This Is How It Begins...

Today the reality of my situation set in for me. Somewhere deep in the back of my mind I was aware that I am going to be traveling to Vanderbilt this summer, but while I was sitting there with the twelve other ILCers staring wide eyed at Don, I finally understood that I was actually going to be able to make it to Nashville this July. I would like to say that I realized this during a time that calls for some sort of flowery language, that the sun was shining brightly and the birds were singing their little hearts out, but I was really just sitting in the corner of a computer lab, halfway through a chocolate chip cookie while Gabi hummed songs from Singin' In The Rain.

Gabi managed to take a surprisingly
nice picture of me, even though I wasn't
 paying attention to her doing so.

Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. I woke up at around 7:30 this morning with one goal. I had to get to the ILC tutorial on time. I had 4 hours to drive 15 minutes away to De Anza High School, so clearly, this would be a breeze, right? Well, sort of. As soon as I realized that it was twelve, I was on edge and all but pulled my mom out of the house so that she could drive me to the tutorial. 

When I got there, the morning session was just finishing up and I saw a few familiar faces. Aside from Aisha and Gabi, who I see just about every day, I reintroduced myself to Thao and Justeen, since we had interviewed together before. There was something about the excited atmosphere of the room there that I just can't explain. We were hearing about all the minutiae of our trip, from what to bring, to how to properly enhance graphics, but it was far from boring. Going over the little details, such as the appropriate font for our blogs (Times New Roman, just in case someone is looking over this as a guideline one day!) made the bigger picture so much clearer. I am in a unique position to go across the country to see amazing things and meet all types of new people, all thanks to the Ivy League Connection.

Anyway, speaking of pictures, we were briefly released to take some so that we could practice uploading them to the blog. I did not realize the amount of effort and care that the ILC'ers from previous years put into their blogs, because their formatting looks great! The placement of my pictures leaves something to be desired, but as they say, practice makes perfect. With the amount of blogging that I will be doing this summer, I certainly will not be short on practice.

A great picture, with even greater people.