Sonali Mehta’s sixteenth birthday was in December but she’s waiting until Jan. 15 to host a special reunion party with her friends from a camp called Duke TIP that she has enjoyed for the past few summers.

“I’ve met so many of my best friends from camp,” junior Sonali Mehta said. “Some of my closest friends from the last couple of years of camp are coming to visit me in a couple of weeks to help celebrate my birthday.”

This camp has helped to improve her abilities in academics, such as creative writing, geometry, biology of cancer, and social psychology.

“I went to TIP for four years, which is the maximum amount of years you can go,” Mehta’s friend  Sarah Kinney said. “Sonali and I are two of a very few amount of people who were lucky enough to go all four years.”

The camp is held on the campus of Duke University and students live on campus and take college level courses.

“TIP was probably the most fun I’d ever had during the summer, at that point in my life,” Mehta’s friend  Nicholas Simmons said. “It was a chance to learn in an environment much more enjoyable than school, because there were no grades, homework, and the topics were interesting.”

The camp lasts for three weeks, more than enough time for Mehta to experience many bittersweet moments with her friends.

“Three weeks may not seem like a lot of time, but since we are all living in a dorm together, we get close with one another really quickly,” Mehta said “It’s a bittersweet thing, because for three weeks we all have the time of our lives, but we all live pretty far apart, so leaving is very hard.

This year, she postponed her birthday party from Dec. 23 so she could celebrate with her friends.

“They’re going to be staying at my house, and I’m really excited to get to see everybody again,” Mehta said. “It means so much to me that they are all coming to visit.”