This Time, a Different Kind of Meeting

If arriving last were a competition, I would hold the title as grand champion of all time. Seriously, this is starting to weigh on my mind, so I guarantee that at the next ILC event - the orientation - I will get there before. We'll see how it turns out next time, I guess.

The whole gang + Ernestina! I'm very excited, as you can see...

Anyways, today was the district School Board meeting, where the ILC would be presenting this year's cohorts. As mentioned, I arrived the latest out of the cohort, but since the meeting wasn't scheduled to start until 6:30, everyone sort of just mingled about. We (Vanderbilt people) all mostly stood in one corner helping Edward, our cohort's speaker, practice his speech. One completely random thing that I noticed was that we were grouped in threes in several different ways: there were three juniors in the group, three of us were taking Engineering in Adaptive Technologies, three of our names started with the letter 'J,' three of us wore glasses, and so on. Soon, we found our seats and continued to talk before the board meeting started; Jahnvi, Ernestina (From the University of Chicago cohort), and I had a very...interesting conversation.

The actual board meeting itself, or at least the time that we spent in the auditorium, seemed to zoom by. After a few opening remarks, each cohort went up, and the chaperone introduced the students and the classes they would be taking. Then a student from the cohort spoke, and there really were some good speakers. Enough to make me jealous, at least! When it was our turn to go up to the podium, I thought that I saw a smile of recognition from School Board member Mr. Todd Groves, whom I had the pleasure of learning from at Math Club back in middle school. Anyhow, I thought that Edward did an admirable job with his speech.

Afterwards, we headed to a courtyard to take a group photo - parents, chaperones, and all. I don't know about you, but when I take photos, it's one shot and a done deal; after positioning everyone perfectly, Don took a whopping 25 photos in total, to make sure that everything was picture perfect. (Hah...get it?)

Today's school board presentation really reminded me how much other people have had to work to make the Ivy League Connection happen, year after year. I just wanted to give a huge shout-out to all those who again made this possible, including: the school board, the sponsors, Ms. Kronenberg, Don, and anyone else I didn't mention. Thank you!