Everything Went Smoothly...Towards The End

One of Don's Point of View Pictures of the Meeting

Today was one of those milestone events that ILCers have once very year--the WCCUSD school board meeting, where the ILC is presented before the school board to say a few words on how excited and grateful we all are, while also stating what we are to bring back to our schools. Although before all that fun could happen, my day started off with something much less pleasurable--AP testing. Yes its that time of year, the dreaded two weeks of AP exam horror and if you're lucky enough, you'll end up having two on the same day (like me!). Those two tests were the AP U.S. History Exam in the morning and the AP European Exam in the afternoon. Now it may sound bad, but to clarify, history in general is one of my favorite subjects and most of it is surprisingly not boring to me. Some people try to memorize it without caring about its importance, others don't memorize it because it's too boring, although in my case, it just sticks in my head like an enjoyable story. 

My Former Best Friends

Nonetheless when the hour of cramming came to a halt--exactly 8 AM to be exact, the first test soon enough began. The multiple choice for the U.S. History exam began and I nailed it and had enough time to go back and double check my answers. The essays were surprisingly easy as well as I wrote away on Puritanism  & Enlightenment on one and Reconstruction on the other. The thing I hate about history tests in general is how much it hurts my right hand. I remember last year, while doing the AP World History Exam my hand wouldn't stop hurting until the end of the day. Yet of course, I had to take the European right after--with a 15 minute break in between (approved by my kind counselors). The European test was slightly more difficult than the U.S. one because I self-studied and not for very long, either way it wasn't as bad as I expected since I knew the material. After surviving the day (by that I mean not breaking my wrist as I had feared) and getting out of school at 4:26 PM I managed to get home around 5 and got dressed for the meeting.

If You Look Closely You'll Realize it's not the Best Picture

Originally I was set up to speak at the meeting today but, was rather recently changed to the dinner next week, so basically no difference. When  the meeting began at Lavonya DeJean middle school, I expected it to be filled with parents and of course students, and sure enough it was. There at DeJean the meeting starting off with some pending issues and then it got to the good stuff (us). Among the things that were first to happen included two former ILCers speeches which were both uplifting and made me think about my future choices. The first one to speak was Leonard, who is going to attend Penn this coming Fall. He explained how his experience in the ILC affected him and how in the end his mind was set on schools that he never thought of applying to. Tamilyn was the other to speak and also reflected on her own personal experiences with the ILC such as having breakfast with my future teacher Professor Kramnick in the Freedom and Justice course and also being independent. Knowing Tamilyn from mock trials this year, she's been a great academic influence on me, like a role model and now she's headed off for Harvard--just like her sister. 

We also got Recognition Certificates

Another person I had never seen or met was Mr. Ray. Who Mr. Ray is and his affiliation with the ILC, has  something very  significant to do with its founding. It turns out he helped administer it since its  prototype  year  with  Dartmouth  (when  I have free time or am bored and happen to remember to research this, I will). Then he proceeded to announcing the cohorts one by one where we all had our time to represent who we were. I remember I told Mr. Chan-Law not forget to mention what schools we are to visit in the Mid-West (since Mr. Ramsey was calling the previous chaperones out for not mentioning it) and he happened to forget it, even though he said he wouldn't and he also said he was looking at the preceding cohorts and making sure not to copy mistakes--oh well, it was funny. Then most importantly to Don, we all took a giant group photo in the back that soon enough will  be posted on the ILC website sometime once the final photo-shopping is implemented. This was the moment I knew Don was going to stress out the most over, because he knows from the past years the hassle that comes along with large group photos. In the end he managed to take about 20-30 pics as mentioned earlier and then chose the "best one." After the meeting, everyone seemed content and more than happy with this day of recognition.