These Milton Academy students are transforming an old bus into an RV, and 2.2 million followers are along for the ride - The Boston Globe (2024)

“When we first hit 10,000 followers, I was like, ‘Wow, we’re famous,’” said Kevin Han, one of the group’s 11 members, in a Zoom interview on Wednesday with the Globe. “And then 10,000 became 100,000, and then 1 million — every number just kept feeling less and less real.”

The past month has been a nonstop stream of working on the bus — with typical days ranging from nine to 10 hours — and editing and uploading their videos to the various platforms to show their progress.

“With the social media aspect a little bit, it can get a little consuming, [but] as far as the work, I think we’ve all just had a ton of fun,” Ben Rhodes-Kropf, another member of the group, said.

But this isn’t a story about students setting out to go viral; they’re driven by schoolwork. Milton Academy requires seniors to participate in a monthlong, self-proposed project throughout May instead of attending classes. While other students might be making a documentary film or writing a research paper, the five seniors who are officially signed onto the bus project — Han, Rhodes-Kropf, Justin Chen, Benjamin Siegel, and Sebastian Romero — decided back in February they wanted to do something more physically challenging despite not having much experience with projects of this magnitude.

“I think 90 percent of the group had little to no experience with power tools, almost no experience with electrical, any of the skills that you would check to say, ‘We can renovate a school bus,’” Rhodes-Kropf said.

Something not very complicated, surprisingly enough, was buying the bus itself. After scanning Facebook Marketplace, they were able to track down a seller in Hyde Park, visit with a mechanic, receive the proper paperwork, and park it outside Chen’s house, where it’s sat ever since. Through a loosely binding document whipped up by Rhodes-Kropf, the students agreed to contribute money from their savings toward the bus and its renovation, which ended up totaling close to $18,000.

“There’s more school buses than you might think that are available,” Chen said. “A lot of buses are just sitting in a junkyard somewhere.”

From there, six of their other friends — Charlie Anthony, Ainsley Madden, Matty Abati, Katherine Risden, Vijay Thakore, and Thatcher Brown — hopped on board to help, bringing the total number of workers to 11. All but two, Madden and Risden, will be on the trip come July.

Their lack of experience means the project hit some speed bumps, not only during construction, but also on the legal side of things. They’re currently working on getting the bus reclassified as an RV, something they said is a lengthy process in Massachusetts. Still, they said they embrace their novice mind-set, as it adds to the challenge and the reward of finishing the bus the way they want to do it.

“What has been great about the project is that we haven’t really had an ‘Is this going to work?’ mind-set. We’re more like, ‘How are we going to make this work?’” Anthony said.

Once they started posting about their project, attention came fast, with everyone from skier Mikaela Shiffrin to “Minecraft” YouTuber PrestonPlayz (with 15.6 million subscribers) having interacted with their videos. (They were all particularly excited about the latter.) They recently landed a “Good Morning America” segment as well.

“It’s almost difficult for [the sudden fame] to set in because of how busy we are,” Siegel said. “We haven’t really had time to sit down and contemplate.”

In some instances, they’ve relied on their viewers to help them.

“Everyone generally wants to help,” Han said. “Electrical engineers have commented like, ‘Oh, I think this wire looks a little bit off,’ or ‘maybe try this,’ or ‘make sure everything’s grounded.’ Stuff like that has just been really incredible. They want to help us succeed.”

Their work includes building cabinets, wiring a refrigerator, and installing a toilet — something that interrupted their renovation plans when they discovered they needed one to get the vehicle reclassified.

“We’re in this kind of ‘bus bubble,’” said Romero. “We haven’t really left the bus in a month.”

Though an undoubtedly fun way to end their high school careers, the work has been tireless, with many saying they haven’t had proper time to relax and spend time with family since construction began. The deadline crunch doesn’t help either, with them needing to officially present the bus at school on Wednesday. However, the outpouring of support online has been a motivating factor.

“One comment on social media that spoke to us was: ‘This bus is now the bus for the entire graduating class of 2024,’” Siegel said. “It felt nice to know that it’s not just us, but there’s kind of people around the world that love what we’re doing and connect with us.”

And they haven’t lost sight of the original intent: to enjoy one last hurrah together before they go their separate ways after high school.

“This is our last summer together,” Romero said, “and we just want to have a blast with it.”

Henry Bova can be reached at henry.bova@globe.com.