The Tutorial

When I woke up this morning, I knew that Don Gosney, the man in charge of directing all the students in the ILC, had an informative session planned for us. What I didn't know, however, is how deep Don would dive into each subject. Don, seven of my ILC cohorts, and and I met at Hercules High School for the tutorial. The campus was large but the empty campus had a sense of peace to it. The flowers were in bloom and the sun was shining. I would have preferred to have spent such an afternoon on a walk down and up the hill I live on, but the information I gathered from the tutorial is invaluable.

Everything that I needed to know for making this blog, Don taught me. The justification of the lines of text, putting in an adequate amount of photos to keep the reader interested, and of course, how to make our blogs interesting. I also relearned the skill of checking my work after I'm done typing it. I know it may seem like a little thing but a grammatical error here and a syntax error there can misrepresent you as lazy or apathetic of your work.

There are of course those bloggers that don't care. Don gave us some humorous but true accounts of people failing to capitalize the first word in sentences over and over again, having blatant disregard for the proper spelling of some words, and writing a boring story.

Don also showed us exceptional writers. The one that I want to emulate is Mr. Austin Long. As he recounted his tale in his blog, I felt as if I was actually there with him on the Yale campus. When he described the food, I felt as if I was there eating it with him. The visuals, too, brought his story to life.

Hercules High School Computer Lab

We also learned that pictures are vital. If you write a lot and don’t have pictures to provide something for your readers to look at, they lose interest quickly. Don also showed us a couple of photo editing tricks to get the picture to look how we want it to. I’ll definitely be using this a lot to modify my photos because I get way too much sky when I take a picture.

Hercules High School

Beyond that, Don went over general things like the responsibilities we had to fulfill, like giving speeches and going to events, and mingling with adults. Mingling with other people has always been easy for me, so I think I’ve got that down.

But with the good, there is always the bad. The school district basically cut us out of the sites we needed to get to for Don to show us exactly what we needed to do. When I was trying to log in to this blog site, I was blocked by the Internet. I tried using a proxy website to get around it, but was stopped at each of the sites I tried. I tried getting in through my Gmail account, but couldn’t find it until Don pointed me in the right direction. To express the frustration that I felt when working with a system that was bent on keeping me from reaching my goals would require me to use some words that shouldn’t be exchanged in polite conversation. Not to mention that my ILC cohorts also had problems accessing their accounts using such slow and archaic technology.

We got a lot done today, and I am now more enthusiastic than ever to participate in the Yale Grand Strategies program. I can’t wait to share my story over these next few months. Also, to those reading, if you think that my stories are dry and droning please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Constructive criticism is all I ask for, and in return I will be able to better articulate my experiences so that you, too, can share in my journey.