At Yorba Linda High School around April 8-15, you probably saw a number of students carrying eggs with them. I also bet that if you tried taking that egg away from them, they probably went all “mama-bear” on you.
When I was a freshman, I was fascinated and entertained whenever I saw students carrying around eggs in baskets and carriers. I assumed it was for some sort of science project.
However, now that I am a junior at YLHS, I now know that this funny egg project is for AP Psychology students. When I chose to take this class my junior year, this project was probably one of the most exciting things that I had been looking forward to. Mr. Walls, the AP Psychology teacher at YLHS, has been giving this project to his students for years and loves to tell funny stories on the different ways past students have dressed up their eggs. He also loves to warn his students about how past students have broken their egg baby as well.
Mr. Walls gives his students this project during our Development Psych Unit. In this learning unit, we learn about how a child develops in terms of their language and behavior. By giving us this project, Mr. Walls hopes that we will be able to take care of this egg for a week and give it a name and dress it up. Once we (hopefully) successfully take care of the egg for a week, we are to write an “egg baby journal” describing what it was like taking care of the egg during its important stages of development from a newborn to adulthood.
So as you can see, this project is more than just trying to make sure the egg does not break. However, what makes this project funnier is that we get to dress up and name our egg to really get us to connect with our “child.” Me and my friend, Tiffany Im (11), named our egg baby, Hen Solo. Other students such as Leilah Huttner (11), Alyssa Hernandez (12), and Faith Alam (11) gave their egg babies names such as Alexander Scrambleton, Chicki Minaj, and Eggward Cullen.
Additionally, to give this project higher stakes, Mr. Walls has consequences planned if one of his students were to break their egg. Since the eggs students were given are raw, it is very easy to break the egg if the “parent” is not watching the egg at all times. If a student breaks the egg, you get -10 points off the project. And Mr. Walls will know if we try to replace the egg because on the egg that we are all given at the beginning, Mr. Walls put his fingerprint on our baby!
However, if you did not want to lose 10 points off this project, Mr. Walls has prepared the dreaded red envelopes. Inside these numerous red envelopes are unknown “dares” that the student has to perform in order to keep full points. Inside these red envelopes go so far as to dare a student to perform a karaoke song outside in the quad during lunch with everyone watching. And if you somehow break your egg three times, Mr. Walls would give you a plastic egg (as you are unfit to take care of a real egg at this point) and you will lose 30 points. HOWEVER, you can pull a black envelope instead, which has even worse dares than the ones in the red envelopes–dares that even go as far as Mr. Walls DMing your crush on instagram.
This year has had a lot of “firsts” for Mr. Walls in terms of students doing unthinkable things to their eggs. One student, Aiden Mohler (12), ended up breaking his egg 3 times. And you will not believe how he and his brother broke their egg the first time. Aiden said that, “it all went downhill when I accidentally cooked my egg and ate it for breakfast.”
Mr. Walls exclaimed to the class that in all his years of giving his students this project, he has NEVER heard of a student accidentally cooking their egg. Aiden also managed to break his egg two more items after that, which as a result, he was given a plastic egg. However, he somehow managed to break the plastic egg too!
This egg baby project is surely a highlight that AP Psychology students look forward to every year. As long as you do not break (or eat) your egg in the span of 7 days, this project will most likely be very fun to do!
