Blown Away by Mistral

Today was our last day at Brown. I'm really sad to leave, but I'm also extremely excited to go back home. I was pretty nervous about my group presentation today, as even though I felt that we all knew the material, we just didn't have the time to each practice our parts nearly as much as I would've liked. I was even more unnerved when we ended up going second in class, after following a big bad group that despite missing one of its three members due to an illness, was able to do a great job discussing the importance of jobs in the private and public sectors. Tayler started off the project with an amazing introduction, and after hearing that I figured no matter how bad my section was, the project would still be decent based solely on the merits of Tayler's introduction.

I have gotten pretty used to public speaking thanks to the ILC, since I had to make a speech in front of about eighty people at the Brown dinner. I still felt a bit uneasy talking about such a complex issue as the banking systems in China and the U.S, but after a few stumbles and frantic note searching to have some idea of what I had planned on saying, I felt that I actually made a decent report on why the U.S' banking system is better than China's. Overall, the presentation went great, and I was genuinely interested in all of the other topics groups presented on, from monopolies to the bailout to Greece. It was soon time to leave however, and after thank-yous and good-byes to Nick and Desi, it was time to say good-bye to everyone else. 

I didn't want to have to leave everyone, but I still had to clean out my room, so we said our farewells to our friends, and each went back to our respective dorms. In what felt like an instant we were loading up Session 2's van with our luggage, and right as we were about to leave, Emily and I saw our Canadian friend Alessandro, and rushed over to say one last good-bye. 

We got to the hotel a few minutes later, only to see Alessandro waiting for us in the lobby! It turns out he will be staying tonight and tomorrow at the hotel, so we get to delay our last good-byes for a little bit longer. 

We met down at the hotel lobby at 5 PM, and Brown sessions one and two headed off to Mistral. Just as I had requested of Mrs. Kaplan, I ended up seated at a table full of MIT students (and one alum, but she was only a year removed and in med school at UPenn, so she was more of a student than alum). I know that it is completely impossible for me to ever get into MIT, but after this dinner especially I wish that by some small miracle I could be accepted, since everything these students talked about made MIT seem even better than I had originally thought, and in case you don't remember my original blog after touring MIT, I thought pretty highly of it then. 

The dinner was yet another great experience, and I can't wait to tour Harvard tomorrow, since I'm always eager to find Boston schools I like.