Although many of the students say they are friends with everyone, the academics do cause some inevitable rivalries.

“I think that humans as people, we thrive on competition,” Greta, a junior, says. “I could have quite easily been one of the top students probably at my school back home, but here it takes a bit more effort; I’ve had to push myself. I’ve seen students come here, and they’re used to being top of their class, and they get here and they’re not, and they have to work through that. It’s humbling and empowering at the same time … you can learn from your fellow peers.”

Greta says this empowerment is one of the results of her education at a school where she controls her academics and motivates herself. “The whole school is about moving forward and education,” Greta says proudly.

Yet, as much for Greta as for other Conserve students, the choice to come to the boarding school is not always clear and simple. Greta was a ski racer and even considered turning it into something more than a hobby.

“Basically my mom pulled up two pairs of skis on the computer, a powder ski and a race ski and made me pick the skis as to which one I was going to buy next year, and I picked the powder ski,” Greta says, indicating the sacrifice she was making to come to Conserve where ski racing is not available.

Opting to come to the Conserve School is becoming more common as enrollment increased 20 percent this year. Their goal is to stay between 150 and 160, this year with 147 students who board and two who come just during the day. Females slightly outnumber males, which Anderson hopes will eventually be a 50-50 ratio.

Many of the students and staff live exclusively on campus and thus are constantly surrounded by each other. Students live in dorms, named after members of Lowenstine’s family and two campus lakes, in wings of about 10 kids with a house parent who is often a teacher.

Ducommun, who was a house parent for four years before becoming the coordinator for the students’ mandatory off-campus community service hours, called her former position both rewarding and challenging.

“You are sort of their parents in absentia. You are dealing with homesickness,” Ducommun says. “Sometimes you are a mediator, sometimes you are a listener, sometimes you are someone who goes in and nags … so you sort of have a multi-role.”

Many students often refer to the community at Conserve as a family, resulting in a smoother transition to life at a boarding school. Each student communicates in varying degrees with his or her actual family. With technology such as cell phones and e-mail, students have many options for keeping in touch with their parents. Social networking sites like Facebook also keep people on and off campus in contact with each other.

During study time, however, the school has the ability to turn off certain non-academic websites to ensure students use their time wisely. Although many of the aspects of the school seem like a university setting, Conserve staff substantially control what the students do in this high school preparation time for college, including strict check-ins at night and no opposite sex visits to dorm rooms.

Everything from living with other people to challenging academics to the ACT prep books strewn about campus are preparing the 99 percent of the students moving forward to the university level. But for these students, part of moving forward is doing it with a keen appreciation for nature and the consciousness that they are part of their environments. For as much time as students spend together, the vast campus offers space for them to get away. Students ride bikes, hike and enjoy the numerous lakes that surround the school and even cross-country ski and snowshoe in frigid Wisconsin winters. Their inevitably close relationship with the environment is precisely what the school aims to achieve.

“Looking to our future, these kids are the ones who are going to be in charge,” Ducommun says. “The idea of the founding person, James Lowenstine, was that no matter what these kids do in life, we’d like to teach them, or open the doors to them, to learn to care about the world in which we live.”

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