"If then we prefer to
meet danger with a light heart but without laborious training, and with a
courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly
the better for it?”
Pericles, from his Funeral Oration
And so
describes the Ivy League Connection experience. Four months ago, I found myself
sitting in a large science lab with four smiling adults with brand-spanking-new
notepads and pens, their heads nodding and noting as I spoke. Little did I know
that I would find myself, not two months later, with a bevy of reading
material, with handy notepad nearby, to help prepare me for the Grand
Strategies course my cohort and I will be taking this summer!
My
personality is that of a reflective, introspective, outgoing person. Through
that lens, as I read the material throughout the past couple weeks, and as I
type these very words, I noticed specific bits of Sun Tzu's The Art of War
that revealed themselves to me in reality this weekend as we put together our
blog (which you're seeing the fruits of right now) in the caffeine-infused haze
of Peet's.
"The
first of these factors is moral influence; the second, weather; the third,
terrain; the fourth, command; and the fifth, doctrine."
As a cohort, one of our
first goals was to put together a blog that would serve as a beacon of Ivy
League light to the online community and introduce a life that many prospective
college students have never considered. After deciding to meet on what is now
this past Sunday, the weather turned out to be a beautiful, sunny day, perfect
for a group of teenagers and Don Gosney, our fearless Ivy League Connection
head connector, to put that blog together. Unfortunately, we hadn't mapped out
the terrain quite as well as we could have, and we found the Starbucks location
we had chosen to have no room for the blog session we needed to have. After
checking out Yelp, we went across the street to Peet's, which had enough room
and beverages for us all, an environment that would work for us!
"Sun
Tzu sees the business of a general to consist, in part, of creating changes and
of manipulating them to his advantage."
After cups of coffee and
minutes staring at our bland-looking blog, Don sat us down and shared ways with
us to make an aesthetically-pleasing blog that was easy to read and visit. With
prior experience working with Blogger, I was ready to go, and so was the rest
of my cohort. We worked with Photoshop to create multiple banners and
backgrounds until we were all pleased with the final turnout.
"Generally,
management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of
organization."
We ended up splitting up
tasks among the cohort to make things go faster. Liam's post goes into
further details about our exact individual tasks, but we worked together,
debating color schemes, pictures, and fonts that would work the best for our
blog.
"If
the officers are short-tempered they are exhausted."
After nearly four hours,
we found ourselves winding down, finishing up our respective cups of caffeine
and chocolate, putting the finishing touches; adding links to our fellow ILC
blogs and making sure all the gadgets were in order. After a twenty-minute
worrying fit (and then later discovering that the button I was looking for was
in front of me the whole time), I happened to be picked up right after. As I
leaned back on the leather interior, I sat comfortably and calmly, although my
eyes were tired, knowing my cohort and I had had only the first of a series of
even more complicated and exciting adventures together.
As the blog continues to be further updated, check back later in the
week for my bio, which will give you, the reader, more information on my life,
why I am interested in going, and what I hope to get out of the experience.
Thanks for reading, and don't hesitate to give me feedback by commenting or
emailing me at jandakocompany@yahoo.com!
