Thursday, June 1, 2017

The Night of Nights

My #1 fan, aka my dad. 
I arrived at the El Cerrito Plaza BART station with my dad, glad to be on time, and was greeted by the other ILCers, their parents, chaperones, and some alumni who would be going with us. Since I had already met the Brown ladies and their chaperone, it was great seeing familiar faces. 

I went up to say hello to Don and afterwards started talking with Kevin Mendoza, can ILC alum from Hercules and a current junior at Cornell. We talked about his experience with the ILC since he also went to Cornell for the summer, how much he enjoyed it which is what made him want to apply, and how it's comparable to universities I'm familiar with such as UC Berkeley. 

Soon our train arrived which would drop us off at Embarcadero with a transfer at MacArthur. Once we reached the city, I reached out to Esmeralda and was bombarding her with questions about Middle College and what it is exactly, I told her about the AP classes I'm taking and found out that she is the secretary for CCC's Associative Student Union, similar to my position as Associative Student Body President. She told me about her plans for after high school as well as gave me some great administrative advice for when I take office. With so much to talk about we did;t even realize we were walking the streets to get to our destination, Town Hall. 

Hummd, Zunarah, and I.
I became very good friends with Hummd Alikhan, who currently goes to Cornell and is studying Information Science, I had never heard of that major before and it's actually in my field of interest. I told her about working with IT at my school and she was telling me about her great experience with her program there, as well as some helpful pointers on how to get a head start if I do plan on applying there. She was really funny and had a radiant personality, I knew I would reach out to her once more to talk about Information Science. We were seated shortly after in a room full of round tables with little name tags that had the emblem of the school we were going to be attending. Nice touch. 

Once we found our table we introduced ourselves and salads were being brought out as the speakers began at the front of the room. Madeline Kronenberg opened up the event, and we introduced ourselves and honored those there supporting us and wanting us to succeed. Bianche was up first to speak on behalf of the Brown cohort. She exuded confidence and represented them well. Then a Brown alum, Irene Rojas-Carroll spoke about her experience in Africana studies. She actually one to El Cerrito High School! Javaria definitely made the Cornell cohort proud, she was followed by Kevin who spoke about how thick some of the textbooks were, and all that we would take away from going back east. 

Waiting for 8:24.
I was doing a lot more talking since I wasn't eating until a bit later; I, along with some other ILcers was observing Ramadan. My food was brought out after the sun went down at 8:24, which I didn't mind at all, the food was great and worth the wait. Stephanie Ny, who was another interviewer, recently graduated form Northwestern and was telling us about some of the sights to see when we go for our site visits. I also very much enjoyed my conversation with Liz Block who was emphasizing the importance of writing being taught in schools which I agree with, and shared that she liked the concept of us blogging because it's a way for us to journal our experience. 

I was also seated at a table with Doug Mitarotonda, an alum from Cornell, he spent 11 years there and was telling us about how they were a a learning experience for him in more ways than one. I admired how he so openly was talking about failures he encountered, how to tackle it and what to take away from them. Never take 'no' for an answer, something I took away from his stories and I hope to embed into my approach. I never would have guessed that he studied abroad in Nepal, he expressed how he devoted the majority of his free time to running track, and his views on how coding is just another language which consists of verbs, nouns, etc. And how he connected Nepali with different coding languages, he made going into CS less intimidating, and showed me that it's possible to go after something you have no experience in, you just have to want it. 
After dessert all the ILCers and alumns went outside to the side of the building to take some photos, it was absolutely freezing and our teeth were almost chattering but we kept our smiles on. Resulting in this gem: 
Cornell: past, present, future. 
I could continue about how this was my first sit down formal dinner. The excitement of getting dressed up and having the amazing opportunity to take advantage of the invaluable first hand experiences at some of the most prestigious universities with the wide breadth of studies available. It was truly an honor to attend this dinner with such great minds, and invigorating to see so many who are standing behind us and cheering us on to do great things, and share our experience to give back when we return. 

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