the new proce-dure of a late evening performance at 7 PM, it was back on its regular sched-ule, at 3.30 PM, just after classes end-ed. However, while time aspects to Lise Live tend to change, there is always the constant restless crowd creating a wall of flesh in front of the gates, waiting for them to be opened, so they can grab the

best seats in the house. Not only stu-dents, but the limited number of guests also join the line, participating in one of the most fun yet stressful aspects of the show.

The first half of Lise Live is usual-ly when the slow songs and the pop songs shine, the metal and the rock is reserved for the second half. The songs may have been slow, but they were in no way lacking in quality. Yorgan Mafyası delivered a great version of “Beggin’,” Tayfa Prep was a force to be reckoned with as they turned the beloved alter-native “Pumped Up Kicks” into a suc-cessful rendition. Ayliz Onur’s voice re-ally shined in Ayliz & Özge’s version of “Knee Socks,” so did Elif Coşkun’s in “My Immortal” delivered by Elif & Emre. All this talent was complement-ed by the Mushroom [Umut Fidan] with his EDM, and Can Sapmaz’s reg-ular but never boring dance moves. Last but not least, the first teacher made an appearance on the stage when Mr. Pu-lathaneli took his guitar to perform

“Yapamam” with Mastering Music, a tribute every RC student would recog-nize from miles away.

The second half to this kind of first half could’ve been disappointing, but once again, RC students exceeded ex-pectations. Night was innovative as they combined the beautifully sung lyr-ics of “In The Night” with dancing. It was almost like witnessing the birth of an amazing idea, there is no doubt oth-ers will follow this new combination. As the end of the show approached, the classic Turkish rock songs started appearing. Dosya Masrafı Yok chose a great song, Seksen Dört’s “Ölürüm Hasretinle,” to perform to the audi-ence. People had already started clump-ing in front of the stage by that point. That performance was followed with Tefeci’s “Hadi Gel İçelim,” and every-one was having a blast. These poignant and well-played songs were followed by the teacher-dominated bands, Geezers and Lemmings. While every student loves seeing their teachers on the stage,

there is just something that ignites the rebellious spirit in everyone when they see Mr. Welch throwing cards around, singing to “Ace of Spades.”

And so, the last group arrived on the stage. Igros Kookli performed two bril-liant songs, “Arap Saçı” and “Bir Kadın Çizeceksin.” Everyone, screaming the lyrics, reached to the stage to touch the hands of their classmates. The theater was one voice, singing one song with unity.

The event was over, too soon for something that was this anticipat-ed. The students filled the foyer, grab-bing their bags to go home, the music still echoing in their heads, memories still seeming present. And those mem-ories will drive them to the same the-ater again and again, listening to differ-ent songs perhaps, but experiencing the same emotions.

So, the wait for Lise Live XXXIV be-gins.

Dance Evening

By İlayda OrhanJUNIOR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

“And those who were seen danc-ing were thought to be insane by those

who could not hear the music.”On April 29th, the International Dance

Day, Suna Kıraç Theatre trembled with the rhythmic footsteps, swayed to and fro with the synchronized dance moves, and was enchanted by the loud, creative souls of Istanbul University State Con-servatory Ballet and Pantomime De-partments, Adapazarı Enka Schools and RC Modern Dance Club.

Tickets for the event sold out as fast as Lise Live XXXIII tickets; the audi-ence was as excited to watch the per-formances as the dancers were, present-ing a whole year’s work. Although it was enough to please the eye to just watch how gracefully the dances were done, each performance had a meaning to it, a story that not only fascinated the audi-ence but also made them feel what the dancers felt.

Öykü Özaydın caused distress among the audience when she hanged her-

self in the pantomimic piece “Ab-ı To-prak.” Her innocent act of sitting on the ground and playing happily with dirt turned so quickly to every inch of her body twitching desperately that it re-minded the audience yet again Et in Ar-cadia ego (Latin for “Even in Arcadia there am I [death]”).

In Camilla Gavagni Cattaneo’s “Yolcu-luk,” it was impossible for the audience not to connect with a person being worn out by life itself. Just as the baby takes its first step, it is blocked by a small stone, then another one, a bigger one. Then an-other. Then another… Until the adult can carry these stones no more…

The helplessness a housewife feels, how clueless she can be when left alone with a baby to take care of combined with other burdens she has, the constant de-mand for her to hide her sorrow, her pain, her anger was portrayed beautiful-ly by Müge Saut’s “Uyusun da Büyüsün.”

The audience went wild after Adapazarı Enka took the stage, not just took it but owned it. Dancing to Caucasian mel-odies, they were fast, eloquent, and in sync. Jumping all over the stage, they made this difficult dance seem so easy, which earned loud cheers and a stand-

ing ovation. The atmosphere changed drastical-

ly into an almost ethereal one whenev-er Deniz Akarslan, Berkay Günay, Meli-sa Ayanoğlu and other members of the Ballet Department took the stage. Their turns were elegant and effortless; their balance was impeccable; so was their timing. They never wiped those smiles off their faces, making the audience feel the warmth. Of course, each time the real owners of the stage, the RC Modern Dancers, stepped in, time stopped. They

were so beautiful, so graceful, so fragile but at the same time so strong. It was as if you weren’t asked to watch the dance but rather forced to by your own eyes. All of them were familiar faces: faces we have all seen but haven’t noticed walking down the hallways. Now, as they were shining brightly on Suna Kıraç’s stage, the realization of how talented they are, how unique in their abilities sank in. For some, this was the last time they would ever dance on this stage, which made their performance more meaningful both to them and to the audience.

Lise Live XXXIII - Courtesy of Eslem Soylu

Courtesy of Berfin Altıntaş

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE

Established 1959

Bosphorus Chronicle

EDITORS IN CHIEFMuhammed Miraç Süzgün ’16

Ezgi Yazıcı ’16İlayda Orhan ’17

SECTION EDITORSArda Başaran ’16

Burak Tunahan Ekincikli ’16Melis Şingin ’16

Rabia İdil Demirelli ’17Ali Çataltepe ’18Melisa Saygın ’18

LAYOUT EDITORMuhammed Miraç Süzgün’16

WRITERSBatu El

Ege İşkesen Evin Cemre Sönmez Gülengül Coşkun İsmail Talha Aktaş

Mehmet Reşat İslamoğlu Nisan Şele Oktay Şen

Özsu RişvanoğluŞeyda Zeynep Ünsal

Simay Yazıcıoğlu Yağmur Güngör

Yasin Alper Kızıloğlu Zeynep Nehir Türkarslan

ADVISORSCarolyn Callaghan

Robin Carnegy

Bosphorus Chronicle is pub-lished quarterly during the academ-ic year by Robert College students.

We welcome letters to the editor, feed-back, and articles by students. Howev-

er, we reserve the right to edit all materi-als for reasons of appropriateness of length.

Give your submissions to the advisor or one of the editors or send it to us via e-

mail. All photographs published are tak-en by the writer unless otherwise credited.

How to contact us: By e-mail: bosphoruseditor@gmail.com

By mail: Robert College, Arnavutkoy, IST.

NEWS AND OPINION 3

Racket in Turkish Theater Company

On March 23, the Turkish Theater Company opened their curtains with Ayışığında Şamata (Racket in Moon-light). After 7 months of hard work, they finally got the chance to display their talent to the RC community. The play consists of two acts, which are op-posite versions of the same story. The play is based on the lives of Çalışkur Apartment’s residents. It criticizes modern youth for being degenerate and having disrupted family relations. Af-ter the production, the team continued to meet on Wednesdays, and they were kind enough to answer The Bosphorus Chronicle’s questions about their play!

BC: Did you improvise in any of the plays? If so, how did it affect the play?

Zeynep Deniz Atacan: Yes, the plays were never the same.

Ozan Geyik: On Thursday (the sec-ond act), İsmet and I were backstage. According to the script, we were to stick our heads out of backstage to stare at the people on stage. Just before sticking out our heads, İsmet told me he was going to improvise something, which had just come to his mind 2 seconds ago. Then he got on the stage and just did it. It was really amazing and people laughed at it because it was funny.

İsmet Enhoş: When you impersonate your role genuinely, the rest is easy. We started to become our characters.

Yiğit Temel: When we improvised, it was hard to not laugh during the scene.

BC: Did anyone help you during your preparation? How did you prepare?

Beste Bilen: Görkem Örskıran (RC’13) was our main guy for that. It was very kind of him to volunteer to help us. We are really grateful to him; without him, we wouldn’t have been

By Rabia İdil DemirelliFEATURES EDTOR

& Zeynep ÜnsalSTAFF WRITER

this successful. Since he was watching us while we acted on stage, he had a dif-ferent perspective, which helped make the play more appealing. We also played some games that Görkem taught us. He didn’t only help us prepare for the play but he also helped us improve via some theatrical activities.

Emre Akşehirlioğlu: Görkem taught us how get into character and improvise.

Eylül Küçük: He also helped us with regie.

BC: Throughout the year, what is your funniest memory?

Küçük: Whenever we made a mis-take in any of our rehearsals, we always turned back to a specific scene which starts with ‘Pastan harika olmuş Beyhan’ (Your cake seems amazing...)

BC: How did you feel when it ended?Beste Bilen: We’ve been preparing this

play for seven months, and when it end-ed, I fell into a feeling of emptiness.

Eylül Küçük: In March, our whole lives revolved around the Theater Club. We were using our homes as if they were hotels since we spent most our time in the theater.

Bilen: We thought about cancelling the play because of the bombings. It was demoralizing. We couldn’t have a rehearsal.

BC: Can you reflect on this experi-ence? Struggles you had, skills you ac-

quired, any last comments? Bilen: When you are on stage, you

shouldn’t just think about the moment, you should also think about the back-ground. That was the hardest thing to do when we were on stage because it’s hard to create a story that is not writ-ten in the play. So, we thought about the backgrounds mostly, thanks to Görkem, who made this possible for us.

Kaan Demir: Görkem asked us weird questions about the characters’ lives, and somehow those questions managed to make us be those characters. Like: “What do you like to eat and why do you like to eat it?”

Bilen: Hande Hoca made big sacrific-es for us. She left her children at home, and she gave us helpful feedback.

Küçük: She made us believe in our-selves. When we lost faith in ourselves, she supported and motivated us.

Bilen: Before every play, she came on backstage and motivated us as a coach.

BC: Which version of the role was more enjoyable to act? Why?

Yağmuray Sarı: The first one was more enjoyable to act. I really like the role and enjoyed playing a villager woman.

As BC staff, we want to congratu-late them again on their play and thank them for the interview. We are looking forward to watching them perform in the upcoming years.

An Inside Look at FAF 2016

By Simay YazıcıoğluSTAFF WRITER

The Fine Arts Festival is the last ma-jor event of Robert College, and there-fore it is a festival where the school spirit is at its peak. It is also an event in which the RC community celebrates the upcoming summer while enjoying the fresh spring vibe. For more than three decades, the FAF tradition pro-ceeds with various performances, ac-tivities, exhibitions, workshops and es-timable guests. Here is a look ahead to FAF 2016 for the ones who wonder what FAF will bring this year.

A great change will occur this year in the number of bands that will perform. Until this year, FAF has welcomed one big music band each year. However, as the President Ekin Gülen (RC’17) in-dicated, Student Council members are working hard to arrange more than one band for the upcoming FAF. They aim to maximize the enjoyment for us;

therefore, they are considering mul-tiple bands that are widely liked by the student body. So, which bands are the candidates for performing in FAF 2016? The president said that “We are talking to Teneke Trampet, Adamlar and Büyük Ev Ablukada for the con-certs.” At the time of this BC publica-tion, it is not certain if these bands will be playing; the negotiations are still in progress.

Secondly, there will be changes in the Interactive Games this year. The good news is that the popular games from last year such as Human Foosball and Funnyball will be again available to all participants in the plateau. In addition to that, a game station will be set in an area by a firm called GramGames. This means that there will be a plethora of opportunities for those who would like to enjoy FAF in different ways.

Lastly, SC members want to im-prove the art section of the festi-val by increasing the diversity of the workshops. Possible additions to the arts section are Terrarium and Snow

Globe workshops. The RC communi-ty is pretty sure that this section of the festival will be up to par or even better.

We hope everyone in the RC com-munity enjoys the Fine Arts Festival - it’s always a fun day!

Racket in the Moonlight

Courtesy of Ekin Güler

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE NEWS AND OPINION4

A Philospher’s Guide to Traffic and First Aid: Mehmet Göral

By M. Miraç SüzgünSENIOR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

& Tunahan EkincikliTECH & SPORTS EDITOR

Mehmet Göral is the Traffic and First Aid teacher of the Social Scienc-es Department who is also one of the two philosophy teachers at the school. However, we bet you don’t know what Mehmet Göral studied before philoso-phy. Chances are you also have no idea what he does on weekends or where he worked for 30 years. But don’t wor-ry! As the Bosphorus Chronicle, we in-terviewed Mehmet Göral for this issue in order to shine a light on his teach-ing history, favorite philosophic era, and hobbies.

BC: Can you please introduce your-self briefly?

I am Mehmet Göral, one of the two philosophy teachers at RC. I have been teaching for more than 35 years. I was born in Çatalca, which is one of the smallest towns in İstanbul. It is known for being one of the two peninsulas of İstanbul. After my high school edu-cation in Çatalca, I graduated from İstanbul University with a degree in philosophy. I can say that the peri-od that ended with my enrollment in İstanbul University was quite adventur-ous. I took the university entrance exam twice. After the first test, with the influ-ence of my friends and family, I chose to study management, an unknown and new profession to many people in Turkey. Management was so new that, in fact, İstanbul University had only 4 graduates. After studying management for nearly a year, I realized that what I dreamed of and wanted to do was not related to management. Therefore, I took the entrance exam again and got into İstanbul University to major in philosophy.

BC: Did you get a high score at the first exam?

Yes, I got a high score at the first test. Since management was a new major in Turkey, its minimum score to accept students was pretty high. Before a man-agement degree, engineers were lead-ing the businesses. While engineers had the theoretical knowledge in scienc-es, they did not know much about ac-counting, business management, work-ing psychology, working sociology, and productivity. Just like management, in-dustrial engineering is a new major and it is very popular.

BC: What happened after you en-rolled into Istanbul University?

Philosophy major did met my expec-tations in many ways and did not meet in some ways. I was a university stu-dent during late-1970s, and there was a political disturbance in Turkey. Stu-dents were divided into groups based on their political views. Violence was a part of the daily lives in universities and streets. In such an environment, getting proper education was very challenging. Schools were closed due to violent acts. For example, after an attack on İstanbul University, the university board decided to close the school for two years. De-spite this chaos, I had a chance to study with wonderful and valuable philosophy professors like Macit Gökberk, Nermi

Uygur and Vehbi Eralp. I always see this as a chance.

BC: Why did you decide to study philosophy?

To be honest, I was not thinking of be-ing a teacher while studying philosophy. In fact, I did not have a pedagogical for-mation for a long time. I enrolled in the pedagogical formation certification pro-gram after a friend advised me to take it. I was aiming to study academically in philosophy, publish papers, and may-be even write books. Later on, I real-ized that I needed to have a proficien-cy in German since there were only a few philosophy sources translated into Turkish. I say German especially be-cause reading and understanding Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche is important. In the end, I changed my mind about hav-ing an academic career in philosophy.

BC: Did you work at a military high school after graduation?

I worked at a military high school un-der the control of Turkish Naval Forces. After I graduated, adventitiously I read in a newspaper that the high school was looking for a new philosophy teacher. Thinking that there would be many ad-vantages of being a part of such a com-munity, I applied to the school as a teacher and got accepted. For around 30 years, I served as a philosophy teacher. Later on, I also worked as an academic headmaster for a few years.

BC: How did you start teaching at RC?

When I retired, I felt tired because of working for 30 years. I thought that be-ing a teacher for such a long time would be enough for me. However, after a short while, I started to get bored. I had a list of things that I wanted to do but did not have a chance, and I did everything on that list in only a few months. I mostly met and talked with my old friends and visited new cities and museums. I had a friend in Üsküdar American Academy, and he told me that RC was looking for a new philosophy teacher. I passed the interview at RC successfully and in the end was selected as the new philosophy teacher.

BC: Which period of philosophy do you like to teach the most?

I believe that the most colorful period of philosophy is the ancient age. Most of the topics that we discuss even today are products of the ancient times. Many researchers think that philosophy is ac-tually the footnote of what two of the great thinkers, Aristotle and Plato, of the ancient age wrote. It means that Ar-istotle and Plato discussed every top-ic possible and did not leave any other topics to work on. I agree with this say-ing because until 1800s, for more than two thousand years, philosophic discus-sions were mainly based on what Aris-totle and Plato said. Even today, opin-ions of Aristotle and Plato are valued.

BC: Considering the new points of views that they brought to philosophy, which philosophers do you like?

My undergraduate thesis was based on Nietzsche. As a result, I had the chance to concentrate on and appreciate his studies. Secondly, I like Karl Marx. He believes that philosophy is not some nonsense that is to be discussed only by intellectuals. I believe that philoso-phy should change humans and com-

munities. Thirdly, I like the works of John Bodviller. He analyses communi-ties and figures who leads these com-munities really well. Last but not least, I tried to read about opinions of some of the known French philosophers. Yet, since I don’t speak French, it is a little bit challenging to fully understand their work, since there are many key terms that are needed to be known. Currently, I am trying to read and understand arti-cles in foreign languages.

BC: Do you have any other interests besides philosophy? What are your hobbies?

I like jogging a lot. I believe that as I sweat, I get rid of the negative thoughts in my mind. I try to jog 4 times a week. I am also interested in music. I believe I have a musical ear and I actually regret not enrolling in a conservatory. While I am not a master at them, I can play bağlama, tanbur, and violin. I aim to de-velop my playing, however, I do not have a chance because of the school work. Furthermore, I enjoy reading, and I read books related to different fields: cook-ing, sports, classics, poetry... My favor-ite poets are Refik Durbaş and Küçük İskender. Exploring the backstreets of İstanbul is another interest that I have. On weekends, I select a neighborhood in İstanbul that I don’t know much about. Then, I go there and try to un-derstand what it feels like to live in that place by eating in the local restaurants and talking to people. After 5 years, I have successfully seen many different places in İstanbul.

BC: When did you start giving Traf-fic and First Aid courses in RC?

When I started teaching at RC, phi-losophy lessons were taken by the se-niors. Over the years, the school decid-ed to put the Traffic & First Aid into the senior lesson program to make the senior’s work load as low as possible and let them study for university entrance exams. I think they also put Traffic & First Aid into the curriculum of seniors to help students get a driver’s licence more easily. When the school selected me as the Traffic & First Aid teacher,

I asked them to send me to a first aid course so that I could learn about first aid. Now I have a certificate for first aid and I can explain details of first aid to students more effectively.

BC: What do you think makes you one of the most beloved teachers by the seniors?

I can feel empathy with the students. I try to understand how students feel and act accordingly. I sometimes even think that I feel way too much empathy with people and therefore have trouble explaining my own thoughts and feel-ings. I also feel empathy for other peo-ple. For example, if I am in a cab and see traffic ahead, I guess that the taxi driv-er must be seeing the traffic as a huge waste of time. So, I get out and walk. While feeling so much empathy hurts me from time to time, I keep thinking about people.

BC: If you were an RC student, which classes would you take?

I would probably prefer mainly social sciences: history, sociology, psychology, and literature. Orchestra would be an-other class that I would take.

BC: You stated that you wanted to write a book when you were a student. Do you still have that goal? Are you currently working on a book?

As I mentioned before, what prevented me from making academic research was limitation of philosophy sources that are translated into Turkish. I did not have a chance to learn a new language. Since I don’t want to write something solely based on sources in only one language, I am not currently working on a book or paper.

BC: Would you like to add anything else?

Teaching again at a different school af-ter 30 years could be a very painful and tiring experience. However, RC stu-dents and the community have always motivated me to work harder. Spending time with students who understand and discuss philosophy very well pleases me. I feel very energetic when I walk into a classroom to teach.

Mr. Mehmet Göral While Writing a Poem in the Poetry Week

Courtesy of Staff Photographer

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE NEWS AND OPINION 5

Robert College’s Hidden Second Library: Önder Kaya

continued from page 1...———————————

Nevertheless it feeds my teaching splendidly, jumping from topic to top-ic, always including interesting de-tails… In the end that’s what makes the student passionate about the subject, makes them connect to you, respect you.

BC: Are there any historical periods that particularly interest you that you enjoy teaching in your classes?

I mostly enjoy talking about Istanbul as a general theme, especially the peri-ods of Mehmet the Conqueror and Su-leiman the Magnificent, not the peri-od of growth or anything, because these are the sultans who made Istanbul the Istanbul we know. I am also cultural-ly interested about minorities in Tur-key, cemeteries, sahafs (sellers of sec-ond hand books and other curiosities) and collectors. So when it is the right place, I try to squeeze those topics into my classes as well.

BC: Exactly for this reason the things you say sometimes make us think, “Where could Önder Hoca have learnt all of these things?”

In the past, there were different plac-es of knowledge transfer and exchange in Istanbul. Among them were books shops and some coffeehouses - for in-stance you might have heard of Küllük Kahvehanesi, a coffeehouse in Beyazıt. In the 1950s, professors from the Fac-ulty of Arts and Sciences of Istanbul University would come to Küllük af-ter school hours and have conversations about literature and history, while their students could simply grab a chair and sit with them. Many topics that weren’t explored too much or simply not talk-ed about in a formal classroom envi-ronment would instead be discussed by the professors here, and many stu-dents picked up a considerable amount of knowledge this way. Unfortunate-ly these kinds of places no longer exist, only a few of them are left but people don’t know about them. And the peo-ple who do know are very careful about keeping them hidden, since not many people are left today who have that kind of good manner and culture of discus-sion.

BC: Can you share one of your mem-orable moments with RC students?

Honestly I cannot remember a specif-ic anecdote, but I can say that I really enjoy going to trips with my students. I would actually like to have more of these trips to the historical sites of Is-tanbul in the future, except it can be dif-ficult to find the time to arrange them and also logistical difficulties because of where the school is located. I like how the considerably more formal stu-dent-teacher relationship in school give way to a friendlier and more interactive learning environment during such trips. For instance two years ago, I took a cou-ple of my students from the History Club to the 7th Beyoğlu Sahaf Festival in Taksim, Miraç was there too, where we had a chance to chat with the well-known sahafs in İstanbul, while buy-

ing some rare books and antiques from their stands. These experiences, overall, are very delightful for me and I prefer to focus on this part of my job, where I can reach the students in a more special way. Otherwise a curious student can get the information I give from a book or other resources as well, so I also want to take them to the sahafs, the auctions, or the conversation environments I mentioned before and introduce them to people.

But usually, since I am a more spon-taneous kind of person who gets out of the house in the morning and makes plans afterwards, I sometimes have trouble organizing such collective activ-ities with other people. I do my best to keep in touch with my students though, that is actually the reason I got into this Facebook trouble to begin with and now I have become a frequent user of sorts.

For an anecdote, now that I think, I had a student once who kept getting 62 in his exams. When he finally said, “Hocam, this is the third time I got a 62. What should I do with all these 62’s?” I responded, “My son, make rab-bits out of them, that is the only thing a 62 is good for.” and we both laughed. Or I don’t know, sometimes my stu-dents joke about my English speaking skills. Sometimes as a joke, when some students forget to write their names on their exam papers, I write on the board: “Don’t ill me, write your name.” Some of them don’t understand it, some of them

do. Also once while having lunch, I re-member there was an American teacher among us. When she stood up to leave, I told her: “Sit down please, we haven’t cut watermelon yet!” She gave a little shriek and didn’t understand what was going on. I asked one of my colleagues who was there, Esin (Pulathaneli) to translate it but she said that there wasn’t a real equivalent in English. Meanwhile all the other teachers at the table were laughing.

BC: Are you considering writing a book about Robert College history in the near future?

I actually started writing one, it is at around 25-30 pages right now but what I prefer more is writing articles about Robert College. The school has a won-derful archive, and making use of that as well I’ve been writing the biographies of some of the teachers who have worked here in the past. For instance I wrote an article about Vahram Çerçiyan, a callig-raphy and math teacher here who de-signed the famous signature of Atatürk, and right now I’m writing about a his-tory teacher named Recep Ülke. Maybe in two years’ time or so I might publish a book, but for now I am trying more to direct the students in the History Club to write about the history of the school. For instance in the latest magazine Ezgi wrote about İsmail Cem, some others wrote about the school’s third princi-pal Dr. Gates and the Grosvenors’ re-lationship to RC. These kinds of things accumulate a memory, I actually have a project in mind where enough of these articles can be put together into a book of sorts, maybe through the Alumni Of-fice or some other venue. I think such a book could be a better gift than plaques for visitors and keynote speakers, as a memory of the school and the work of our own students.

Interview with Esra Sezer (RC’17)

By Cemre SönmezSTAFF WRITER

Student Council is one of the big-gest student organizations at Robert College. Although people are used to see SC members selling Senior Sweat-shirts and FAF tickets, the real work is much greater than that. SC organiz-es school events and serves as a bridge between the student community and the administration. To get an inside look at SC, Bosphorus Chronicle in-terviewed Esra Sezer (RC’17), last year’s Treasurer.

BC: Did you have any leadership ex-perience from middle school?

No.BC: So, what fueled your passion to

join the Student Council?Back in my day, when I looked at the

members of SC, all I saw were male residential students. It was and still is very easy for boarding students to get elected. So I told myself that I would give it a shot and beat the boarding students. My dream was to become the President. My first step was to become

Treasurer. Did that one.BC: What is the most challenging

thing you have faced so far in the SC?Finding sponsors.BC: When you were Treasurer?Yes. It was a very busy period.BC: How does it feel to have so

much responsibility? What kind of responses do you get from students?

Students often criticize SC members for not taking their jobs seriously or for not changing anything at school. But the thing is that we work a lot. For example, the SC didn’t have a lot of money before, but now we have the fi-nancial power to organize a well-pre-pared FAF.

BC: What were people’s reactions to FAF?

Mostly negative, and that’s okay. But what’s not okay is that they didn’t ap-preciate our work.

BC: Could you tell us about the fi-nancial background of FAF?

We sign contracts with the compa-nies who agree to sponsor us. We send them our banking information, and

they send us money. All the income tax and stuff that’s factored in makes it pretty complicated. Then, their rep-resentatives come to school and ask for an individual area. Things get messy then because not everyone gets the place they want, so we try to calm them down. There’s also the part where we calculate our income and expenses.

BC: That is a lot of work...And that’s not the end of it. Keep-

ing track of the money is the hardest. As you know, we sell tickets from the

Önder Kaya’s Famous Facebook Profile

Önder Kaya and His Wife

booth in the canteen, so there has to be someone in charge there. We write receipts in order to be able to balance our books.

BC: Were there times when you in-curred a net loss?

During my period, surprisingly, no. BC: So overall, can we say that SC

places a big burden on you?Definitely. BC: Thank you for your interview.You’re welcome.

SC 2015-16 - Courtesy of Yasemin Kiriscioglu

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE NEWS AND OPINION6

AP Exams at Robert College

By Ege İşkesenSTAFF WRITER

Advanced Placement examinations known as AP exams are taken by lots of students every year. There are a va-riety of AP exam topics, and students choose which exams to take according to their interests. For example, since I want to study business in college and I am interested in economics, I am tak-ing micro and macroeconomics exams this year. This AP exam is not the most important thing to write on your re-sume while you are applying for col-leges, but it is still important, especially if you want to study in England. Most of the students in our school are tak-ing these exams, and there is one main goal for everyone: earning a good score.

Hence, these AP exams should be tak-en seriously.

To be honest, I have not yet started my study for the AP Micro-Macro-economics so far, and even though it is partly my fault, I am not blaming my-self. Our school is providing the oppor-tunity to take this exam in our school and that is an advantage, but that’s all. Unfortunately, there are no more ad-vantages provided by our school. You give 150 dollars to take an exam and you are on your own. As you might all agree, RC school work is already tough to do and to be successful constant-ly. Adding a self-study process to that workload is making things far hard-er. You need to spend lots of hours in order to be successful both in AP and RC school work. This means a big part of your free time is gone. You need to

commit your time to achieve the goal you set for yourself, but it is not that easy.

It is not my absolute desire to spend all my free time to studying. All of the teachers are always stating that we need to learn the course material during the class-time. So, how do they expect us to finish an AP course by self-studying for it? I admit that it would be hard to open a course for all the AP classes, but it would be really useful if there were courses for the common AP exams tak-en by most of the students, such as psy-chology and micro-macro economics. I feel like I am throwing my three hun-dred dollars away, spending one hun-dred-fifty dollars for each exam. With less than a month to the exam, I will try to learn the concepts by taking pri-vate lessons. But I still wonder why I

don’t have the opportunity to learn at school rather than outside of class. Can Otluçimen (RC’18) says: “Doing self-study AP work while doing my school-work, I don’t have any time to rest; it is a struggling process for me.”

So, wouldn’t it be nice if RC fully pre-pared its students for overseas study?

Terrorism History and Future

By Batu El & Alper KızıloğluSTAFF WRITERS

The recent attacks in the various countries in the world and the terror-ist incidents in our country have once again drawn people’s attention to-wards terrorism.

In 2015, the institute of economics and peace published the third edition of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI). The GTI is a source which “provides a comprehensive summary of the key global trends and patterns in terror-ism”. In the third edition, the main subject is the increase and the chang-ing trends in terrorism since 2000, for 162 countries. The results are wintry.

In 2014, terrorist acts caused the death of 32,685 people. This means that terrorism increased by 80 per cent compared to the prior year, which is the greatest yearly increase in the last 15 years. In 2014, 9 times more people died because of terrorism compared to the year 2000.

Looking at the Global Terrorism Database(GTD) collected from stud-ies done by the University of Mary-land, the majority of these terrorist incidents are concentrated in 5 coun-tries: Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Paki-stan and Syria. The deaths in those top

5 countries are responsible for 57 per-cent of all the terrorist attacks and 78 per cent of the total deaths caused by terrorism in the world. The two dead-liest terrorist groups, ISIL (also known as ISIS) and Boko Haram in Nigeria, caused 51 percent of terrorism deaths in the world.

Among the deaths caused by terror-ism, only 0.5 percent of worldwide numbers have happened in western countries when 9/11 attacks are ex-cluded. In the western countries the situation is the opposite. Instead of or-ganized terrorist groups, the majority of terrorist attacks are caused by small groups. These percentages may change for the next edition of GTI, which is going to include the attack in Paris at-tributed to ISIS where 130 civilians are killed.

Turkey has the 27th place in 124 countries in Global Terrorism Index Reports. The GTI puts Turkey in the 3rd group where terrorism is in the middle level, but by being a border with Iraq and Syria, Turkey is on the firing line.

Once again, unfortunately, this is an article about terrorism and recent ter-rorist attacks. People may think terror-ism has already been addressed in The Bosphorus Chronicle, but in our coun-try and in the world, terror attacks are still targeting innocent people. We are

writing and protesting against these horrible attacks once again because terrorism should never be a daily and normal concept in Turkey. If we don’t talk about it and protest against it, terrorism will be a regular thing and it will show that we become accus-tomed to these attacks. People are an-gry about the fact that there is noth-ing we can do after seeing these terror acts in the news. We are not soldiers or politicians that can help to prevent terrorism, but we are society, and con-sequences of these attacks harm us the most. What we can do is feel sorry for every loss equally, without differ-ing between the ethnic groups or rac-es involved in the incident. We should not support even a single idea said by terrorist groups. When the ISIS at-tacks first started, some people were suggesting that it could be beneficial for the politics in Middle East. Today we are all watching ISIS targeting our own country.

We decided to write about and de-nounce terrorism after the unfortu-nate incident happened in our capital city for the third time in five months. Within a week once again we heard about the deadly attack in Taksim, which is the most popular square in Turkey. All of these attacks in differ-ent parts of Turkey were committed by different terrorist groups, and targeted different people, but this doesn’t mean

we should feel sorry for our loss dif-ferently. Every single life is important and those lives will be at stake as long as terrorist groups exist. Terror has no morality and they are targeting inno-cent lives.

A tourist in a Belgian airport or a family having fun in an amusement park in Pakistan were not guilty of anything to deserve to be killed by a suicide bomber. If we stop talking and no longer feel sorry for these losses and see these crimes against human-ity as a regular thing in our country, Turkey will be the next chaotic middle eastern country. If someone doesn’t say ‘stop’ to these things and people keep turning their heads when they hear about these terrorism incidents, it is inevitable for us to see Turkey climb-ing up to the first places in the charts like our borders Syria and Iraq.

The influence of terror incidents also has a major effect on people living in the cities that these incidents happen more than one time. Robert College is an important example of this effect. Our school temporarily stopped order-ing food delivery to campus because of safety issues. One of the most casu-al concepts such as ordering food be-came a safety problem because of the terror incidents. Residential students were unable to leave campus when the Taksim bombings occured. Terrorism targets people’s freedom. People have started to go out less and they try to not be in crowded places. The terror-ists’ aim was to change our daily lives and they are becoming successful at it. We can’t advise people not to be afraid because we are afraid, too. Obvi-ously we need to be afraid. And be an-gry. And be sorry. But we should unite and everyone should have the same thought: terror needs to be over.

Works Cited:“More People Died from Terrorism

Last Year than Ever Before-and Most-ly in These Five Countries.” Quartz. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.

“Global Terrorism Index.” (n.d.): n. pag. Institute for Economics and Peace. Web.

Courtesy of CollegeBoard

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE TECH & SPORTS 7

The Cool Basketball Girls

By Bilge TatarGUEST WRITER

The glorious year of basketball has come to an end. We have witnessed the best possible combination of girls bas-ketball players together, seen a lot of great games, and listened to their sto-ries of the Paris tournament. They have had a hard time finding teams to play for the past three years and have always complained about it, yet they could never have imagined that one day we would leave Istanbul, and go abroad to play. Twenty-seven friendly people are on the team, one of the largest teams in the school, and we say our goodbyes to five of these really cool girls. Four of them are going to be 12th graders next year, and we hope to run into them dur-ing school. One girl is going to gradu-ate this year and will be going to a real-ly good university in the US. We have plans to meet each other in her dorm in the US - we’ll think about the details later. In the meantime, we say farewell to these amazing players:

Duygu Özkan (RC’17): She was like our second coach with her enthusiasm, ever smiling face and her great tactics. She lifted our heads up when we were feeling down and told us, “Girls, we can do this!” When she saw us during the

Fencing: Interview with Burcu Tulpar

By Yağmur GüngörSTAFF WRITER

The sport of fencing incorporates strength, coordination, and timing. As well as physical activities, mental ac-tivities are also very important in fenc-ing because fencing is a sport that needs significant intelligence. It’s both a phys-ical and tactical challenge between two opponents. The sport of fencing features three different levels that are categorized by the type of weapon used in each level. The weapons used include the epee, foil, and the saber. We’ve interviewed Burcu Tulpar (RC’18), a student in RC, who is a very successful fencer.

BC: How and when did you get into fencing?

When I was in 6th grade, my basket-ball coach saw a spark in me. He told me that my work discipline, aggressive-ness, and drive to win showed that I would thrive in an individual sport. His son also was a fencer and my coach en-

rolled me in the fencing club his son was in. That is how it all started.

BC: Is it hard to get used to the equipment?

At first holding a sword in your hands needs some getting used to. The first time you do a match with someone, you instinctively know how to defend your-self, so the equipment isn’t that hard to use. To use it efficiently and technical-ly is the harder part and it requires years of practice.

BC: What’s the hardest thing to learn in fencing?

The hardest thing to learn is definite-ly learning to control your reflexes. The key in fencing is to react smartly, not to everything your opponent does. So if you are jumpy like me, controlling your reactions can be very challenging.

BC: Have you ever had any accidents while fencing?

Yes, fencing accidents happen all the time. Especially in the summer, when we don’t want to wear the heavy pants

and wear shorts instead, we get many, many bruises and cut marks caused by the great impact of the sword tip hit-ting you.

BC: Do you have other girls fencing on your team? Are they successful as you?

Yes, there are 3 girls in our club. The other two are 5 years older than me, and they are very successful. In the case of fencing, practice makes perfect and the experience they have from going to in-ternational tournaments is phenomenal. I hope to achieve that someday.

BC: How did your life change after you started fencing?

Fencing is very time consuming. I used to have a lot of free time, but after fenc-ing all my free time goes to practice. Since I have always done sports, I don’t feel exhausted, but a lot of my friends who have just started fencing usually complain of the crazy practice hours.

BC: How did you become successful in fencing? Can you tell us more about

your story? I am not that successful. The place I am

at now was achieved through hard work and a lot of failure. I believe that you should push through all the difficulties life throws at you, which in fencing are a lot. There were a lot of tournaments where I was on the verge of quitting and feeling that I wasn’t good enough, but I came out better after those tourna-ments. I also had a lot of support from my coach; he was the one who helped me to get through everything. I can say that he is the reason that I am still inter-ested in fencing; the motivation he gives me is out of this world.

BC: Do you see yourself on the na-tional team in the future?

I am already a B class national fenc-er and plan on being on the class A na-tional team in the near future.

Works Cited: “What Is Fencing?-Olympiad Fenc-

ing Club.” What Is Fencing? – Olym-piad Fencing Club. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

school day, she would stop and have a small but uplifting talk with us. Even though she couldn’t travel with the var-sity team to Paris, there were moments where we felt like Duygu was there making the whole team laugh.

Ece Naz Erülker (RC’17): Oh cap-tain, my captain. The best captain of Robert College, what are we going to do without you? With her sweetness, even the most stressful moments of the matches could be solved very easily. As a captain, she never put unnecessary pres-sure on us; as a player, she entertained us with her beautiful voice singing Queen on our way to the matches; as a friend, she shared the delicious halva her mom made and saved us from dying of hun-ger after our matches. Owner of two MVPs and our hearts, she is going to stay a legend years after she has grad-uated.

Nesli Türker (RC’17): The feeling of passing the ball to Nesli and knowing for sure that her shot was going to go in is an indescribable feeling. Her most sincere smile can be seen right after Nazlı tells her “Good luck, Nesli!” be-fore the jump ball. Known as a silent person on the team, there is no way you won’t be pumped up when she shouts during the game when she gets excited. Nesli, aka ‘soft fingers’, will be spread-ing positive energy, except for the times

when you ask her to wait for you (she usually has programming homework and has no idea how to do it).

Nazlı Yurdakul (RC’16): We stopped believing she was human after she spent all night chatting with us and then took the history exam the following day. She got a hundred, with a smiley face on the paper. She is the best scorer and known for her “Nazlı move,” which is passing three people on the court and shooting the ball inside the lane from far away. People have no idea how it goes in every time. The only 12th grader on the team, an indicator of her determination, she is the pride of the team with her successes both on the team and outside.

İrem Akçal (RC’17): She almost fac-es death in every MEB match when she forgets to take her growing pills. She is there to make us believe in ourselves, to show her great love for Fenerbahçe dur-ing the games from the very back row of the stadium (where the court is small-er than a box) and to take care of or-dering the brand new team sweatshirts. She always reminded us where to shoot the ball in the beginning of the game and the second half. We hope we don’t score in the wrong hoop in the absence of Irem. Nevertheless, she is the most devoted teammate one can imagine.

The team will not be the same with-out these girls. But we hope to see all

of them in our practices and in next year’s Dave Phillips Cup (if we have one) whenever they are free. Last-ly, none of these things would be real-ized if Coach Jones wasn’t our coach for this two year time period. We wouldn’t be playing so hard, smart and together if it wasn’t for him. He showed us what is possible with a team shorter than av-erage, motivated us with his funny com-ments before the games, and support-ed us no matter what. If we wrote down our valuable moments, it would certain-ly take more than a book! They are all going to be missed!

Mr. Jones and the Cool Basketball Girls

As the school year is coming to an end,

the joy of summer and the idea of a long awaited vacation are emerging in everyone’s heads...

Summer is also bringing bittersweet memories for the members of the Robert College Community.

Bosphorus Chronicle wants to bid farewell to the beloved teachers who are leaving

RC at the end of the year and hear about their future plans and what they will miss the most.

We sure will miss them.

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE TECH & SPORTS8

The RC Roboteam and the FIRST Robotics Competition

By Ali ÇataltepeNEWS & OPINION EDITOR

If it exists, there’s usually some sort of competition involving it, whether “it” be sports, science, or even simply gorg-ing oneself on some hotdogs. Natural-ly, this holds true for robotics as well.

The annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Tech-nology) Robotics Competition (FRC) is one of the biggest robotics events, having been around for 25 years, and this March the newly-founded RC Robotics Team took part in the NYC regionals. After a hard-fought bat-tle, they brought home the prestigious Rookie Inspiration Award, defined as “celebrating a rookie team’s outstand-ing success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engi-neers, both within their school, as well as in their community,” for their mem-bers’ involvement in projects, events and educational ventures by Microsoft and CoderDojo and the RC Makers, Google Glass, AR/VR and Android & iOS App Development clubs, includ-ing the RC Makers maker faire last year and Code Week earlier last semes-ter. Bosphorus Chronicle interviewed some of the members of the RC Ro-boteam for an inside view of the whole process.

The theme of the competition this year was called “Stronghold.” “The deal with ‘Stronghold,’” explains Oktay Şen (RC ’16), the Roboteam programming group leader, “is that it’s a medieval-themed contest.” Teams are grouped into alliances, and each alliance has a central tower and 5 defenses protecting that tower. The setup involves some au-dience participation: one of the defens-es is chosen by the spectators, while an-other is a permanent part of the playing field. Robots are tasked with breach-ing the defenses, picking up boulders from the ground and shooting them at the towers, like a catapult. Teams gain points based on the successful comple-tion of these objectives.

Given that this is the team’s first year, their efforts make for a far more inter-esting story than their results. Egemen Güray (RC ’16), one of the team cap-tains, explains the team admission pro-cess:

“We believe that innovation doesn’t just come from attracting the most in-telligent, highly skilled individuals;

it comes from creating environments where different ideas can connect un-der the same vision. So when we start-ed the RC Robotics Team admission process, our philosophy was to attract people from different backgrounds in hopes of finding the ones who see things differently. To do that, we de-signed discrete questions like ‘Design an evacuation plan for RC,’ ‘Describe a problem and how you solved it,’ ‘De-scribe an experience that most affected you,’ ‘What is wrong with this world, and how would you change it?,’ ‘What five words best describe you?’ ”

The team leaders then announced to the forty most promising candidates that they would be interviewing them, but instead split them into groups and had each group design a robot, then re-design it with half the original budget. After this process, they ended up with a very diverse group of students for the team, among them “musicians, basket-ball and soccer players, MUN and EYP students, visual art enthusiasts, art and film history gurus, photographers, and STEM enthusiasts.” Despite this vari-ety of interests, or perhaps because of it, the team had no problem staying solvent:

“Since we managed to create such a diverse environment united under a single vision, we easily dedicated our-selves to do our best in collaboration while ending any internal rivalry be-fore it began.”

Even so, getting the robot ready was no cakewalk. States Elifnaz Önder (RC ’20), from the team’s robot me-chatronics division: “The time we had was limited; we needed to build the ro-bot in six weeks. The theme Stronghold was very fun but also very hard indeed, so we had to design many different parts to the robot in order to complete the missions.”

Ali Kaan Duranyıldız (RC ’17) adds: “As a rookie team we had no experi-ence, which slowed us down a lot be-cause we had to determine what caused problems and what worked well on our own. We also had to build everything from scratch and take note of what parts we needed, as it was our first time. Other teams had parts and pieces that they had saved from earlier competi-tions.”

According to Egemen, the team’s lack of financial resources due to how late they secured funding prevented

them from building a full-scale repli-ca of the playing field to test their ro-bot, but they overcame this hurdle by making their robot “as modular as pos-sible.” They also had to work over-time on the robot, sometimes even for 48 hours straight, as two of their six weeks of building overlapped with Fi-nals Week. Oğuzhan Yılmaz (RC’ 16), the team’s vice captain, states how they coped with the significant amount of work this left them during the compe-tition:

“There was constant action at the pit: some of us were working on the robot, some were making presentations, and some were doing both and more. We maintained this overall spirit through-out the competition just like we did in the months leading up to it and it helped us overcome the challenge of having a limited amount of time to complete so many tasks quickly and ef-ficiently.”

The competition itself was also fraught with difficulties and unfore-seen complications. Even so, “gracious professionalism,” one of FIRST’s core concepts, saved the Roboteam from the worst of them, as the other teams were surprisingly welcoming towards a for-eign opponent. Oktay states “the oth-er, more experienced teams helped us with our issues regarding the robot.” The P.R. division did a stellar job in se-curing this aid too by “making friends among the other teams and providing moral support.” Egemen would like to thank “all teams for all their support and their gracious professionalism.” Of course, the Roboteam returned the fa-vor many times over.

The team is undaunted by the chal-lenges they have faced this year. As Ali Kaan points out, “nearly all the schools that were in the competition were

technical schools that trained kids to work in the automotive industry or other such fields. As a private college I believe we did a great job among such schools. We should be more con-centrated as a team. As we now have some more experience, we know more about design. After this point I believe we can build robots much more effi-ciently.” Oktay’s outlook on the future is positive:

“Since this was our first year, mistakes were to be expected, but we learned a lot from them and we hope to be bet-ter and stronger in the next competi-tion. We are proud to have earned the Rookie Inspiration Award, and I would like to thank my teammates and men-tors for all of their support and hard work during this process.”

However, what should always be kept in mind is the raison d’être of the com-petition itself. As Egemen states:

“We believe technology is the mag-ic of the modern world, and that the magicians of this century will be the ones who shape the future. Hence, our main purpose has always been to in-spire and train the magicians of the fu-ture, by building science, engineering, and technology skills that inspire inno-vation while nourishing curiosity, cre-ativity, perseverance, risk-taking, open-ness, self-confidence, communication, and leadership.”

We wish the Roboteam as well as all our other technical clubs the utmost success at following this principle, and would once again like to congratulate the team on their perseverance and professionalism during the FRC and their well-earned award.

The Stronghold, Robots and Defenses - Courtesy of FIRST

The Roboteam Represent - Courtesy of Mehmet ÖzdemirThe Team Hard at Work - Courtesy of Mehmet Özdemir

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE

The Culture Hidden in the Colors of India

“All of my relatives and friends told me not to go to India because I would get murdered or kidnapped there. When I came back from India, I told them they were half right. I wasn’t murdered, but I was kidnapped. I was kidnapped by love,” says Zubin Shar-ma, founder of Project Potential, a so-cial enterprise located in the rural ar-eas of India, in his RedStudio Talk. The same thing happened to us 9 students and 2 teachers wanting to go to India: We were warned several times by our friends, relatives and even parents that India would not be a suitable place for us. Keeping their warnings in mind, the Social Entrepreneurship Club traveled to Mumbai, India between the 23rd and 28th of April to participate in the “Global Entrepreneurship Summit” at the American School of Bombay.

“The Global Entrepreneurship Sum-mit” (GSES) is a place where con-cerned scholars come together to brainstorm and prototype their inno-vative ideas, trying to solve social prob-lems.

By creating a diverse environment with people from the USA, India, Af-rica, Jordan, and Turkey, the summit helps passionate high school kids find others who share their concerns and find solutions by leading them through the design process. At the end of this year’s summit, there were ten proto-typed projects ready to be discussed and improved with social entrepre-neurs. During this process, everybody in the summit got a chance to learn how to efficiently plan a social entre-preneurship project and make it real.

Spending three days intensely work-ing on a project was challenging. Spot-ting a problem and getting to its ini-tial cause was the hardest part for most of the groups. Anticipating our strug-gle, GSES also invited different so-cial entrepreneurs from all around the world to enrich our projects with their experiences. From day one, Suzie Boss, Karishma Galani, and Zubin Shar-

ma were there to support us and share their experiences. Karishma Galani, the main organizer of the summit, in-troduced us to the design thinking pro-cess. We followed the steps given to us to come up with a sustainable solution to a social problem.

On the first day of the summit, we were asked to choose between three topics (Waste Management, Small Businesses, Communities and Edu-cation) and sit accordingly. Depend-ing on our subjects, we started to form groups with people with the same con-cerns. The first step we took was to get an idea of everyone’s views, lifestyles and concerns. So, with these groups, we went on a tour in Dharavi, one of big-gest slums of the world. Walking the streets of Dharavi was a unique expe-rience because even though the place was dirty, crowded and compact, every-body welcomed us with warm smiles.

Even though Dharavi is a “slum,” it has its own design. Dharavi lies in Ma-harashtra, Mumbai and has two main districts. One part of the slums is the part where people live. They pay rent to live in those slums like we do for apartments. The wide area of Dhara-vi is owned by one person, who is the “landlord” of Dharavi. That landlord is rich enough to move out from Dharavi, but he prefers otherwise. The same de-sire is also found in the residents: many of them live there because they want to. According to law, if 70% of a dis-trict agrees, the government can build two apartments in that district: one for old residents to live in and another to

sell. Dharavi residents have not accept-ed this offer because they like to live with their neighbours in a close envi-ronment. When we got the chance to see Dharavi firsthand, why they chose to stay together was clear: They had a very strong communal spirit. Com-pared to us, their life standards may have seemed low, but they were ac-tually fine and content with it. What they wanted was not a lot of money, big houses or expensive cars. They just wanted to stand together as a strong community, in which everyone is val-ued individually.

During our trip, a local woman host-ed us in her house and had a conver-sation with us. At the beginning, we were shocked because even though we were just strangers to her, she was hap-py to welcome us into her own house. She told us her daily routine and her place in the community. When she started talking about the problems in her life, she said that her only problem was multitasking because she needs to cook, clean, etc. at the same time. This also affected us very much be-cause we all thought that she was go-ing to say the problem was water cuts, houses being too small, or public toi-lets being filthy, but she didn’t. These are the things we see as “problems,” but for them, they were not problems at all. While planning our projects, we realized that when we choose a prob-lem that we wanted to solve, we should also consider whether it is a problem for our target audience or not.

The second part of Dharavi was where people worked: one of the biggest recy-cling systems in the world. There, all the trash from India and countries around is collected and separated. There were countless workshops for glass, plastic, card boxes and aluminum to be specif-ically recycled. Workers in the work-shops were paid 200-300 rupees ($4) per day, our tour guide informed us. In the plastic recycling workshops, plas-tics were sorted according to their col-or and quality.

When all the plastic was sorted, they ran them through a machine to cut the plastic into smaller pieces. The pieces were then washed, dried and sold to companies as raw material. Aluminum is recycled in a different way: Alumi-num collected from trash is melted in a small room where people work with-out any masks. Then, the aluminum is poured into a press machine to be re-shaped. Both of the processes we ob-served were mainly done using manual labor instead of high-tech machinery. It was so interesting to see recycling

being done in a place without high technology standards, when even high-tech places neglect to do it. Some so-cial entrepreneurial spirit was also ob-viously present in the city: A guy in a wheelchair was using it as a car in some dense, Indian traffic.

After the Dharavi trip, we, in groups of 2-5, defined the problems we ob-served in Dharavi and wanted to solve. Then we brainstormed and came up with lots of solutions. After that we trimmed down the number of solu-tions and decided on the solution most likely to solve the problem. Lastly, we prepared our prototypes, meaning we created a presentation of the structure of our projects and presented them to our friends and other social entrepre-neurs.

Contrasting the common view of In-dia as an underdeveloped country, In-dia is a country with a strong sense of culture and colors. Instead of having high-tech machinery and wealth, India has a strong community that allows the people to support and value each other rather simply making them happy. The Global Social Entrepreneurship Sum-mit gave us this unique opportunity to see the diverse culture of India by com-municating with local people. The ex-perience we got from GSES will sure-ly influence us in our future projects in the Social Entrepreneurship Club. Many thanks to people who made this dream come true; it was a life-chang-ing, amazing adventure for us.

FEATURES 9

By Rabia İdil DemirelliFEATURES EDTOR

& Zeynep ÜnsalSTAFF WRITER

Elephanta Caves

Courtesy of RCSEC

Buses Without Doors

Courtesy of Evsen GüleçElephanta Caves Photo Courtesy of RCSEC

‘Flowers Bazaar’ -

Courtesy of Evsen Güleç

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE FEATURES10

Kickboxing with Yağmur Güngör

By Cemre SönmezSTAFF WRITER

Are you looking for a sport that is one of the most beneficial sports in the world? If you are, then you should con-tinue to read this article! Don’t let ste-reotypes change what you want to do. Or, if you are female, don’t just pass up this article without reading it, be-cause this sport is as unisex as most of the other sports. Taking kickbox class-es provides lots of advantages to your body: It helps you to defend yourself, to improve your balance and to increase your flexibility. Boshorus Chronicle in-terviewed Yağmur Günör (RC’18), who is very passionate about kickbox-ing, to learn more about this sport.

BC: When and how did you decide to start kickboxing?

It was the beginning of second se-mester of my prep year when I was on holiday in Thailand. We went to a big muay-thai match of the year, and I was really stunned by the atmosphere of the event. After the holiday, I decided to attend kickboxing classes.

BC: Were there a variety of kickbox-ing courses in Turkey?

No, actually most of the classes were held in places with bad conditions, and the atmosphere was suburban, so my family didn’t want me to go there.

BC: Where did you start your first lesson?

I started kickboxing in Istanbul Tech-nical University (ITU); they had a pri-

vate fitness room where we had our training sessions.

BC: Were there also girls like you who were passionate about kickbox-ing?

Actually, most of the people were studying at college and there were only a few girls besides me. I have been the youngest person there for the last two years.

BC: Why do you think that girls are outnumbered?

In my opinion, fighting is stereotyped in our society as a boy’s job, but what I am doing is much more than fight-ing. It is not only a sport of violence as most of the people think.

BC: How often do you train? And can you give us specific information

about your training? In my first year, it was twice a week,

but then it increased to four days a week. My exercises often start with stretching; then I start shadow-fight-ing, which is the exercise where you fight as if there is someone in front of you even though there isn’t. After be-ing warmed up with quick exercises, I start the rounds. I work on the punch-ing bag for four rounds that last two and a half minutes. At the end of the training we spar (fight) with each oth-er once a week, and one day of training is only for condition-training, and to strengthen.

The Jane Page Writing Contest 2016: In Review

By Ali ÇataltepeNEWS & OPINION EDITOR

The pen (or keyboard, in this case) has been proven mightier than the sword yet again, but pens are only as great as the stories they write, so whose is the mightiest? The results for the Jane Page Writing Contest are in, and the lineup of winners by category consists of Ke-nan Sarp Çelikel (RC ’16) in Dramat-ic Script, Ezgi Okutan (RC ’18), with honorable mentions to Zeynep Soy-dan (RC ’20) and Mehmet Tüfek (RC ’19) in Poetry, and Veli Barış Heybe-li (RC ’16), with an honorable mention to Mehmet Doruk Eliaçık (RC ’18) in Short Story. The Bosphorus Chronicle would like to congratulate them all on their authorship, and thank all entrants for their participation.

Most probably already know about the contest itself, but why and how did it start, and who is Jane Page to be-gin with? The answer to the latter, sur-prisingly, is not “the teacher who orga-nized the competition.” The truth lies on a placard mounted on the wall op-posite Gould 119, for the “Jane Page Teaching Award.” The award is in hon-or of Jane Nichols Page, who served as an RC trustee for 55 years, and was awarded to Maura Kelly of the English Department in 2009. Along with the award came a sizable sum of money, and Mrs. Kelly decided to use the money for something which would encourage stu-dents to write more, and thus contrib-

uted it as the prize for the competition. Although the money ran out after the first 2 years, the competition has sur-vived to this day thanks to the generous contributions of alumni, the parents of students, and the administration.

Now that the introduction’s out of the way, let’s get to reviewing the winners (no spoilers, of course, look for the en-tries themselves in this month’s issue of Kaleidoscope):

Dramatic Script Winner: Panopti-con by Kenan Sarp Çelikel (RC ’16):

This surreal drama takes the epony-mous concept, proposed by Jeremy Ben-tham (whom the protagonist is named after), of a prison (or any other institu-tion) where subjects may be watched by guardians without their knowledge, and knowing this, moderate their behavior as if they are always being watched, and turns it into an opportunity to comment on the “normalization” of non-conform-ing individuals in society in the most absurd way possible. Jeremy, the protag-onist, semi-voluntarily commits himself to the “Panopticon,” a circus-cum-mad-house where he risks coming out worse than he came in. As the judges say, “The writer frequently goes on the attack and doesn’t take any sides. Amongst his tar-gets are the drug-loving psychiatric in-dustry, the justice system, and the fam-ily. He might even attack thoughtful readers.” The play is built upon many layers of philosophy, from 18th centu-ry utilitarianism to Rumi’s (yes, Mevla-na himself has a significant supporting role) Sufi mysticism.

Poetry Winner: “Rhymes and Pa-pers” by Ezgi Okutan (RC ’18):

We all love ourselves a meta-commen-tary on a medium, but it takes a special understanding of the process of creat-ing art to work. “Rhymes and Papers” achieves its objective with poetry by fo-cusing on a very specific example: Em-ily Dickinson, the renowned 19th-cen-tury American poet. The poem is itself a veiled examination of Dickinson’s re-lationship with her work and how it af-fected her identity. By describing her writing her name similar to how she writes a poem, “Rhymes and Papers” shows the reader how a true poet –in-deed, any true artist– cannot divorce their selves from their work.

Poetry Honorable Mentions: “Re-quiem Black” and “The Complaint” by Mehmet Tüfek (RC ’19):

Poetry is not all whimsy and flowers, it can be visceral, violent, and psycho-logical. “Requiem Black” shows itself definitely befitting of those three de-scriptors as it shows how madness and morality may affect, and even transform each other. It achieves this by person-ifying the two concepts, and describes their relationship as akin to that of the id and superego: Morality, like the lat-ter, keeps madness, more like the for-mer, in check. The subject matter of “The Complaint” is more societal than psychological, highlighting how despite many noble ideologies being cheapened and corrupted over time, people will still find something to struggle for.

Poetry Honorable Mentions: “Fish on a Hook” and “Yellow Eyes” by Zeynep Soydan (RC ’20):

It is a time-honored tradition in poet-ry to spin a seemingly innocuous event into something profound. “Fish on a Hook” does just that, turning a routine fish catch into a symbol for the tran-sience of human life itself. We all leave behind regrets when we die, “things un-finished/things never said,” begging for the chance to complete them just as a fish gasps for air. “Yellow Eyes” com-ments on how we view ourselves due to how we believe we are viewed by oth-ers. It likens the negative emotions gen-erated by how we view others view us to unnaturally yellow pairs of eyes, which appear in a sequence mirroring how a child establishes their relationship with

the world.Short Story Winner: “La Vie en

Rose” by Veli Barış Heybeli (RC ’16):There naturally exists an enmity be-

tween any free-spirited and creative writer and the necessary but soul-crush-ing bureaucracy of the society he lives in. “La Vie en Rose” (lit. “Life in Pink,” i.e. “Life Through Rose-Tinted Glass-es”), is a crushing satire of bureaucracy in the vein of Gogol and Kafka, made even more biting by the contrast be-tween the whimsical tone of the narra-tor and the monolithic and threatening army of clerks and forms before him. The narrator, on a journey to report his taxes, struggles with traffic, a negative balance, and a labyrinthine structure of forms, checks and balances before his journey, in true absurdist fashion, comes to naught as he becomes a financial vic-tim of government corruption. It also brings a unique perspective to the mat-ter in a way only a student can, high-lighting the tragic unfeasibility of “just studying what you want” due to the crippling debt caused by student loans.

Short Story Honorable Mention: “Edward’s Bar” by Mehmet Doruk Eliaçık (RC ’18):

Humanity continually strives towards a utopia where no-one goes hungry and all are content. “Edward’s Bar,” how-ever, paints a picture of a post-scarci-ty economy nobody wants, where soci-ety, having relegated all meaningful jobs to robots, has now come to a standstill, where the only jobs left for humans are more style than substance (doctors only deliver diagnoses to come across as less unfeeling than a robot, bartenders don’t mix drinks but make small-talk and of-fer advice, etc.). Even the news is taken as a pill. The increasing automation of society has also made it more totalitari-an, with clandestine executions of “trai-tors” by agents not even aware of what they are doing becoming commonplace. The overall theme is that it is continu-al change and struggling that gives life meaning, and one of the symbols em-phasizing this is the continuous us-age of the word “knowing” as opposed to “thinking,” “learning,” or “feeling,” showing how a spoon-fed populace is an unthinking one.

Jane Page Ceremony 2016

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT 11

Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice Fanboy Wars Review

By Berke NuriGUEST WRITER

“Batman v Superman” was one of the most hyped up and awaited movies of 2016. It grossed almost $200 million on its opening weekend, which made it the seventh biggest opening of all time. De-spite its decent score on IMDB, it re-ceived a score of 44% from Metacritic and a pathetic 28% from Rotten Toma-toes. The movie seems to have failed to meet people’s expectations.

Actually, the movie’s plot was interest-ing for the first half, but then it turned into a dull, Marvel-like superhero mov-ie. The first half of the movie is about the tension between Batman and Su-perman. Superman is accusing Bat-man because he is fighting criminals in an illegal, dangerous way, and Bat-man is accusing Superman for destroy-ing the whole city as if it were a sand castle while fighting General Zod, all while Lex Luthor –the villain who acts like my 7 year old brother after eating an entire bag of family size M&Ms— turns them against each other more and more. Seeing heroes judging each oth-er’s actions and thinking about the out-comes of their actions and powers was a new and interesting concept to watch. It seemed more realistic and felt differ-ent because the world wasn’t just watch-ing, clapping and glorifying the heroes anymore.

On the other hand, everything changed in the second half of the mov-ie. During the anticipated showdown of the movie, Batman and Superman real-

Hair of Steel

(Courtesy of blastr.com)

Head&Shoulders-Smooth and Straight

(Courtesy of screenrant.com)

Hulk Gone Wrong

(Courtesy of express.co.uk)

Bad Armor Choice

(Courtesy of Independent)

A Journalist

(Courtesy of IGN)

ize their mothers shared the same name, and they decide to become BFFs to save Superman’s mommy. This situation makes Lex Luthor angry, and he de-cides to revive General Zod. Like most of the antagonists, General Zod turns out to be an ugly monster; looking like Hulk, covered with Neşeli Tavuk sauce and 7th grade acne. The rest of the mov-ie is just about heroes fighting against a common enemy.

(SPOILER ALERT) Unoriginal-ly, the movie ends with heroes’ victory, and when it finally decides to surprise the audience with Superman’s death to at least have a remarkable ending, it doesn’t. Superman revives but hides it and forces the audience to watch his an-noying girlfriend cry for another 5 min-utes.

Overall, the movie has some promis-ing scenes, but it is still a waste of time like most of Adam Sandler’s movies. Characters such as Lex Luthor and Su-

perman’s girlfriend are as useless as so-lar flashlights and just seem to be in the story to make the plot seem less emp-ty like the cooking recipes at the back of the newspapers. The cool graphics of the movie are quite entertaining but only make the movie interesting enough for

elementary school kids. If you are a per-son who watches Ben10, listens to Tay-lor Swift, wears phosphorous shoes and plays with action figures, then this mov-ie is for you.

Expectations vs. Reality

By Kaan TarhanGUEST WRITER

Expectations vs. Reality...After a very exhausting Monday, you

enter your room, your mouth reeking from all the bitter stuff you kept in the whole day. You expect the “Mastering” to keep you busy for ten more minutes: you really think you will get that es-say done promptly this time. Copying down some geography notes couldn’t possibly take hours, could it? Nei-ther could finishing those leftover al-gebra worksheets... and you could, in fact, finish two books over the week-end and maybe finally take a look at your two-weeks-overdue-YHP, while scrambling from practice to practice either for your music band or for your team. Not to forget the community in-volvement project (CIP) that occupies your Fridays, and the weekly AP study hours on Wednesday, and the endless lab reports that take up your Tuesdays and Thursdays, and many other things we can add there…

In reality, you lay down after the third question that had parts A, B and C, all with calculations. You are dream-ing about sleeping off the exhaustion of the previous months with a tinge of hunger in your poorly nourished stom-ach. While postponing studying for your Advanced Physics test and find-

ing an excuse to go to the last events of the year, you will hopefully get anoth-er week over without dying. But here comes the question: Is this what you were expecting when you decided to come to RC? When you were young and beautiful, you perhaps had higher hopes for life, and actually for yourself. You believed that you were smart, tal-ented, social,--and even special! That feeling, however, is probably rotting over in some corner of Feyyaz Berk-er Hall, and the stink is made worse when coupled with the leftovers from your dignity and self confidence. What happened?

Let me tell you exactly what hap-pened. “Robert College, Fount of Knowledge”. Sniggering, you can count more things than we can pos-sibly hope to fit in this small corner, things that made you ache really deep inside. Blaming is not the answer. Was it that cynical comment about your art that started it? Was it the vulgar backlash for showing some backbone against injustice, bias and inequality? Was it the nonsense criticism you got that blunted your scientific inquiry? Was it the constant reminder of integ-rity from people that lack even the ba-sic understanding of the concept that forced your hand into a little bit of data temperament and dirty tricks? Or was it something entirely different, an assault on your personality or your be-liefs? Either way, something inside you

has changed through your odyssey at Robert College.

Placing the blame on a person does not usually resolve the actual conflict. If needed, you should perhaps discharge your anger and tears in the Counselor’s Office. Though it may not always solve your problems, it will definitely create a short-lasting sense of satisfaction. You may also want to rant about your issues all around school--and through homegroup sessions for further grati-fication. Obviously there may come a point where you simply cannot take your personal issues anymore - and talking behind people’s backs won’t cut it, in which case you have two op-tions with similar results: you can ei-ther go talk to an admin or pray that the trouble resolves itself. Why both-er, it’s not like any of the admins have magic-wands that can dish out justice, equality, goodness, integrity and all that stuff you might think you need. It is perhaps better for you to realize that life, whether we like it or not, is harsh, and things will not always go the way we want them to. Even then if you are not relieved, you can pay a visit to the amusing and amiable Headmaster, Dr. Skipper, who may give you some im-ported candy bars. If those candy bars cannot solve your problems, what else can solve it?

“Robert College, Fount of Knowl-edge.” It definitely gives you the knowledge to deal with anything life

can throw in your face. What a wonderful place to get a head

start in life, right? Well, if you disagree with me, just repeat the steps suggest-ed above and you will all be all right!

Ayda Öktem Resting in Feyyaz Berker

Courtesy of Kaan Tarhan

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE FOOD12

2 Super Easy Meals: Zucchini Noodles & Salmon with Fluffy Quinoa and Steamed Broccoli

By İrem DeyneliSTAFF WRITER

You can also follow the author’s blog @ “Recipes from a Cookaholic”.

Spring has finally arrived! Birds sing-ing and sun pouring down through our shades not only mean that the trees will blossom and the tulips will col-or the streets, but also inform us that summer is on its way. And if you are a foodie like me, then the following two months will be the hardest for us. Sum-mer is coming, which means you should get ready for bikini season, start cutting off those high-calorie carbs and getting more veggies and exercise. Nonetheless, summer is also the best time of the year with the fresh fruits and vegetables, and there are no excuses for not being able to work with healthy ingredients.

If you want to cut down on some of those cookies, pastas, chocolates, and so on, this zucchini noodle (zoodle) recipe will be your to-go meal. Not only does it take only 4 ingredients to prepare, but it also results in a very easy-to-cook and healthy dish. In addition, this recipe is perfect for our vegan readers. Before we give you the recipe for Super Easy and Super Healthy Vegan 15 Minute Zoo-dles, we would like to tell you up front that you may also want to try other veg-etables like carrot or eggplant with this same recipe.

Ingredients: • (1 portion)• 2 medium-sized zucchinis, ends cut

off• 2 cloves of garlic, finely diced • 1 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil• 5 basil leaves• Salt and pepper to tasteDirections:1) Cut your zucchini into thin strips

using a julienne peeler, a spiralizer or a vegetable peeler. As mentioned above I

am using a mandolin with a julienne at-tachment.

2) Heat a medium pan with the olive oil. Add in the finely diced garlic. Cook for 1 minute.

3) Add in the zoodles (zucchini noo-dles), and cook for about 2-3 minutes. Do not overcook– doing so will result in mushy and very soft noodles, which is not what we are looking for. Toss in the basil. Serve warm.

This other recipe is a very simple salm-on dish. Salmon is probably one of the easiest fish to work with. If you buy your salmon filleted, you only have to toss it on the pan or pop it into the oven with some aluminum foil. Although alumi-num foil is not the healthiest materi-al to cook with, it is very easy to clean afterwards. We always have those lazy days when we don’t even want to think about the dishes we’ll have to clean af-terwards. Furthermore, provided you don’t use aluminum foil every single day, it’s okay to be lazy from time to time.

Here’s the Super Easy Salmon in Foil with Fluffy Quinoa recipe:

Ingredients:Yields 2 servingsFor Salmon in Foil:• 2 salmon fillets (125 grams each)

• 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil• 2 cloves of garlic, minced• Juice of 1 lemon• Zest of 1 lemon• Salt and pepper• Fresh thyme (optional)• For Fluffy Quinoa:• 1/2 cup uncooked quinoa• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil (optional)• 1 cup water, room temperature• 1/4 teaspoon salt• For the Steamed Broccoli:• 1 head of broccoli• Special equipment: Microwave steam

bag (Koroplast brand highly recom-mended)

Directions:1) Prepare the marinade for the salm-

on. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, mix the olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, zest, salt, pepper and fresh thyme if you are using it.

2) Put the salmon in the marinade and coat it using your hands. Let it marinate for at least 15 minutes, but preferably for 1 hour.

3)Take a piece of aluminum foil and place one of the salmon fillets in the middle. Drizzle some of the marinade on top. Close the aluminum foil and put on a baking tray. Repeat this step for the next fillet as well.

4) Bake the fillets in the oven for about 30-40 minutes, depending on the size of your salmon fillets.

5) While waiting for the salmon to cook, wash the quinoa using a fine mesh strainer. In a medium saucepan, drizzle 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil and sauté the quinoa for about 2-3 minutes.

6) Pour in the water and add in the salt. Close the lid of the pan and let it cook for 10-15 minutes, until the water is absorbed.

7) Take the pan off the heat and also take the lid off the pan. Place a tea towel over the pan. Replace the lid and let the quinoa rest for about 5 minutes.

8) Meanwhile, steam your broccoli in the microwave according to the package instructions.

9) When the salmon is cooked, take it from the oven. Fluff the quinoa and serve everything on a plate.

Hamlin Players Spirit

By Ayça YılmazGUEST WRITER

Most of the time the only things that make us happy are our memories. For a long time the Hamlin Players ex-perience has been the only thing that came to my mind. We worked for months for this musical performance, and we put in a lot of effort. We cho-reographed the dance routines and re-hearsed day and night. While it was hard work it, was definitely worth it.

The Hamlin Players is a club full of cooperation and happiness. But it would never have worked without the efforts of our advisor, Ms. Dunne. She gave us courage even when we lost hope, especially me when I couldn’t learn the dance routines. I don’t like comparing, but if it wasn’t for her or

if there was another teacher leading us, I don’t think that we would have succeeded and gained people’s admi-ration.

In addition, socially, I met amazing people. We became really close friends and got used to each other easily. None of us made fun of each other; instead, we helped each other. The nights of our performances we were happy that we would finally show what we had managed to do, but we were also pret-ty sad because we knew after our last performance there wouldn’t be time to do more musicals.

Anyway, the performance day was absolutely perfect. Ms. Dunne and people back stage did a great job; they arranged everything perfectly on time. We were beyond excited, but Ms. Dunne kept calming us down, al-though she was even more nervous

than us. Being on the stage was a to-tally different and an unexplainable feeling. Those stage lights were nearly going to make us blind, but the knowl-edge of dancing and singing with peo-ple we like kept us fully concentrat-ed. Even though I was lucky to be a part of Lise Live, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did the Hamlin Players. I don’t think I ever will enjoy anything as much.

I still remember my audition for Hamlin Players, singing the song “Popular” with a shivering voice and shaking hands. After 6 months, I no-ticed that something had changed within me. I became a courageous and a confident girl who is proud of what she and her group has achieved.

Courtesy of Irem Deyneli (Staff Photographer)

Hamlin Players Performance

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE STATE OF SOUND 13

Through persistent preservation of their genuine sound that is a mixture of rock, soul and heavy Latin influenc-es, Carlos Santana and his band have stood for the last few decades as pillars of rock against today’s popular music that has so unsparingly overwhelmed rock like a plague. However much they have stood against the torrent, it was inevitable that their sound was unduly affected by developing sound technol-ogies; since after all, it was the subtle touch of instrument feedback coupled with virtuosity that defined the 70’s music scene. Santana had more than their fair share of guest artists and the mechanical songwriting process that was deprived of the creative pro-cess. Along this line of modernization that the band had been going through, Santana IV, released April 15, act-ed as a savior. With the almost entire Woodstock-era lineup since Santana III, the band seems to recapture, even if partially, the original Santana spirit.

Although the album lacks the au-thenticity of 1969’s debut Santana, the band is not to blame: Woodstock re-cordings were a seminal factor; and sound engineering systems were not as sophisticated which resulted in an indiscrete fusion of guitar, percussion, drums and keyboard. Within the pos-sible bounds, Santana IV resembles 1992’s Milagro; and reaches as ear-ly as Santana III, possessing some of its prescient elements. It can be said to exceed expectations especially af-ter this decade’s two previous releas-es, the poorly composed Shape Shifter and the mainstream Latin pop album Corazón. The album extends to an

Santana - Santana IV

By Kaan ErtaşGUEST WRITER

Gregory Porter - Liquid Spirit

By M. Emir AkdereGUEST WRITER

For those who have forgotten that jazz is the genre of sentiment, here I present to you: Liquid Spirit. Although not the most recently released album, I feel obliged to introduce the readers to the Grammy-winning musician, Greg-ory Porter. Porter’s voice is an extreme-ly qualified one for jazz singing: it reso-nates with the strings of your heart; you have no chance but to feel what emo-tion the song conveys. “Hey Laura,” the most popular song on the album, is that kind: first, you fall in love with the mel-ody, then with the voice of the sing-er, then with the saxophone solos, then with the lyrics. “I Fall in Love Too Eas-ily” is similar; you will see that the song will prove its name to you. Porter and his band make sure that the listener has no doubt that the band and the produc-er have spent hours and days and weeks on the album.

For those who have forgotten that jazz is the genre of dance and upbeat emotions, here I present to you: Liquid Spirit. This album is the one that won

the Grammy Award for ‘‘ best vocal jazz album.’’ “Liquid Spirit” is the song that deserves its name (as well as to be the name of the album). The melod-ic structure is an invader of the brain: it simply sticks to your tongue; good luck getting that off your mind. Con-stant clapping in the background draws the listener to join the song; don’t stop-- Porter wants to see you thump out. “The ‘’In’’ Crowd” will, in addition, not only get your feet, but your whole body moving to the beat.

For those who have forgotten that jazz is the genre of coolness, here I present to you: Liquid Spirit. Gregory Porter does not sing; he plays the instrument called ‘‘voice,’’ especially in “Musical Geno-cide,” my personal favorite song from the album. You know those jazz songs that you can always flick your fingers to the beat? This song is one of those cool jazz songs, but still is able to put the lis-tener in the mood without boring him.

Overall, I wanted to introduce not only the album, but also the great jazz singer who has an album coming up this year on the 6th of May as well. Gregory Porter is an artist that pays jazz his due when singing; he does not show-off,

but he does whatever he should do with greatest care in every song he chants. He does not push his voice range to the limits; that kind of maturity and self-

awareness is hard to find in musicians. Expecting greater works from the mas-ter.

Albummmamsdasdklasdlka sjdlkasjd

hour and fifteen minutes, with a track list of 16 songs. The list seems to fol-low no recognizable pattern, with sud-den jumps to ethereal instrumentals right after pop sounding single-ma-terial songs. The opener, Yambu, cries out like the lion on the album cover with vocals unmistakably resembling those of Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan. All Aboard, a continuation of the previ-ous song, is a remarkable instrumental piece. Carlos Santana seems to have stolen a phrase from his 2010 cov-er of The Doors’ Riders on the Storm. Sueños, an acoustic and electric gui-tar medley, is a more laid back and late night suitable tune. You and I is a beautiful instrumental that goes back and forth between the dynamic and serene ends of the album, but mostly relies on the latter end.

Also worthy of note is that the al-bum hosts only a single guest artist, unlike its predecessors with a ridicu-lous number of guest artists. Thus, the album slips out of the –mostly valid- criticisms attributed to previous al-bums in which the albums were said to “never develop a consistent voice that holds the album(s) together.” (Er-lewine) Ronald Isley, widely known for his lead vocalist work for the Is-ley Brothers, sings for Santana in the two consecutive songs Love Makes the World Go Round and Freedom in Your Mind. He does not steal from the genuine sound of Santana (as did the other guest artists), and builds on its soul aspect. Overall, the album roars, (thankfully!) digresses from the path the band has followed for the past two decades, and manages to prevent be-ing lost in the midst of crowd pleas-ing Latin pop tracks. The factor that plays the greatest role in this coun-termarch might be the lineup. Carlos

himself admits it: “We didn’t have to try to force the vibe – it was immense. From there, we then needed to come up with a balance of songs and jams that people would immediately identi-fy as Santana.”(Santana) All in all, we are offered a retrogressive album that is, contrary to what the adjective im-plies, anything but harmful – in fact, it does quite the opposite by retaining the raw sound within the confines of contemporary music production.

Works Cited:Erlewine, Stephen T. “Supernatural

- Santana.” AllMusic. N.p., n.d. Web.“Santana IV CD”. Santana. N.p.,

2016. Web. 1 May 2016.

Santana IV

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Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE

Farewell to the Joneses

By Ekin VardarGUEST WRITER

Farewell to Mr. Anthony JonesBosphorus Chronicle interviewed

Mr. Andrew Jones, who has been a part of the RC family for the last two years. Mr. Jones is an English teacher and the girls’ basketball team’s coach.

BC: How did you decide to come to Turkey and teach in RC?

We used to teach in Bulgaria at a school that was quite similar to RC in terms of the students and quality and history of the school. So, while we were looking for a new international school, and the opportunity to teach at RC came up, we got very excited. We had been to Istanbul before coming to RC and definitely loved it. Also, prior to coming to RC, we knew a lot about the school. In the end, the combina-tion of living in Istanbul and being a teacher at RC seemed like a great fit for me and my family.

BC: What are your plans after leav-ing Robert College?

We are having a baby! I think our plan is to have our lives flipped upside down because we will have two little crazy ones running around. Ms. Kah-le is due on May 26, so I think we will have a pretty fun summer with grand-parents in the States, two kids and sleepless nights. It is going to be awe-some. Following these in July, we are planning to go to Brazil to teach in an American school, and that will be exciting too. Hopefully, we will start learning Portuguese quickly.

BC: How was living in Turkey for you apart from Robert College?

I think Istanbul is one of the best and one of the most interesting cities in the world. It is a fascinating place and a great city to go out for a walk and explore. It is not a great city to drive in, though! Yet, I think that the combina-

tion of walking and taking the boats and then taking the metro to all these historical places, eating great food, are all awesome. I believe that the places that you can visit in Turkey are even more awesome. We liked the places that we visited in Turkey so much that every time we felt like “I want to come to this place again.” We went to İzmir and Ephesus and loved it and thought, “I want to come to this place again” and spend more time in Çeşme. We went to Bodrum and thought that we could spend the whole summer there. We went to Fethiye and hiked on the Lycian Trail and loved it. Cappadocia was also amazing. So, I think the fact that you could get to so many places with a cheap airline flight and see so many different amazing things in Tur-key is something hard to beat.

BC: How would you describe your teaching experience in RC in a sen-tence?

In a sentence? I would say that my

students challenge me and make me laugh everyday.

BC: What was your favorite memo-ry with RC students?

If I pick just one, then I will have 50 other students who will yell at me. I think that the students at RC are so en-thusiastic and eager to learn. I believe that if you give them something that is meaningful and valuable, they will run with it. I start all my classes everyday with a fistpound and everybody gets a fistpound. It is probably my favou-rite part of the class. After I do that, I see all these eager faces who want to challenge themselves and want to ex-pand their minds. I feel like from there on, class is always great. We start pos-itively and, unlike other schools where there might be some people who don’t want to be here, I feel like RC students do want to be here and learn. That is the best thing about this place.

BC: What are you going to miss the

most about RC/Istanbul? I have taught classes that I have loved

each year, but I think the one constant in RC has been the girls’ basketball team. In two years, the relationships that I have formed with girls like you, Ekin, and people who played for two years, you mean so much to me. When I look back on that, I think what we have built as a basketball team and as a program means the most. I was thinking of the last year, sometimes we would have 8-10 girls at practice, and now this year we have 20-21. So I think of what we have been able to do as a team and how much everyone has improved and feels like they are a part of something. These mean a lot to me.

BC: What was it like coaching the girls’ basketball team, and what is your favourite memory with the team?

I have coached for 14 years, but I think it has been 12 years since I coached a girls’ team. I have coached boys’ teams for the last 12 years. So to come coach a girls’ team was a big change for me and than to have it be a Turkish girls’ team was a big change too because I was worried that some-times girls in Turkey aren’t very en-couraged to play sports as much as they should be. To see what we have been able to do as a team and to have these girls take on becoming aggres-sive, tough and play so hard and real-ly see why that matters and to see how it shapes their personality has been so powerful for me to be a part of. So to be a girls’ coach and to be a Turkish teams’ coach has just been so incredi-ble, and I hope that they have learned things that they will take with them for the rest of their lives. I know that I have learned so many things from them.

As Bosphorus Chronicle, we would like to wish both Mr. Jones and Ms. Kahle luck in the next chapter of their lives.

FAREWELL14

By Melisa SaygınSTAFF WRITER

Farewell to Ms. Erin KahleMs Kahle, for two years, taught bi-

ology at Robert College and was rec-ognized as a motivating, sincere and successful biology teacher who is real-ly knowledgeable in her area. Unfortu-nately, she left Robert College this year, which truly upset her students; this triggered The Bosphorus Chronicle to interview Ms. Kahle in order to leave a delightful memory of her.

BC: Can you us tell about you and your interests?

I’ve always thought of myself as a per-son who has a variety of interests. I love science and math but I also really enjoy reading and history, as long as I don’t have to write papers about them. Above all, I love sports, the outdoors, and be-ing active. I love traveling and learning new languages. While I never thought I was good at art, I love crafting (most-ly Halloween costumes), carpentry, and music, mostly listening at this stage in

my life. BC: How did you decide to become a

biology teacher? When I was in high school, I had an

inspiring biology teacher and fell in love with the subject. In school, I re-ally enjoyed helping other students and thought that I might like to teach someday. In college, I studied Molec-ular Biology and started doing mostly genetic research. After college, I con-tinued research at the National Insti-tutes of Health in an immunology lab. I still thought I would like to teach but planned to get a PhD first and teach later on in my career. However, my schedule in the lab made it difficult to do other things that I valued, like vol-unteering, playing sports, and traveling. I decided I would try teaching, got a job in Sofia, Bulgaria, and have been teach-ing ever since!

After teaching in Bulgaria, and meet-ing Mr. Jones, we taught in Ecuador, Chicago, and then came to Robert College. After we had Eliza, we were looking for jobs internationally again and found out that there were Eng-lish and Biology positions available at

Robert College. The more we found out about the school, the more we wanted to come and teach here. When we took the jobs, we imagined coming for at least 4-5 years, but it turned out that we were only here for 2 years.

If I recall, the first time I was at RC, I do remember immediately liking the students, teachers, staff, and everyone else we met, and thinking how lucky we

were to end up in such a baby-friendly place with Eliza!

BC: Do you have any memories that you would like to tell to the RC Com-munity?

We have a lot of memorable moments surrounding Eliza’s early childhood here. Sometimes, I think more peo-ple knew Eliza than either Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones and the Girls’ Basketball Team

Mr. Anthony Jones, Ms. Erin Kahle and Eliza!

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE FAREWELL 15

or myself. I remember her learning to walk out on the plateau, eating dinner in the cafeteria and taking selfies with groups of teenage boys (something that would never happen in the states), be-ing a simit and ayran for Halloween, kicking a ball around at the end of soc-cer practice, chattering away in Turk-ish with her bakıcı as we got ready for work in the morning, and generally lov-ing life in such a warm and welcoming culture.

BC: If you wouldn’t mind saying, what is the reason you are leaving RC?

It mostly comes down to the fact that professionally, I’m looking for some-thing a little different, and think that I could be happier teaching in a differ-ent environment. However, I feel that I should always mention that I can’t imagine being happier with students than I am at RC, and will miss that as-pect of my job tremendously.

BC: What are the qualities you look for in an ideal student?

I think curiosity and a love of learn-ing are ideal values for a student. I re-ally love all the fascinating questions I get from students here at RC. Once the questions are asked, the next step is de-vising strategies to come up with an-swers and solutions, and it’s been fun to see students who enjoy doing this instead of waiting for someone else to come up with an answer for them. I also think that for many reasons kindness is an invaluable quality in students and people in general.

BC: Which places do you like to vis-

it in Istanbul and around the world? Why?

Anywhere with a view of the Bospho-rus is a favorite of mine, especially if it also involves eating Turkish breakfast, another of my favorites. This fall, I was training for a half marathon and on my longest run, I went up past Tarabya and enjoyed watching the sun rise over the Bosphorus as fishermen went to work, people walked along the shores, and families went to brunch. I have so many wonderful memories in Istanbul with the Bosphorus in the background.

I’ve been lucky to have visited so many wonderful places throughout Turkey and the world. Some of my favorites in-clude hiking parts of the Likya Yolu or the mountains of Sri Lanka with Eli-za and Mr. Jones, visiting the Galapa-gos Islands in Ecuador, and whitewa-ter kayaking in Amazon tributaries. But there really are too many places to list.

BC: What is your greatest regret?There are always more things I wish I

could’ve done, ways I’d like to improve my teaching, people with whom I’d like to spend more time, or that I could’ve learned and used more Turkish. How-ever, I knew that when working with a small child, I wouldn’t have time to do everything I wanted to do, so I just did the best I could. In this way, I don’t really have any real regrets, or perhaps as an optimist, I just try not to dwell on them. This might sound cheesy, but my only real wish is to be happy and in whatever small ways, to increase the happiness of others.

A Farewell to RC’s Ms. Amy Callahan

By Deniz Yağmur UreyGUEST WRITER

Doesn’t it make you sad when you hear that someone who has been here for 23 years and calls Turkey her home away from home is leaving? We are heart-broken to say farewell to a great teacher like her. “Who is she?” is the first ques-tion you’ll probably ask, and the answer is “our beloved prep English teacher Ms. Amy Callahan.” Why is she leav-ing? She answers, “The simple answer is two words and it’s ‘my parents.’” It was a very hard decision for her to make.

The news was a big surprise for us. We knew that she loved working at RC, so one of the biggest questions that popped in our minds immediately was why she was returning to her home-town in California. Apparently her par-ents’ health had been declining for the past year, and she wanted to spend some quality time with them while she still had the chance, “My parents aren’t go-ing to be here forever so I have to take a break,” which is understandable. She added that she hadn’t been living on the same continent as her parents for many years. We know she has a Turkish hus-band so we asked her how they’re plan-ning to manage. She answered: “He’s coming with me to California and he’s going to stay a month with me.” After-wards, she added that she would stay for at least two more months with her parents and then see if they could con-tinue with their plans.

“Sometimes, you don’t even realize you

miss something until it’s gone away.” We can only hope that these words of hers mean that deep down, she’ll return here someday. The only thing we can do at this point is to trust her feelings. One of the good examples of her connec-tion with Turkey is the fact that she has lots of very good friends here, includ-ing a 9-year-old friend called Sungu. Ms. Callahan has been babysitting and playing with her ever since Sungu was a little baby. I think being called a “best friend” by a child shows a lot about Ms. Callahan’s character and that’s probably the reason why she’s so beloved: she un-derstands the language of children. Ad-

ditionally, she has had long teaching ca-reers in different countries. Even with all these other experiences, she said that Robert College “was one of the greatest teaching jobs you could ever imagine.”

Ms. Callahan reveals that she has seen a lot of sides of Turkey. Even though she admits her Turkish is still not good enough, she still says, “I know a lot about Turkish culture.” When she was talking about this, there was a glim-mer in her eye, which told a lot about her deep feelings for this country. We asked her what breaks her heart the most about leaving Turkey, and she an-

swered: “A thousand things...” It’s ob-vious that she feels very connected to Turkey. She’s a great example of some-one who can consider a foreign country “home.” In light of all her experienc-es, we had to ask her if she’s planning on coming back. She told us she has a strong feeling that she definitely will. So, we’re hoping she’ll maybe be back at RC someday.

If I know Ms. Callahan, believe that Istanbul will bring her back as soon as she realizes she feels homesick. We want to say farewell to this amazing teacher and thank her for all the effort.

Arade Kural (RC ‘20): “Ms. Calla-han has been teaching me for only a few months, but I can say that I have learned a lot from her. It is a shame that I will not have the chance to be a stu-dent of Ms. Callahan in the following years. Farewell…”

Sude Naz Kutlu (RC ‘20) said that Ms. Callahan’s contributions “to many of her students are undeniable.” The laughter-filled memories of every one of her classes will live on in our minds. Especially the words she says when we start speaking in Turkish during lessons: “Çok rahatım, Türkçe konuşuyorum.” She inspired us and changed our lives in many ways. She was the first per-son who introduced me to the power of writing and made me find myself with the magic of words. We definitely want her to know she’ll never be forgotten. Don’t make us miss you so much; Is-tanbul will be waiting to see you soon.

Take care, Ms. Callahan!

BC: Is there anything you would like to add? (Perhaps, you may want to suggest something to RC Students?)

Even though I will try to reach out and properly thank everyone, it seems almost impossible because there are so many people in the RC community who have made our experience so spe-cial. Whenever I leave a place, it’s al-

ways the people that I will miss the most. Mostly I want to say thank you again to everyone who has made our experience a positive one: my students, The Lady Bobcats, my homegroup, col-leagues, and friends. Please keep in touch! Robert College, Istanbul, and Turkey will always have a place in my heart!

Ms. Amy Callahan Wearing a Ham Costume

The Joneses

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE

Farewell Madame Peyrache!

By Melisa SaygınSECTION EDITOR

Corinne Peyrache is the head of the foreign language department; she has taught French in Robert College for six years. Unfortunately, she will be leav-ing Robert College at the end of this year which upsets her students from all grades. To cheer her students up and to keep a joyful memory of her, Bosphorus Chronicle interviewed Ms. Peyrache.

BC: Can you tell us about you and your interests?

Corinne Peyrache: I was always an adventurer, so I love travelling and get-ting to know new cultures. I also read a lot, but mostly non-fiction books, and I love to listen to music and dance (when nobody is looking).

BC: How did you decide to become a French teacher?

As you may know I have dual nation-ality, French-Portuguese. My parents moved to Portugal when I was a little girl, and I grew up in a bilingual en-vironment since my mother spoke no Portuguese at all. Living in between two cultures and my love for my French origins made me continue my educa-tion in modern languages and litera-ture, and this gave me the opportuni-

ty to use my enthusiasm to motivate students who are willing to learn this romantic language. Before coming to Turkey, I taught in Portugal for 8 years in several state schools.

BC: What do you find good or bad about the French culture?

I love the cheese and all the rich gas-tronomy in general. I also try to keep track of recent movies and songs be-cause there is so much quality work produced in France and I can use bits of it to motivate my students and teach culture while learning the language. I’d love to see French people becoming more open to learning new languages.

BC: If you can recall, what were your first impressions of RC? How did these change in time?

The first time I came to RC, I was im-pressed with the school organization and how fast the students would ab-sorb the information. I thought that a 40 minute lesson was too little to do anything productive, but because the students were/are so eager to learn, we could accomplish a lot. I am still im-pressed with the students today! Quite often I go back to my office after a les-son and share good experiences or ex-ceptional student work. This is my 6th year at Robert College. Sometimes in life you feel the need of a change. In my case, I had always wondered about in-

ternational teaching and wished to have the opportunity to live and teach in a different country.

Before I started my contract in Au-gust 2010, I came to visit the school in April and observed a few lessons. After one of the lessons, one of the students who saw me in the class approached me and asked me if I had enjoyed the les-son. I said yes and added that I was im-pressed with his participation. The next

thing he tells me is ‘Le Français pour moi est comme de la poésie’ (‘French for me is like poetry’). From this mo-ment, I knew I was going to love work-ing at RC. Coincidently, he was my stu-dent the year after.

BC: If you wouldn’t mind telling, what is the reason you are leaving RC?

As I mentioned before, you have these times in life when you feel the need to change. Getting out of my comfort zone and coming to Turkey allowed me to get to know myself better and grow so much, not only at the personal lev-el but also professionally. It is time to move on again, leave my comfort zone and get to know more of the world. I love historical places that make you go back in time and reflect.

Every teacher wants a student to love the subject he/she’s teaching and there-fore show engagement and motivation for learning. My advice to RC students is to always follow your dreams and do what you love. You will find difficulties along the way, but don’t quit; be persis-tent and one day you will be where you want to be.

We bid farewell to Ms. Peyrache and sincerely hope that her journey to the rest of the world turns out to be great and full of delightful adventures.

FAREWELL16

Farewell to İzzet Şengel and Güler Karabatur

By Arda Başaran & Tunahan EkincikliTECH & SPORTS EDITORS

After all those years filled with suc-cessful, amazing projects, children chuckling with happiness, show nights prepared at the last minute, and fresh-ly painted schools, the CIP office is say-ing farewell to two inspiring CIP advi-sors, İzzet Şengel and Güler Karabatur. Before they leave Robert College at the end of this year, the Bosphorus Chron-icle wanted to have one last interview with them.

BC: When did you come to RC?İzzet Şengel: I came to RC in Sep-

tember 2006 for my internship. I can-not forget the day I came to RC. Be-cause I used the Arnavutköy Gate and walked all the way up to the school, I was sweating as if I had run a marathon. The first thing that I asked for at RC was a paper towel.

Güler Karabatur: I started as a Ger-man teacher in 1978, and until 2006, I worked as teacher. For the last 15 years I was the head of the Foreign Languag-es Department.

BC: What is your most memorable moment at RC?

İŞ: These superlative questions are al-ways difficult for me. I have had a lot of cheerful moments at RC. I am lucky that I worked on sincere, friendly, and supportive teams besides the great RC community. I remember the moment when I got an offer to work at RC. I was over the moon and I wanted to hug ev-eryone that I saw on that day.

GK: Every single moment that I spent

ar RC has a big place in my life.BC: Why did you want to become a

CIP advisor?İŞ: Since my university years, I have

been involved in volunteer projects and civil society institutions. BUSOS (Boğaziçi University Social Service Club) and Çağdaş Drama Derneği are some of the places I have worked at. I believe that true democracy and a pro-gressive society can only exist with ac-tive citizens who take responsibility instead of waiting for a leader to take action. Because of this growing interest in civil society, my academic advisor rec-ommended that I apply for a Commu-nity Development and Planning Mas-ters at Clark University. I applied to the program as a scholarship student and got accepted. Based on the experience and education, I wanted to be a part of the CIP office at RC.

GK: It was a great fit to my life philos-ophy and my nature as a person. I want to do as much as I can for humanity.

BC: What are some of the challeng-es of being a CIP adviser / consultant?

İŞ: It requires good time management. You should be able to divide your time into project management and content generation.

GK: A couple of them were getting the chance to understand numerous conditions of life and being able to wit-ness students gaining awareness of the community of which they are a part.

BC: What was the most unforgetta-ble community projects you were in-volved in? What made them unforget-table?

İŞ: Arhavi CIP was the most unfor-

gettable because there was a serious flood in the city when we were there. In addition to the flood, the electricity was cut, so we could not use our phones. Despite all of these, our students com-pleted their project and had a lot of fun. I remember them playing the game “vampire” at nights with candlelight. I was happy to see that the group was able to entertain themselves without phone, computers, and Internet.

GK: Each and every project is very precious but the one that is unforgetta-ble for me is the CIP we did for worker

families’ children in Amasya. It was un-forgettable because those children were forced by their families to pick onions in the full glare of the sun. Nevertheless, they attended the project with great ex-citement and desire. They painted on the floors in a gloomy environment, while bugs were wandering around. Even in a week, we were able to witness the dif-ferences in their behaviors. Our stu-dents from Robert College did a great job working with them as well.

BC: There are a vast number of com-munity projects done in Turkey. What

Madame Peyrache

Güler Karabatur and Izzet Sengel

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE FAREWELL 17

do you think makes the projects that are done by RC students special?

İŞ: I guess the planning aspect makes them special. We are trying to improve our plans by a curriculum that we are currently working on. Also, the fact that community involvement projects help RC students to involve with the com-munities that they live in makes what we do special.

GK: CIP is a win-win situation; our students at RC can serve the commu-nity on different fields and this provides them a great experience. They learn the world by experiencing it; they get to learn about different places and cultures, thus making a difference in their lives.

BC: What is the most interesting student activity that you have ever seen in a CIP?

İŞ: I believe it is the football game be-tween RC students and professional vi-

sually impaired soccer players. At that game our students were able to empa-thize, since they blindfolded themselves during the game.

GK: I can’t say one is better than the other; each of them is useful and nec-essary.

BC: If you had the chance, which place would you want to do a project in?

İŞ: I would want to do a project in one of the remote villages and with nomad communities.

GK: Since the creation of the CIP program, the office work has been very useful both for my life and my job as a teacher. Aside from my working envi-ronment, I enjoyed the projects I have done and I worked happily. In short, each step of the CIPs is a new experi-ence and enjoyment.

Farewell to Mr. Mathew Rose

By Rabia İdil DemirelliFEATURES EDITOR

For the last two years, Lise 10-English and Art, Society and Literature class-es flourished due to Mr. Mathew Rose’s teaching skills: His limitless knowledge of everything, we really mean every-thing, and his “photographic” memory inspired many of his students to chal-lenge themselves. But unfortunately, he will be leaving Robert College to dis-cover different parts of the world, this time Qatar. The Bosphorus Chroni-cle would like to share with our readers Mr. Rose’s German, French and Latin expressions, as well as his love for Aris-totle, which will not be forgotten by his fellow students and faculty members.

BC: What are your plans after Rob-ert College?

I am leaving RC to teach L10 and

AP English Literature at the DeBakey School in Doha, Qatar.

BC: What are some of the most memorable memories for you at RC? What did you enjoy most in RC?

The most memorable moments from my time at RC all involve my students showing themselves to be of the high-est caliber both as students and young people of character. While walking through campus with my children, I’ve often had former students ask if I want-ed help carrying bags. I’ve had students exceed my wildest aspirations for their work in performances whose videos I’ll treasure. RC is most enjoyable to me for those interactions with students who received my passion for litera-ture and came to love Shakespeare and Atwood as much as I do. RC is most memorable to me as being that place where, in the classroom, I was lucky enough to find some students who ac-tively believe that it is cool to be smart

and to be curious about everything.BC: What are you going to miss the

most about Robert College? Outside of some colleagues who have

grown to be friends, the one thing I will surely miss is the opportunity to in-teract with students who are trying to learn how to take their talents and serve the world.

BC: Would you consider coming back to İstanbul in the future?

For holiday, certainly. To live, possibly. It would depend upon current events and where life ultimately leads. I will surely miss the architecture, the Bos-phorus views, and the amazing food.

BC:What do you think about the RC student profile?

Every class is filled with very bright students. RC students work hard-er than any group of students I’ve ever seen. Within some classes, however,

Farewell to Mr.Ron Miller

By Mehmet İslamoğluSTAFF WRITER

Mr. Miller joined the RC Community two years ago as a math teacher. Unfor-tunately, at the end of this year, he will be headed to Frankfurt International School. Bosphorus Chronicle had the opportunity to interview him for the last time and talk about his memories of RC.

If you ever had him as your math teacher, you would probably know what a nice person he is. He quietly spread knowledge and love to his students, col-leagues and especially to the cats, which he described as the one of the things he would miss the most about RC. Along with these, he also loved the friendli-ness and the warmth of Turkish people, playing Ultimate Frisbee after school and taking walks along the Bosphorous. I told him not to worry, since there are many Turkish people in Germany, he will probably find plenty of warmth and friendliness there as well.

In his two years in RC, Mr. Miller’s most interesting experience was the

Discrete Mathematics course, in which he also learned new things alongside his students. In addition to the Dis-crete Mathematics course, Mr. Mill-er taught Prep and 9th grade Math in RC. In all of these courses, he really enjoyed teaching Math to the RC stu-dents, whom he described as: “some of the nicest, kindest, smartest students that I have ever taught.” Unfortunate-ly, in contrast to these students there were many other students, “who would

rather talk than pay attention in class” who gave a hard time to Mr. Miller. Although Mr. Miller is leaving the RC community at the end of this term, he will never be forgotten. We have noth-ing but good memories left from his two-years-stay in RC and he will surely be missed, especially by the cats.

BC: What were the most interesting experiences you had in RC?

I found the Discrete Mathematics

course interesting, as I was often learn-ing new things along with my students.

BC: What are your plans for your life after RC?

Next year, I will teach math at Frank-furt International School. I also plan on giving lots of hugs to my wife, my daughter, and my cats.

BC: How would you describe your experience with Turkish students?

At Robert College, I had some of the nicest, kindest, smartest students that I have ever taught. But one of my least favorite parts of the last two years was dealing with the many students who would rather talk than pay attention in class.

BC: What are the things you think you will miss about Istanbul and Tur-key? What will you miss the most about RC?

I will miss the warmth and friendli-ness of the people in Turkey. I will miss walking along the Bosphorus. I will miss my students and colleagues, play-ing Ultimate after school, and the RC cats that sit on my lap (sheds a single tear).

BC: What do you think was the most valuable lesson that you learned from your CIP experiences?

İŞ: This question reminded me a lot of the motto of a magazine called Magma. It says, “The one who wants to know takes the road.” So, I want to say “The one who wants to know interacts with it.”

GK: The key to happiness is to be serv-ing and being involved in life.

BC: What are you going to miss about RC?

İŞ: Many things… Students, friends, and the gorgeous campus.

GK: Working at RC is one of the most important colors in my palette. I always worked here willingly and passionate-ly. “People can say they live, if they love the work they do.” Here, I can say I have lived.

BC: What are your plans after you leave RC?

İŞ: I am moving to UK this summer and planning to work at an education-al institution.

GK: I will continue to be involved and serve society.

BC: What is your last advice to RC students?

İŞ: Go after your dreams! RC pro-vides many opportunities for you to learn from the people who inspire your dreams!

GK: “Make happy, be happy!” “Love what you do.” “Don’t say you don’t have time, always improve on your interests.”

Bosphorus Chronicle thanks İzzet Şengel and Güler Karabatur for an-swering our questions and wishes them a very happy life after RC!

one finds the occasional student who is so brilliant as to defy understand-ing. The brilliant aspect of RC is that is provides an environment for those stu-dents in which their genius finds refuge and is accepted as a good thing.

Discrete Mathematics Class - Courtesy of Irmak Pakis

Mathew Rose

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE FAREWELL18

A Tribute and Farewell to Ms. Andrea Holck

By Ceyhun Elmacıoğlu & Ilgın Sezer& Doruk G. Aktepe (Lise Preps)

As you’ve read from the title, this will be an article in honor of Ms. Holck. But you don’t know her? People re-fer to her as “The beautiful one.” Got it? Cool. So I don’t want to start with what Ms. (soon to be Mrs.) Holck isn’t. Like her (not) being a human and an ordinary teacher, or the aver-age friend.

Ms. Holck is American, if you didn’t know, but after college and only 3-4 months of teaching, she left America and has never taught there, nor had a proper home until now, a proper home being a permanent house or apart-ment that was hers to crash in and call home when she returned to the U.S. She went for the real deal.

She is, from our interviews with her close friends, “Free, eclectic and a health fanatic,” and, she has been a vegetarian for more than half her life. She is also a traveller; she has taught in various countries, including Croa-tia and Ecuador. She even has a lot of teacher friends who are in many parts of the world. And now, she is going back to her homeland, the U.S, and specifically to the beautiful San Fran-cisco, for love. Crazy what love can do, right? She will be teaching Eng-lish to 6th and 7th grades in Hillbrook

School. And seeing their website, it seems like a nice place, so it is nice to know she will be in good hands.

A quick note on Hillbrook School. It is a school where new ideas are al-ways being tested. When we first got this information, we immediately said, “That school would be Ms. Holck if it were to be a person,” and Mr. Leit-er, her very close friend, said that she loves trying new ideas and influenced him herself to try new things. For ex-ample, Mr. Leiter is trying out being a vegetarian!

From the interviews we made with her and her close friends, and also our own experiences with her, Ms. Holck has a unique personality. As Mr. Leit-er, her partner in teaching, says, she is “interested in everything” and “rebel-lious in teaching”. She is also influen-tial as we mentioned above. But what type of a teacher she is?

There is no clear way to define Ms. Holck, the way she teaches, and we don’t want to get stuck with stereo-types anyway. She teaches with great enthusiasm, although sometimes she gets sad, but there is no lesson with-out her gorgeous smile. She loves what she is teaching and us, her stu-dents, and that’s probably why her les-sons are mostly interesting and make us think outside the box. She always encourages us to speak up for our-selves, to share our opinions in class,

and eventually get more prepared for life itself, not only for the ninth grade. She is also very critical when it comes to our work, something that we may whine about now, but in the future we all know that her “critical feedback” is going to take us somewhere.

However, Ms. Holck is more than a really cool teacher; she is also a pret-ty cool person. Mr. Leiter defines her as “one of the coolest people I’ve ever met.” That is mainly because she has travelled to many places and has in-terests in many things. A conversa-tion with her about anything can be enjoyable. She is adventurous, she en-joys trying new things, tries to write her own novel and she is free-spirited. She is also very interested in how to be more mindful and teaches us how to be mindful, too. Being with her is like eating chocolate all day long. Not exaggerating, it hurts to call her a hu-man being because she is much too perfect for that.

Honestly, we are all a little bit up-set about her quite surprising depar-ture; even she thought she would stay longer in Turkey. But nobody real-ly knows what life will bring them, right? We will definitely miss her, the best-looking blonde teacher in school, the nearly inhumanly healthy person, and the coolest teacher ever. I mean, come on, she is a teacher who is su-per friendly, and you can get into deep conversations with her immediately.

A Farewell to Celeste Pierson

By Zeynep Nehir Türkarslan & Özsü Rişvanoğlu

STAFF WRITERS

Did you know that Ms. Pierson has been in the Studio Art Program, grad-ing the AP Studio Art exam for 20 years now? Or did you know that she’ll be moving to Tel Aviv, Israel next year? Read on to find out more...

BC: After studying in the US, did you live anywhere else, or did you come to Turkey right afterwards?

I came here straight after America. I was a college professor for 26 years in Miami and I raised 3 children. I worked really hard and when my chil-dren were grown after college, I di-vorced. I knew Mr. Baykal Rollins and Mr. Downs from the AP Studio Art reading. I got an e-mail one day ask-ing if I wanted to move to Turkey, if I would consider applying for the job. So I thought about it and said, “Yeah! I think I’d like to do that.” Because my children were grown up and graduated from college, I was free, I didn’t have any responsibilities and so I could do something I never thought I would do.

BC: Is your work here more slow-paced than your work back in Miami, considering it’s a high school instead of a college?

It’s very different. I don’t know about slow-paced but it’s interesting. First of all, I taught a variety of students. I taught at a special school for creative and performing arts, which means they

had to audition to get into the school. It was college level but I also had one high school class because there was a high school component to that spe-cial program. So I always taught 11s and 12s, as well as college and adults. So I would teach from age 16 and up, to people who were older than me. So it was always really interesting. I think that I worked at a very high level there, whereas here, for me, it’s more begin-ning level art; not many people go to Art School from Robert College.

BC: Actually, there are a lot of peo-ple who want to, but are not going to.

Which is a shame, huh? It’s a shame because there’s so much opportunity in the arts. So I don’t think it’s much slower-paced here, just very different. Back there I only taught 3 classes. But I got to really spend time in the studio and I was expected to be a practising artist, which was part of the job.

BC: So you’ve had your work in ex-hibitions as well.

Yes, I’ve been in many many differ-ent shows. But people here don’t real-ly know that about me because I didn’t really talk about it very much. When I started working there in 1996, it wasn’t known as the center for art in Ameri-ca, but I watched the city grow. It grew with me. They have Art Basel there now every year. It’s huge for art now.

BC: Did you always want to teach or did it come up later?

I did. I made a conscious decision when I got out of art school and I got my MFA, my Master of Fine

Arts, which is the terminal degree for art. When I graduated, I was work-ing as a practising artist for a gallery and I would do big paintings. It be-came a product. People would come in and say “Oh, could you make one that looks like that? The color of my couch or a color that fits my kitchen furni-ture...” And I said “No! I don’t want to do this.” I was so frustrated. And I’ve always wanted to teach. I said I want-ed to teach so I could make the art that I wanted to make. I’ve never regretted this decision. I love teaching. I really love teaching. I feel like I’ve touched so many people. I really do feel good about what I’ve given to the world in general. It’s really a great thing to do. I never studied to be a teacher. I did my Master’s in Fine Arts, but I really love teaching. But now I feel like I’m get-ting kind of old to be teaching. I’ll be retiring in about two more years. I’m going to Israel for two years.

BC: We heard that you’re going to a top school in Tel Aviv. Will you tell us about it?

I guess I am! It’s called the Wal-worth Barbour American Internation-al School. It’s north of Tel Aviv, about half an hour.

BC: Why did you decide on Tel Aviv?

I never thought I would go to Israel. I started thinking, since I am close to retiring, if I wanted to go some place else in the world, that now’s the time. Because if I get to be 60, I’ll never get a job. Too many places… They don’t want to hire someone who’s going to

leave right away. And because I loved my experience here at Robert Col-lege, it’s been an incredible cultural ex-pansion, with the language and every-thing, just the way that people think is different… So I thought maybe I’ll go to Asia. So I started looking into Japan, Korea and Indonesia. I’m look-ing at these jobs and none of them are AP schools; most of them are IB. But I have no IB experience. So this school in Israel called me and said “We are an AP school and we are really interest-ed in having you come.” I hadn’t even applied for that job. So I went there to visit in November and it looked like a good place, so I thought maybe I should take advantage of them want-ing me.

BC: Were you always focused on ce-ramics during the 4 years you’ve been here?

No, actually. Printmaking, book mak-ing and AP Studio Art was always what I taught, more 2D, but I real-ly love ceramics. I had taken a lot of workshops and I had taught it over the years a number of different times so I had a lot of experience teaching it. It just wasn’t the top thing that I taught. So I said, “Sure that’ll be great.” We didn’t have a kiln here when I start-ed. We had a really old one that didn’t even work so the Parent Association was really kind and got us a new kiln.

BC: Can you tell us about book making?

There is a whole field of art and that’s actually what I taught in Miami. I im-plemented the entire curriculum for

We wish her the very best luck in Hillbrook School, and hope she will be very happy and come to visit us one day.

Ms. Holck and Her Prep Students

(Facebook)

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE FAREWELL 19

book making. There is a wide range of people now, who call themselves book artists and they either work with found books. They take a book and change it creatively or some people actually make sculptural artwork that refers to a book form. So if you look up online for ‘artist books’ you’ll see all different kinds of work. I used to teach every-thing from just technically binding a book and here I’ve actually taught a book making club: we’ve made hand-made sketch books. That’s always real-ly fun to do.

BC: Do you have any memories that you would like to share?

There are just so many memories. Really, it’s been so great because even though we live in a big city, it’s like a really small village here when you live on campus. Very insular and kind of closed, and that’s both good and bad. You know it’s good because you feel like you really are part of a family and people have been so kind. I brought my dog with me. Her name is Nel-ly and she’s amazing. She is a golden doodle and she came with me on the plane in a cage because she is so big. I can tell you that story. This is a fun-

ny story. When I came here, it’s a long jour-

ney on the airplane through Germany and it maybe took 22 hours and I have my dog in the bottom of the plane and I was so worried about her. I was soo worried. I’d given her a little bit of a tranquilizer and I knew she slept a lot of the way but still I was worried. And then when I got to Istanbul, I don’t speak the language, I don’t even know how to say ‘dog’. I wasn’t even think-ing, I was so stupid in retrospect. And so finally I found someone in the air-port.

Two hours I’ve waited and no dog came out. I don’t know where to go to pick up my dog. I’m worried by now, it’s been 30 hours that she’s been in this cage. So I find a bellman and he knew a little bit of English so I said “dooog” “doog” and he knew that word. Finally they bring her out and Mr. Baykal Rollins is waiting for me out-side in the airport and they are wor-ried. Because every other person that came in around the same time has al-ready left. He’s waiting for me with a driver and they are going to bring me to school and so finally I get her and

she’s fine and she gets out and she’s so friendly she wags her tail and she’s all fluffy. She looks beautiful, I’d just had her groomed. She’s all fluffy and pret-ty and here I am coming from Mi-ami and I had my hair done and I have this big white fluffy dog and I have my sunglasses on and I walked out and Mr. Baykal Rollins says “there she is” “there she is” and I felt like a movie star. Because I have all this luggage with a bellman and I’ve got a big dog and I’m walking. Then we got into the car and it was 3.5 hours from the air-port to the school. The worst traffic I have ever seen in Istanbul since I’ve moved here.

BC: Where did you meet Mr. Baykal Rollins?

I met him at the AP reading and I still see him every year there even though he left here. We still work to-gether.

BC: Where did he go?He went to a school in Connecticut

and the AP Readings are in Utah. I don’t know if that’s a good story or not. I mean I think that something that I’ll always remember about the school, that I’ll always bring with me is just the companionship with the other teachers. Especially the ones who live on campus. Mr. Downs and his family every week have a fish grill on Thurs-day nights, so we grill fish and every-body brings food. It’s just so nice, it’s like a family.

And now I actually do it with the preps. I don’t know what they call it. Once a month… It’s really nice be-cause I got to know a small group of the residential preps and they are just so nice. It’s nice to get to know them, too.

Also another really wonderful thing that I experienced in Turkey was: I went on this CIP out past Kars to a little village called Yukarı Çırıklı. And it was on the boarder. Almost on the border of Armenia and Iran. It was in-credible. And I took 12 students with

my husband and we helped them. We went to a very, very important place in Europe and world for world migra-tion. And scientists were there from all over the world. And there were bird banders so they had all these nets up and they would catch the wild birds as they were migrating through the area and they would weigh them and they would measure them and keep care-ful records and then they would put a little band on their feet so when they came through the next year they would catch them again and they could mon-itor the migration patterns of all the birds. It was amazing. And we stayed in the village with a lady named Zeynep, in her house and it was snowing and muddy. It was spring break and it was still snowing out there. In Kars there was even a blizzard. We had to go up over the mountains in a little dolmuş bus but it was just incredible. It was something I would never have done by myself, just like the students. I think they would never have done it.

BC: How did you find out about the place?

One of the students had gone to this place in the summer before to volun-teer because she very much liked bird watching. So she knew about it and set up the CIP. We also went to Ani. It’s an ancient city on the border of Arme-nia and it was this gorge with a river and this ancient city. You should find out about it because it’s really impor-tant for Turkish history. It goes back before the Byzantines and it’s still an important archeological site. And we also went to İshak Paşa Palace on the border of Iran. So when I really think of my time here, that just stands out because first of all, we all did some-thing we wouldn’t have a chance to do otherwise, and we really pushed past our comfort zones and learnt so much. It was great.

We thank Ms. Pierson for this inter-view, for her time and for the 4 years she helped art grow in this school.

Özsu, Ms. Pierson and Z. Nehir

Shakespeare on the Green - Courtesy of Merril Hope-Brown

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE

From Teachers...

By Şükran Başarır

Sevgili RC’16,Benim RC’07 ve RC’11den sonra

üçüncü sevgili çocuğumsunuz siz! Hazırlık haliniz hala gözümün önünde;

öyle küçüktünüz ki odamdaki minder-lere sınıf olarak sığışırdınız ve sınıfta kalmak yerine odama gelip rehberlik dersi yapardık. Sırayla sizlerle bireysel görüşme yapar, sizinle ilişki kurmaya çalışırdım. Bazılarınızı konuşturmakta zorlanır bazılarınızı ise susturamazdım! O meşhur LP10 sınıfının (kızlar kuzu kuzuydu da o erkekler yok muydu o erkekler - onlar kendilerini çok iyi bil-ir) tüm sene boyunca odamı nasıl al-tüst ettiğini asla unutmayacağım, öyle hareketli bir sınıf bir daha da ge-lir mi bilemiyorum. Hazırlık sene-si gereği bazılarınızla, “yatılılık” veya “ama ben İngilizce anlamıyorum, ödev-leri bile anlamıyorum” konulu, bol gözyaşlı ve “ben niye geldim ki bu oku-la” isyanlarıyla dolu görüşmeler tüm günümü kaplardı. Yatakhanedeki oda meseleleri sıklıkla “ben üşüyorum, camı açmasınlar”, “ben uyumak istiyorum, gürültü yapmasınlar”, vs. konulu olurdu hatırlarsanız...

Derken 9. sınıfa başladınız. O yaz epey büyüdünüz, sızlanmalarınızın konusu tam değişmişti ki birden benim iki-zlerim geliverdi ve bu sefer ben hiç is-temeyerek sizleri bırakıp gitmek duru-munda kaldım. Sizi burada büyütmenin keyfi bambaşkaydı benim için ve hele ki

9. sınıf başında size bırakmamış olmak için inanın bebek zamanlamamın farklı olmasını dilerdim; ancak hayat her za-man planlanamıyor tabii. O dönem git-tim diye bana küsenler oldu (onlar ken-dilerini çok iyi bilir ki bir tanesi hala, 12.sınıfta bile bana sitem etmeye devam etmektedir!), ama sonradan biraz zor da olsa toparladık neyse ki. Ben evde be-bek pışpışlarken siz burada büyüdünüz büyüdünüz büyüdünüz… O dönem bazılarınızla yazışmaya devam ettik, bazılarınız da beni ve bebekleri evimde (ve hatta çocuk parkında!) ziyarete geldiniz. Ama 9. ve 10. sınıfınıza eşlik edememiş oldum ne yazık ki.

11.sınıf olduğunuzda dönebildim an-cak okula ve bu iki senelik arada ne ka-dar büyümüş olduğunuza inanamadım. Hızlı hızlı ve büyük ve içten bir mer-akla kaçırdığım zamanları telafi et-meye çalıştım biliyorsunuz. Nasıl olduğunuzdan, nasıl hissettiğinizden daha önemli bir şey yoktu benim için ve çoğunuzun anlatacak uzun hikay-eleri vardı bana. 11. sınıf nasıl geçti anlamadım bile.

Geldik bu seneye,12.sınıfa. Panom-da bazılarınızın o şahane kepli resim-leri bana gülümserken, ben bir yandan gideceğinize inanamıyor, bir yandan bana söz verip hala o kepli resim-lerini getirmemiş olanların peşinden koşuyorum (onlar da kendilerini çok iyi bilir!). Bazılarınız hala o hazırlıkta üzer-inde oturduğunuz minderleri özlemek-te biliyorum… Tabii kim bilir minderl-er mi o özlenen, yoksa hazırlığın o naif çocuksuluğu mu.

Artık konularımız çok farklı; siz

büyüdünüz, eskilerin dediği gibi der-tleriniz de çeşitlendi ve büyüdü. Odam-daki gözyaşları artık hazırlığın çocuk-su meselerden çok uzak. Hayatı paylaşıyoruz burada sizinle. Neler nel-er konuşmuyoruz ki… Çok ama çok teşekkür ederim bana güveninize, o eşsiz sevginize, sarılmalarınıza, tüm paylaştıklarınıza. Ailemdensiniz artık çoğunuz, biliyorsunuz. Gece yarılarına kadar kabullerinizi bekledim; YGS saa-tlerinde aklım da kalbim de sizlerdey-di. Gidiyorsunuz tamam ama, ner-eye gittiğiniz de çok önemli benim için. Hep ama hep yanınızda olma-

ya çalıştım, iyi olmanızı istedim; bili-yorsunuz. “Burda olman bana iyi geli-yor, rahatlıyorum” demenizden daha kıymetli bir şey yok benim için işimde, bunu bilin. Hep iyi olun istedim bu-rada, ve sonrasında da iyi olun istiyo-rum, mutlu olun; siz hayata açık olun ki hayat da sizlere karşı cömert olsun. Siz nerede olursanız olun, ben hep Şükran ablanız olmaya devam edeceğim.

Çok sevgiyle, ve en içten iyi dile-klerimle…

Şükran Abla’nız.

SENIORS20

By İzzet Dodurgalı

2015-2016 Mezunlarına Veda...Sevgili öğrencilerim, zaman bir su

misali hızla akıp geçti. Robert Lisesi eğitim öğretim yıllarınız bakın ne ça-buk geçti ve yılın sonuna geldiniz. İlk cümleye başlamak için zorlanıyorum, kolay değil beş yılımı geçirdiğim sizlere veda duygusu yüreğimi burkuyor. Gal-iba hayat da böyle bir şey; başlangıçlar umutlu, mutlu ayrılıklar ise hüzünlü…

Her sabah gün doğarken kalk-mak, birbiri ardına gelen yazılılara hazırlanmak ve ödevler ne de zor geli-yordu. Bir bitse de kurtulsak derdi-niz. İşte bitiyor. Ama biten yalnız okul değil içinizden de bir şeyler bitiyor. Sanki alıştığınız ve her an yaşadığınız bir şeyler bitiyor. Evet, mezun oluy-orsunuz. Lise hayatı denen o beş yıllık güzel zamanın bitişine şahitlik edi-yoruz. Gitmek! Ne acımasız bir keli-medir. Söylemesi zor gibi görünüyor ama birkaç kere tekrarlayınca alışıyor insan, o kadar da zor değil. Gitmek, gidebilmek… Uzaktan sevmek de se-vilmek de gerektiği yerde ağlamasını bilmek de hepsi öğretildi size bura-da. İnanıyorum ki, sizler, erdemleri-yle, yetenekleriyle, başarılarıyla bir bütün olarak anılacak bir kuşağın en genç temsilcilerisiniz. Ülkemiz sizin başarılarınızla çağdaş uygarlık çizgisi-ni sürdürecek, dahası onu da aşacaktır. Ülkemizin sizin başarılarınızdan sevinç ve gurur duyacağından kuşkumuz yok-tur. Yaşanan sorunlar ne olursa olsun,

topluma ve kendinize güvenmeli, ül-kemizin daha iyi bir düzeye gelebilme-si için sizlere ve sizlerin çabalarına çok gereksinim duyulduğunun bilincinde olmalısınız.

Hayatınızın belki de en toz pem-be beş yılının sonunda veda ediyor-sunuz. Bizleri unutmayın çünkü bizler sizleriunutmayacağız. Sizlere artık “sev-gili mezunlarımız” diyebilirim herhalde, beş yıllık bir eğitimin sonunda bir üst eğitime veya iş hayatına uğurluyorum sizleri. Eminim buraya dönük çok farklı anılarla ayrılıyor ve çok karmaşık duygular içerisinde kendinizi bulu-nuyorsunuz. Her türlü haylazlıklarınız, çalışmamalarınız, çocuksu tavırlarınız, üzmeleriniz, hatta kızdırmalarınıza

rağmen ben sizleri çok sevdim ve hep seveceğim. Bazılarınızı kızdırmış veya istemeden üzmüş olabilirim belki; ama hiç kötü düşünmedim…

Sizleri mezun ettiğimiz binlerce mezunlarımızın arasına yollarken si-zler de bizi ve okulunuzu unutmayınız olmaz mı? Hayatın bu yeni aşamasında okul yılları bir tatlı anı olarak kalırken asıl zorlu ve bütünlemesi olmayan hay-at sınavında sizlere başarılar diliyorum. İleriki yıllarda yine karşılaştığımızda sizleri başarılı bir iş adamı, güzel işler başarmış bireyler, mutlu ve huzurlu yaşam süren insanlar olarak görmenin gururu bize yeter de artar bile. Sizlere bazen baba veya abi gibi olmaya ve gideceğiniz o uzun ve zor hayat yolun-

da işinize yarayacak, başarılı olmanızı, mutlu ve huzurlu olmanızı sağlayacak bilgiler ve alışkanlıklar kazandırmaya bir evlat şefkati ve hassasiyeti ile yaklaşmaya çalıştım.

Sevgili gençler, herkesin bir hedefi olmalı. Hayatınızın sonunda nerede olacağınızı bilmek istiyorsanız ner-eye gittiğinizi bilmek zorundasınız. Umarım bu nedenle kendinize doğru hedefler belirlediniz. Hedefe ulaşmada size yolunuzu, aldığınız eğitim, iraden-iz, azim ve kararlılığınız gösterecektir. Önünüze belki bir sürü engel çıkacak, bocalayacak, zorlanacak, tökezleyecek fakat asla yılmayacaksınız. Başarılı ol-mak adına dikilecek, dik duracak, engelleri bir bir aşacak başarılı, mutlu ve özlemini çektiğiniz güzel bir yaşam süreceksiniz. Söylemeye gerek yok her-halde.

Sevgili öğrencilerim, sözleri-mi bitirirken sizlerden son bir isteğim Robert Kolej’i bir kitaba benzet-meniz; gözlerinizi kapayın, yavaş ve an-layarak, hiçbir satırı atlamadan çevirin sayfaları, okuyun… Kitap bittiği za-man hayatınızın ne kadar değiştiğini ve ufkunuzun ne kadar genişlediğini fark edeceksiniz... En içten duygularımla, başarı yolunuzun açık olmasını diliyo-rum. Her şey gönlünüzce olsun.

Sizlere bana yaşattığınız sevgi, onur, vefa duygusu ve anılarıma kattığınız değerler için teşekkür ediyorum. Ben-den yana hakkım varsa hepinize he-lal olsun. Sizlerin bende hakkı varsa hakkınızı helal edin…

İzzet Dodurgalı.

Our One and Only Sükran Abla

Izzet Dodurgalı

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE SENIORS 21

By Philip Gee

“The Seniors Section.” How grand it sounds, how honoured to be asked to write “about you for you”.

I taught 44 of you, we suffered togeth-er.

But we also danced together (Oguz) and laughed together.

I met Ezel from another planet, the charming Aybuke, the quiet Peri, the noisy Ruzgar, the humorous Ege, the running man Can, the genius twins, Kutay and Baris. All in Modern Novel.

And in another MN class, the fab-ulous Ferhat, Sercan the man with a smile, Doganay my hero, Ece the won-derful letter writer, Ozum with the smile that solved every problem, Oyku the ice hockey star, Remin who talked only because Ece made her (every les-son).

And in L10-7 the cool, calm Anil, the Bull Armagan who nearly gored me but who ended up laughing at my dancing, and Baris Ö. whose brilliance

bedazzled me, and Buse the charmer, and Busra the lovely leader of the M group, and Ezgi the master persuader, diplomat, and rhetoric genius (we con-tributors got “slightly more votes than others”), my favourite Fatma Nur, and Sema and Seyma who always made me feel great, and Berk K who made me smile every time he spoke to me, and Ipek of photograph fame smiling down on me now as I type, and Emre the hard shelled Cancerian, and Melis who never stopped sparkling, and the one and only Mirac, the King of Gentle-man, and Oguz who sent me mad but who encouraged my dancing skills, and Onur E the politest young man and ex-pert on Hitler, and the fantastic Ram Umut, and last but not least Miss Su-percool Yesim. I already mentioned the awesomely brilliant Kutay.

And L 10-8.If only I had words to describe Alara’s

greatness, or Can’s magnificence, or Deniz’s eccentricity, or Elize’s smiles (and scowls), or Ilknur’s infectious laughter. If only.

If only I had time to tell of Irem’s scintillations, or Sarp’s acting skills, or Magali’s delightful nature, or Safa’s af-

fairs, or Mert’s limericks, or Oguz C’s unbelievable statements, or Oktay’s worries and humour, or Onur I’s world-ly gentleness. If only.

If only I could re-live the pain and pure pleasure of Lal, the constant chirping of Ruzgar, the pure warmth of Oyku, the

glinting eyes and smiles of Sercan, the directness and honesty of Uguralp, the beautiful gentleness of Yagmur. If only.

But Ezgi only allows me 400 words, and that’s all I’ve got.

Philip Gee.

By Engin Yetkin

Aşkın ömrü kısadır derler, aşık olma-yanlardan duyarız daha çok... Ama aşk bitti... Tayt giyen erkekleri, feminist kadınları, postmodern haykırışları, pla-tin omurgalarıyla ayrıldılar. RC 16’nın arkasında bıraktığı renkli-bohem hint kumaşı, haleflerine bol gelmez umarım, dar gelirse tayt yapmaları mümkündür.

Ülkede yozlaşmanın mesnevisinin yazıldığı dönemde dar, ucuz, çapsız tartışmalara girmediler, eğilmeden mücadele ettiler, yaşayarak yol göster-diler, geleceğin ütobik bir toplumu-nun küçük bir modelini kurdular, ade-ta Paris Komününü yeniden yarattılar, sıradakilere de zengin bir kültür haz-inesi bıraktılar. Mizansenlerini beyaz perdeye aktaracak bir Inarritu olmaması ise tek eksikleriydi...

Beklenmedik anlarda aklımıza gelerek yaşamaya devam edecekler, gelecekte ve gönüllerde…

Engin Yetkin.

By Önder Kaya

Çarşambanın gelişi Perşembe’den belli olur derler. Bu jenerasyonun gayet nite-likli olacağı da 11. Sınıftan belli idi. An-cak 9. sınıfta “Kavram Bilgisi” dersine giren hocalar bu süreci daha da eskilere kadar götürüyor (ben giremediğim için onların yalancısıyım). Sizleri tanımak ayrı bir keyifti. Sosyal Bilimlere ilgi-li, ülke ve dünya gündemine duyarlı bu grubun sadece öğretmeni değil zaman zaman öğrencisi de oldum ve bundan da büyük keyif aldım. Sizin gelişiminizi gözlemlemek apayrı bir mutluluktu. Umarım eskilerin dediği gibi “çorba-da benim de bir parça tuzum olmuştur. Sizler bende her daim yaşayacak gü-zel anılar bıraktınız. Ben de yüreğinizin bir yanına dokuanbildiysem, belleğinize küçük bir kakı yaptıysam ne mut-lu bana (Çok mütevazi kelimeler seç-tim sanırım. Ne olsuysa artık? Sanırım akşam mahmurluğu... Hepinizi çok se-viyorum. Yolunuzun ve bahtınızı açık olması dileğiyle ….

Önder Kaya.

By Aydemir Doğan

Unutulur mu?Fırat Kar’la olan hukukumuz, Şafak

ve Derin’in sinema birikimi, Melis Şingin’in twitter’dan takip edebilme ihtimali, Açıkgöz’ün açıkgözlülüğü, Elhan’ın ürkekliği, Büşra’nın Afyon özlemi, Ege Ersü’nün laiklik sunu-mu, Sarp’ın edebî gücü, Ayhan’ın Hint aksanı, Onur’un kıvırcığı, Eylül’ün sıcaklığı, Mert Hızlı’nın içtenliği, Mehmet Can’ın yakasını ilikleyişi, Şimşek ve ekibi, Kaan “dönbeşikçi”, Serdar’ın hapşırığı, İlayda’nın teatral gücü, Kaan Cemil ve Ceren’in dansı, Bora’nın “kıyıcı”lığı, Yardımcı’nın deva-sa yazısı, Barış Özakar’ın Robert’e kayıt macerası, Ezel’in “uyanış”ı, İdil Naz’ın kıvrak figürleri, Seyfettin’in Almancası,

Narod’un reveransı, Melisa’nın “Ho-caaaam!” serzenişleri, Ege Erten’in çiğ köfteleri, Miraç’ın Princeton’ı seçmeyişi, Alâra Altıntaş’ın tebessümü, Alpay’ın çalımları, İnci’nin şaşkınlığı, Oktay Şen’in iştahı, Oğuz Ceylan’ın bilgisayar tutkusu, Akdere’nin ciddiyeti(!), Can Gübür’ün muhabbeti, Rüzgâr’ın Türkçe danışmanlığı, Billûr Eda’nın selamı, Barış’ın soyadı, Pınar Tercanlıoğlu’nun “Hâşim”i, Deniz Bozdağ’ın çalışkanlığı, Sema’nın sessizliği, Armağan’ın tak-lit gücü, Uğuralp’in mahcubiye-ti, Doruk’un telaşı, Lâl’in olgunluğu, Doğukan’ın solo performansı, Meriç’in elleri-kolları, Ekici’nin “Oblomov”luğu ve gecikmeleri...

Unutmak mümkün mü?Sevgiyle kalın, hoşça kalın! Aydemir Doğan.

Aydemir Dogan

Engin Yetkin Önder Kaya

Philip Gee

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE SENIORS22

By Eda Yurdakul Önen

“Yazmasam deli olacaktım.”Sait Faik Abasıyanık

Adalardan bir ada, Sait Faik’in Burgazada’sı... Bir tekneye dağılmış öğrenciler ve yanlarında bir avuç öğretmen... Herkes sakin, yorgun, uzak, belki biraz kaygılı. Güneş bir varım di-yor, bir yokum. Kararsız. Havada Bu-lut, teknede bulut... Sonra kulaklara çalınmaya başlayan ilk Türkçe Pop parçaları ve yavaş yavaş bu ilginç sözlü parçalarla hareketlenmeye başlayan bir koca dönem. Hep bir ağızdan söylenen o şarkılar ve zıp zıp zıplayan öğrencilerle beraber kol kola, omuz omuza biz…

Kendimi fark ediyorum o an ve diğer tüm tanıdık gözleri, o şimdiden, daha mezun olmadan birbirini özlemiş gö-zleri. Ne güzel diyorum dönem olmak, beraber zıplayabilmek, gülebilmek, şarkılar söyleyebilmek, coşabilmek... İskeleye yanaşan tekneden, kendini o bir güzel ada gününe bırakan bir güzel dönem. Bisiklete binenler, bisikletten düşenler, faytonlara koşanlar, ada turu atanlar, kahvelerinde keyif yapanlar, yiyenler içenler, gülenler, coşanlar… Hep beraber koca bir gün çocuk olan-lar, çocuk olmayı özleyenler, hep çocuk kalacak olanlar… Ne güzel diyorum, damağımda vişneli milföy tadı, aklımda Sait Faik öyküleri, yanımda bir koca dönem, güzel diyorum, ne güzel… Yazmasaymış, nasıl deli olacakmışız...

Eda Yurdakul Önen.

By Koray Demirkapı

İki yokuş ortası taş bina…Bu binanın sakinlerinin kalpleri, bina

gibi taştan değildir aslında.Yeşilin sarmaladığı dar yollardan buraya ulaştığınızda, kor gibi kalpler selamlar sizi... Sevgiyle, heyecanla köpürüp, ba-zen lav olup akarlar Arnavutköy sahil-ine, dumana boğarak boğaziçini...

Kadim bir grubu vardır bu binanın… En eskilerdir onlar, her şeyi bilenler-dir... “Onikiler” derler onlara... Bu taş dünyanın sırlarına vakıftırlar… En kuytular onlardan sorulur, görülmezi görür, duyulmazı duyarlar.. Binanın en dolambaçlı yollarından, binbir numara-lar ile sıyrılanlardır..

En çok onlar sorar, sorulmazı soranlardır… Geleceğe bakar bir yü-zleri hep, gözlerini kırpmadan hem de..Dünyanın binbir hali , yağmur gibi yağarken üstlerine , onlar sırılsıklam

olsa da, dimdik duranlardır…Şarkıları ve rolleri severler..

Yüreklerinin derininden gelen ses-leri, “aşkla”, taş binanın tavanına asanlardır… Küçük yüreklerini sahn-ede deve dönüştürürken, özde hep aynı kalanlardır..

Yaratırlarken geleceği, aynı zaman-da geleneğe de sarılanlardır.. On me-tre çaplı bir taş çemberde, bir olimpi-yat sporunu, kan ter içinde yapanlardır..

Bir kere sevdi mi, hep seven, şekle değil, derine bakabilenlerdir..Affet-meyi ve hoş görüyü de bilip, halden anlayanlardır..

Bu “onikiler” çok sevilenlerdir.. Taş binanın her santiminde izlerini bırakmışlardır.... İsteseler de,zorlasalar da gi-de-me-ye-cek olanlardır..

İki yokuş ortası taş bina,Bu binanın “Onikileri” CAN’dır

aslında..Koray Abi’niz.

By Mehmet Uysal

Güzide 2016 Mezunları,Robert Kolej’de geçirdiğiniz beş yıl

içinde hepinizle aynı sınıfta olamadım ama sınıf ziyaretlerimde, koridorlarda hep her birinizle göz göze, gönül gönü-leydim. Burgaz gezimizde Sait Faik’in dünyasında insanlık hallerini paylaştık , bazılarınızla Sait Faik’in arkadaşını tanıdık ve heyecanla Sait Faik’i yaşadık arkadaşının anılarında ayak üstü . Gü-zide şubem 12-2 ile kantinde “ Simitle Çay” öyküsünü okuduk, simitlerimizi yiyip çaylarımızı yudumlarken…

2016 mezunları olarak sizler, coşkusu yüksek, sorgulayan, “hak bildiği yol-da” tek başına da olsa yürümeye devam eden; ülkemizin geleceği için güven veren gençler oldunuz. Hem akademik başarıyı yakaladınız hem de ders dışı çalışmaları başarıyla yürüttünüz. En zor yılınızda bile coşkunuzdan, olumlu ve yapıcı tavrınızdan asla ödün vermedi-niz. Gelecekte de her nerede olursanız olun, kendiniz için, ülkeniz ve insanlık için özgürlükten, barıştan ve insani değerlerden yana tavır almak vicda-ni borcunuzdur. Her birinizi “ fikri hür, irfanı hür ve vicdanı hür” gençler olarak görmek en büyük dileğimdir.

Yolunuz ve bahtınız açık olsun. Sevg-ilerimle,

Mehmet Uysal.

Eda Yurdakul

Koray Abi

Mehmet Uysal

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE SENIORS 23

Painting Metaphors

By Tayfun Gür

A great many things can fit inside 350 m² but moderation is not one of them.

Several dozen people worked for over a week to draw and paint the ban-ner that will be hanging from Gould Hall on the day we leave. Many bar-rels of (mostly blue) paint were used up and many different interpretations of İbrahim Tatlıses’s “Mavi Mavi” were sung by the time it was all done. I think I would speak for everyone to thank Erol Kulaoğlu and all the other wonder-ful people for being at the forefront of all the organizational efforts even when they had LYS just around the corner.

One of the first things I remember learning here is the concept of meta-phors, back when we had Güler Kamer as our Turkish literature teacher in Prep. I remember Philippe Noiret’s immortal rendition of Pablo Neruda explaining to the Postman in front of a steady stream of blue Mediterranean waves that there was no such thing as a metaphor that is created unwittingly.

You don’t always know what you are in the best mood or mind set to learn. Unexpected education is an enduring theme in this school and it finds many forms: with Mr. Cadorette what you thought were simply good old “num-bers” can suddenly become “Hindu-Arabic numerals”, with Önder Hoca the obscurest details of history can come alive in the modest confines of Gould 4th floor, and with Deniz Abi music can transcend its artistic func-tion into changing your brain and de-creasing crime rates. And just like how RKANEP CIPs teach you that little kids can be more dangerous than you’d think, painting a banner also teaches you things you wouldn’t have thought to worry about before. Like how paint thinner can actually be much cheaper than you’d think. Or how wearing socks doesn’t mean you are paint-proof. The seemingly oddest details can be made

into valuable knowledge or a good story in the right sort of hands.

I originally set out with the intention to make a metaphor out of the Gould Hall banner, but it seems like a redun-dant activity now. On the other hand, the intricate conceptual foundations of painting hold a mirror up to much more than what would be expected of the act taken at face value, and deserve some further elaboration.

To clarify, painting is a more compli-cated business than one initially thinks, and constitutes a system of balance. The paint by itself is too thick, it is inappli-cable and raw, unable to fulfill the basic function that it was designed to fulfill, and is often very insistent in its stub-born way of sticking indefinitely onto whatever surface it touches. This is ex-actly like us, how we were before Robert College. And then we dissolved in this place, mixed into each other’s lives, and it gave us the kind of liquidity and ease of use that makes it possible to paint something. In this way Robert Col-lege is very much like the paint thin-ner that refines the crude paint which is us. And in retrospect, though at times it made our heads spin a little and make us say some weird things, it was an over-all pleasurable experience to inhale our share. The only major downside has been its addictiveness and it is almost certain that we will all feel withdrawal symptoms once we’re off it forever in a month or so.

We must also bear in mind though that in every painting job there needs to be a balance between the thinner and the paint. The prodigal young paint-er will only achieve a dense and lim-ited blob before running out of paint while the penny-pinching despot who puts too much thinner in will end up not getting any real colour through. The person who has the bottle of thinner in their hand can often fall into a verti-go of power, wanting to put more and more of it into the paint, unable to re-sist the tantalizing sweetness of its smell as the whitish liquid mixes into the dif-ferent shades of the colour being used.

That is why it’s best to paint in groups, with every person providing a check on the next, so that the innocent act of uti-lizing paint thinner doesn’t turn out to be chaotic and unpleasant and carried away by the authoritarian tendencies or personal taste of a single person.

It is equally important to use the dif-ferent varieties of paint effectively, since however much thinner you put in, you cannot make purple out of blue paint alone; you need to mix it with the red. So although the thinner is eventually required in some stage or another, the paint makes for the essence of the ban-ner’s content, the thinner is there real-ly just to keep things from falling apart.

So, it is possible to find a metaphor in anything, even where one isn’t initially intended. In the end the intention sim-ply seems irrelevant as long as a mean-ing is attributed to something, since the consumers of the metaphor are the ones making the association to begin with. So if on the 17th of May you look

carefully enough up at Gould Hall, you might think that what you see is sim-ply a very large banner with a paint job somewhat imperfectly done. Or, if you so choose, you will see (quite literally) the footsteps of RC ’16 spanning the blue sky as they make their final leave.

Special note:More people started this journey than

are ending it now: Let us commemo-rate our friends Yasemin Cöbek, Eren-can Aydoğan and Anıl Kütle who were all victims of the LP-7 curse.

Also I would kindly like to invite this newspaper’s editor Muhammed Miraç Süzgün to settle our differences once and for all at the 100 meters race that will be held for the Youth and Sports Day, with the hopes that he will be out of tricks this time.

Robert Güzel Ama Ingiliççe - Courtesy of Yasemin Kiriscioglu

Courtesy of Yasemin Kiriscioglu

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE

From RC’16 Students:

By Veli Barış Haybeli

Five years ago, back in my prep year, I was a part of the flag football team. During my short tenure as part of the RC Bobcats, I could’ve been eas-ily considered the worst player on the team. I couldn’t pass the ball properly. I couldn’t give it a spin. I was a below-average runner and was even worse at getting hold of other people’s flags. I played many matches but failed to in-tercept a single ball. As a lineman, I was easily knocked down by other players who were twice my size. I attended the club nevertheless, but it almost never provided any satisfaction to me.

I would’ve loved to say that I even-tually improved a lot, won the nation-al championship and was named the MVP of the tournament. Unfortu-nately, that didn’t happen. I remained mostly stagnant over the course of my short-lived flag football career.

One day, towards the end of the year, I finally accepted that flag football wasn’t the right thing for me. That day, I ap-proached Mr. Becker and said that I’d be leaving the club. He understood my

situation – after all, he knew how I’d been performing. I left the club on that day.

Still, I believed that I’d somehow make a good “flag football strategist.” (I’d always thought I was better on the theoretical side than the practical side.) On the same day, I asked Mr. B if I could start coaching the club along-side him. The answer wasn’t positive at that time – but now, five years later, in my senior year, Mr. B revived this al-most forgotten memory by bringing up the topic again. “Perhaps you were fit for that position, after all,” he told me in an e-mail he sent me a few months ago. The memory came back – and so did a few tears. All of a sudden, I real-ized that it had been five years since my official entry to this school.

Five huge, heavy, packed years. Look-ing back, I realize that I’ve fulfilled most things (and more!) one would ex-pect from a high school student.

I’ve failed exams. I’ve felt disappointed about myself.

I’ve tasted detentions quite a few times.

I’ve illegally hung posters around the school.

(Needless to say, they were dealt with.)

I’ve won awards. I’ve published poems. I’ve travelled with my friends to dis-

tant lands. I’ve seen and felt love. I’ve felt that we were all together in

this. I’ve felt solidarity. And here I am, graduating five years

after my enrollment – and thirty years after my mother’s own RC graduation in 1986. I’m grateful to her, I’m grate-ful to this school and I’m grateful to my classmates and teachers. It’s a feeling that is indescribable and one that will stretch for time immemorial.

SENIORS24

By Melis Şingin

Senior year passes so quickly that you don’t even realize. It is the best but also the most heart breaking year at Rob-ert College. After senior year, stu-dents make for college and are scat-tered around the world. This summer is the only summer that students don’t have anything to worry about like SAT, ACT, AP, LYS and YGS. Here is some advice for both the current and upcom-ing seniors for getting the most out of their summer:

1) Plan a trip to Europe with your friends from RC. Start by picking a city that all of your friends want to see. In-vite other people from the school who may be interested. A trip to Europe is a chance for you to get to know more people in your grade. Don’t go there only with your best friends. The more crowded the group is, the better. It is a way to maintain the senior spirit.

After picking the city and inviting people who you aren’t that close with, buy your plane tickets and arrange a hotel or a house. Airbnb is a perfect website for finding the right house with

the great location. It also offers houses that are half the cost of a regular hotel. Staying in a big house with your friends will create a more sincere environment.

Make a list of museums, restaurants, parks, shopping malls and historical buildings that you want to visit. Buying a tourist guide book helps.

When you go there, make sure you take lots of pictures with your friends.

2) Plan an Interrail trip. Interrail is for people who like to live more spontane-ously. If you would like to travel across Europe in a month or less, interrail is the right choice for you. Plan your in-terrail trip on www.interrail.eu. Decide on the cities that you want to see with your friends. Don’t bring a suitcase be-cause it will be too difficult to carry with you. Buy a big backpack for your clothes. During the trip, make sure you get some sleep. Otherwise, you will get tired so quickly that you won’t have the energy to carry on.

3) Go to the historical peninsula or other historical places/buildings in Is-tanbul. Tell your friends to come with you. Search the historical place/build-ing online before you go there. Hire a tour guide. Tour guides are usually very affordable and informative.

4) Go to Büyükada with a crowded group of people from RC. Rent a bicy-cle and tour around the island. Go to a restaurant on the shore and eat fish. Af-ter dinner, make sure you eat a waffle.

5) Go to Cappadocia with your friends from RC. Invite your parents. They will miss you especially if you are planning to study abroad. This trip will be a per-

fect opportunity for you to spend time with your parents and friends. Search tours online for Cappadocia. Etstur and Jollytur usually offer great tours. They take you not only to Cappadocia but also to Lake Tuz, Haji Bektash Veli Complex and many other places. Rent a hot air balloon in Cappadocia and en-joy the view.

By Nazlı Güngör

Looking at the five years that I spent in RC, one thing that stands out among the classes, extracurricular activities is the time I spent in the dorm.

I still remember the first night I spent in the dorm. A group of six or seven people gathered in our room and may-be we spent the whole night talking about how school would be and how we would survive here for five years. It is still unbelievable that those five years, which seemed like at least ten on our first day at school, passed very quick-ly. Even though these five years passed very quickly, we had enough time for great memories, especially in the dorm.

Over the years, my dorm mates have become my second family. I know I always have a shoulder to cry on and friendly face that will make me feel bet-ter. We study together, we celebrate the end of every exam week together, and we tell each other about our dreams and what matters most in the world to our-selves. I realized how easy was to create this sisterhood. You have to put thir-ty girls together and soon they’ll create it together, banishing silence with con-versations between beds at 3AM and forging rituals that make everyone feel part of the same special, nameless club.

There are countless things that can make Robert College special to every-one, but for me and I hope for most of the residential students, this sisterhood is the most important.

Baris Heybeli

Five Years Ago...

Robert College Class of 2016

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE SENIORS 25

By Deniz Keleş & Şule Kahraman

“Dişi” Bobcats

Who let the Bobcats?Who? Who? Who? Who?

Go Lady Bobcats!Go! Go! Go! Go!

Having witnessed the establishment of the RC Girls’ soccer team by Ms. Seed with a few girls only, we have been proud of its great expansion and journey to become The Lady Bobcats. Seven coaches have come and gone in five years: Ms. Seed, Olivencia, Jesse (the blonde), Mr. Morse, MSG, Kah-le, Livesay.

From Gateway to British Interna-tional, MEF to Üsküdar, we have seen many great rivalries.

There have been 14-0 losses as well as key victories, clever saves and goal queens (*wink* Esra *wink*). We suf-fered through challenging trainings in

deathly cold and pouring rain, didn’t mind playing alongside Beşiktaş devel-opment teams or horse farms and trac-tors. We endured the dreaded plank circles with the motivation of having six-packs and turned them into a tradi-tion. We have been to so many endless journeys: IICS, Koç, Portugal… There were many surprises (like the addition of a new member to our big interna-tional family) and tears. We have said many welcomes and farewells.

These were all the things that made us The Lady Bobcats.

Now, we are onto new journeys. Once again, it is time to say goodbye, cherish the amazing friends and memories we have gained and, long story short, deal with all the emotional stuff.

But that doesn’t mean we are not go-ing to harass you from Whatsapp, spam you with emojis and boost your confi-dence by recalling old memories.

Yes, we’re going now but we’ll never leave the Lady Bobcats family.

Thank you for being part of this dream team.

Go Lady Bobcats!

By Ayhan Okçal

After five years of experiencing Rob-ert College, I believe it becomes harder to believe that this adventure is com-ing to an end. Of course, every part of your growing up process is important in shaping your personality; however, the high school environment you be-long to is the most crucial stage. Rob-ert College presents us with, when compared to other high schools, end-less opportunities to pursue our inter-ests. But while you are trying to get the best out of RC, you should try to maintain a good balance of everything to ensure the smooth running of ev-erything.

The first part of this balance is of course your academic interests. RC not only has one of the most rigorous academic curricula in the world, but it also makes available a very wide range of electives. Of course, most of you will try to take advanced courses, trying to push yourself to the limit and achieve high GPA’s with hard lessons. RC is

able to provide us, students, with the means to make this possible; howev-er, during your high school life, I be-lieve it’s very important to test yourself in different fields – by taking electives from different departments. You might find that you don’t like physics or bi-ology; or you might also find you are really into something you didn’t think of before - such as music or photog-raphy. By taking different lessons, you will also be able to meet new teachers and new friends.

I personally believe that the most important aspect of your life at RC is the extracurricular. Everyone has the chance to find something suitable to himself/herself here; whether you’re interested in music, sports, history, de-bating or politics, you’ll both be able to find people who have the same inter-ests and also join a club to further pur-sue these. Your interests, your hobbies and the activities you do to improve yourself without any monetary or ac-ademic return is what’s going to make you a better human being. For exam-ple, I was very lucky to join and made my closest friends in this school in the MUN club.

My advice for you to try new clubs, make new friends and make sure you do something you enjoy rather than doing it for the CV. CIP’s are also a great way to see parts of Turkey you’d otherwise never visit, make new friends and interact with many little and rel-atively poor local kids. It’s a very dif-ferent experience and I assure you that it’ll teach you a lot that class lessons cannot.

The final part of this balance is your personal well-being. Although we spend a lot of time studying and en-joy doing CIP’s and clubs, everything might be a little too overwhelming at times, especially in May. When this is coupled with the general stress of your friends and peers, you might find yourself struggling in an abyss. While there are no certain formulas to over-come this, as a senior who also expe-rienced these overwhelming periods, I have some advice for you.

First of all, try to create yourself an environment where you study most ef-ficiently. You might learn more in an hour of intense studying than in five hours of studying/messaging/talk-ing with someone. You might consider turning your phone and computer off as well. This will both save you time, and also will help you avoid the “I studied for five hours and I still don’t know anything” syndrome.

My second piece of advice is to make sure you take a break from everything every once in a while. A day spent at home doing nothing but sleeping might be able to recharge all your bat-teries. You don’t need to study every-day – if you study efficiently.

Lastly, be aware that every friend group might be too much – especially at times where everyone is stressed out by exams. We all have that friend(s) that studies for hours, tries to get 99 in everything, makes us see ourselves as lazy or inadequate, and stresses us out. That is definitely not the case. Don’t be afraid to take a step back from your so-cial circles to give yourself a break ev-ery once in a while; and don’t worry,

you won’t be excluded from anything or be seen as “antisocial.” Also, there are around 200 other people in your class, you might form new friendships in these times of stress.

With the balance of these three as-pects, you should be able to do just fine. While I’m ending my words, I would like to remind you to enjoy ev-ery second of RC because when you are close to the end and look back at the times you spent, you’ll realize that you don’t recognize the value of the time you spent inside this beautiful campus. And you’ll regret it.

Lady BobCats

Courtesy of Deniz Keles

L9-1 (2013-2014) - Courtesy of Ezgi Yazıcı Courtesy of Ezgi Yazıcı

Selfie with Oktay Sen

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 IssuePAGE SENIORS26

By Eren Uman

During the final days of school, it is pretty standard for a senior to get over-ly-nostalgic and give long speeches to his younger friends about how to be successful at RC. Although such a for-mula for success does not exist, I be-lieve that these pieces of advice are quite important. Given the opportuni-ty to reach all BC readers, I will not suppress my “senior” impulse to pro-vide my insight and will share with you as much as I can. Yet, since I am in no position to present myself as an exem-plar of success, I will try and give you a couple of tips on what I know best: enjoying every bit of Robert College! Tried and tested.

For me, the utmost prerequisite for establishing a happy mood in an en-vironment is to appreciate the com-munity that that environment hous-es. Of course we have our fantastic friends and teachers; they are the ones we interact with the most of the day. However, we often do not realize that the Robert College community in-volves more than just our teachers and us. Over the past five years, I’ve had the chance to meet the amazing peo-ple in the IT Department, the Theatre Crew, the Security and ISS offices as well as those in the Electric Shop and the Cafeteria. Today I consider myself lucky that I witnessed Metin Ferhato-glu’s inexhaustible care and attention, Kenan Kara and Kenan Muştu’s un-paralleled sense of humor and sincer-ity, Müge Tüylüoğlu’s uplifting energy, Murat Demir’s ability to undertake ev-ery possible physical endeavor in cam-pus, and Şakir Kırmızı’s everlasting smile and politeness which I believe is

the actual reason why our campus re-mains safe. Frankly, if I didn’t get to know these valuable people and hear the stories of many others such as En-gin Abi, an ISS staff from three years ago who was a bankrupt jeweler and taught himself how to play the piano in the Faculty Parlor when he started working in Robert College, and Ah-met Abi, the very embodiment of the “Karadeniz Spirit” who called everyone he loved “ugly” just to avoid “nazar”, and also Songül Abla from the canteen, who is married to a tattoo artist and is the most talented actress on campus, I would not consider my Robert Col-lege experience complete. So, my first suggestion to you is that if you want to take the most out of RC, do not be afraid of connecting with these people. I assure you, there is so much they can teach you.

My second suggestion will be more of a senior type. Even though I know how trite it is to say this, I would like to re-mind you that your time in RC is pret-ty limited and that you will never know exactly what you will encounter in the subsequent years. So, if you really want to enjoy your time here, you do not have the luxury to postpone your aspi-rations. If you want to sing, you should audition immediately. If you want to start a football team, regardless of your class, you should start moving now. Be-cause, I am quite confident that if you do not act on what you wish to do at RC, you might never have the time to do so again. For my part, I was ex-tremely lucky that I found my passion, organizing RCIMUN, very early in my RC journey. I cannot even begin to de-scribe how extraordinary it feels to ex-perience the realization of something

that you loved and worked for and have met your favorite people ever along the very same process. I sincerely wish that all of you will feel the same way when you graduate and see how satisfying a high school experience can be.

By following the two suggestions I just shared with you, I’ve managed to enjoy this school to the maximum. (Of course, having the most entertaining friends and inspiring teachers contrib-uted majorly to this fact.) I hope that you appreciate my suggestions and de-cide to adopt parts of them in your own style. As RC’16 is about leave very soon, I finally would like to everyone who contributed in making this jour-ney both fruitful and a lot of fun and wish all RC classes the best.

Robert College Class of 2016

Robert College Class of 2016

Bosphorus Chronicle • May’16 Issue PAGE SENIORS 27

QUICK FACTS ABOUT RC

BOSPHORUS CHRONICLE Monday, May 16, 2016MAY 2016 ISSUE

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Senior Editors’ Epilogue: Discovering the New and the Unknown

By M. Miraç Süzgün & Ezgi YazıcıSENIOR EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Thank you. We simply would like to thank the school community, alum-ni and, of course, our dedicated staff for making the school newspaper Bos-phorus Chronicle fully-fledged and much more inclusive and colorful for our readers. After spending four beau-tiful years on the Bosphorus Chroni-cle, we cannot say a goodbye but only express our gratitude for our first step in the world of journalism. The paper has had a profound effect on our high school lives and broadened our vision in many ways. From writing to editing ar-ticles, from designing pages to commu-nicating with publishers, we have found ourselves in every step of the work. Our greatest gratitude is simply for that amazing journey.

The journey is, indeed, a challenging one. It starts from trying to find (and getting lost in) Woods Hall on the first day of Prep Year, when the pros-pect of the following five years seem very tough, even daunting. Then the Orientation Day, first Lise Live, Prep Irish Dance, first lab report, first Fi-nals Week along with sleep depriva-tion, then a fast-paced 10th grade with friends and beloved Geography, then AP exams and SATs in junior year....

The moment of realization occurs when one becomes a “senior”. Then all the “firsts” are replaced by the bitter-sweet “lasts”: the last fall on campus full of red and orange leaves, the last exam, the last time waking up at 6 a.m., and the last goodbye. And when the last wisterias bloom your senior year, you, like all before you, will realize that time does fly.

And time brings change. In the past five years, Robert College and Bospho-rus Chronicle have seen many novelties and changes. Our Class of 2016 was the first class included in the student-laptop program - we were politely alienated as the “tech generation” by older classes. Now, every student walks around with a laptop. We switched from 40-minute classes to 80-minute ones. Final exams of spring 2013 became optional, mark-ing a historcic point when RC’15 nev-er took the legendary Geography final. We have seen two Turkish headmis-tresses and three Foreign Headmasters in the past five years. We bid farewell to some of the longest serving members

in RC Community like Dave Phillips, Charlotte Şamlı, Tulû Derbi. We wit-nessed the complete renovation of the school library and the Bubble becom-ing Karamancı Student Center (aka Bubbleteria).

In Bosphorus Chronicle, we start-ed publishing full color issues. We aimed to focus the newspaper on more school-oriented topics and events. The paper adopted a completely new de-sign. We included diverse subjects like music, food, technology, and even math and science sections. And finally, with this issue, we are opening a “Seniors Section,” dedicated to this year’s se-niors: RC’16. To us and to our friends. Faculty chosen by RC’16 and volunteer students have written for and about this year’s graduating class and their RC ex-perience. We hope this will remain as a loving memory for RC’16, offer the se-nior perspective to younger members of the RC community, and start a mean-ingful tradition.

More than anything, “change” became the definition of our high school years.

One of the future changes we are hopeful about is the school adminis-tration’s slow but positive change on its influence on school papers. In the past years, we have had to remove parts of interviews and articles, and have been unable to publish a few entire articles due to the request of the administra-tion. We even said an early goodbye to a thriving satire magazine at RC called “The Satirist”.

Nevertheless, things are changing for

“There is nothing in the world

so irresistibly contagious as

laughter and good humor.”

- Charles Dickens

1971:

The “Yüksek Okul” officially ended.

1989:

Three news buildings, which were named for Feyyaz Berker (RC’46), Ne-jat Eczacıbasi (RC’32) and Suna Kirac (ACG’60), were founded.

1992:

The “Orta” is moved from Bing-ham Hall to Woods Hall.

MUSIC

ON

MONDAYS.

——FACULTY

PARLOR.

——11.50-13.20.

the better. Our first issue this year was published with a black cover dedicated to “Those who lost their lives in recent attacks of terrorism.” We had the full support of admin, especially the Turk-ish headmistress Nilhan Çetinyamaç. Handing out that December 2015 issue around the campus, BC staff was proud to be able to voice their thoughts on a pressing issue. We were, too.

After that, we have published arti-cles about the terror attacks in Europe, feminism and the gender spectrum in school. We are hopeful about the evolv-ing relationship between the adminis-tration and students in terms of voicing opinions and communicating transpar-ently. Yet, there are many miles to go and many important topics to cover both at RC and the outside world, and we hope that Bosphorus Chronicle will continue to be the medium for students to share their ideas and opinions with the school community in this course.

As our time at Robert College and with Bosphorus Chronicle has finally reached an end, as a tradition we kind-ly offer a few suggestions for younger classes in their ongoing journey among their books, friends and hectic courses.

Don’t be shy. Discover the new and the unknown. Discover your surround-ings, your community, but most im-portantly discover your personality and your thoughts.

Try to learn the names of people working in school administration, fac-ulty and ISS. (For a wonderful article about this, refer to our Senior writer Eren Uman.)

Get on the stage! Either by holding the flag during a ceremony or by sing-ing in front of an audience of five hun-dred, live your minutes of fame at least once.

Listen to one of the myths about Robert College. For instance, talk to Mr. Colin Edmonds and Mr. Önder Kaya about the mysterious tunnels be-neath the campus and the legend of the Maze.

Leaf through the yearbooks in the li-brary to find interesting facts about Robert College history.

Be open to discussing and defending your ideas, yet never forget the presence of diverse and different opinions. Hear them out.

Benefit from the Community In-volvement Projects (CIP) Office as much as you can. Participate in projects outside Istanbul to get out of your com-

fort zone. Don’t be afraid to do something

strange or unusual in your high school life. This can be counting the number of doors on campus or investigating the birthday paradox by asking your friends their birthdays.

Take a good photograph with your friends under purple wisteria in front of Gould Hall - a selfie is preferable.

Attend as many school activities as possible, and try not to miss any Lise Live events, as well as the orchestra concerts. As you might have already noticed, Robert College has an incred-ible number of talented musicians (and dancers!)

Know that one does not have to be the best the time. It is okay to fail some-times. It is okay to get 59 on a Calcu-lus BC exam. It is okay to take a differ-ent path.

After all, it is important to realize that Robert College gathers very tal-ented, diligent and smart kids from all over Turkey on this beautiful cam-pus and provides all the means and re-sources that enable them to accomplish great things in the future, while pro-moting intellectual development, free-dom of speech and diversity. And this unique experience makes Robert Col-lege an exemplary institution in Turkey. We are really thankful to Robert Col-lege for helping us to expand our hori-zons through many courses and social activities, and we hope that we benefit-ed enough from the unique opportuni-ties offered to us.

Every beginning has an end, and right now, we are ending our final chap-ter of the book called Robert College. Without any doubt, we will always re-member our beautiful memories at this place, our home. Wherever we go and whatever we do, we will not forget our first sight of Gould Hall on our first day, neither will we stop talking about our friendships, misbehavior and fun-ny jokes at this school at a homecom-ing twenty years from now.

We would like to thank everyone, es-pecially our advisors (Carolyn Cal-laghan and Robin Carnegy) and our committed staff again for making our journey with Bosphorus Chronicle phenomenal and enlightening for us.

Farewell RC Class of 2016,Farewell Robert College, And farewell Bosphorus Chronicle...

Farewell RC’16,

Farewell Robert College,

And farewell Bosphorus Chronicle.