Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Back in the Swing of Things

And so it begins again. After almost eight months of rest, I am blogging again. Well, rest is a slight exaggeration. Really is has been eight months of being a junior, reapplying to the the Ivy League Connection, getting in (as you might guess from my presence on this blog site), and more recently applying to Yale. And let's not forget the reading. After almost a thousand pages of reading (only a fraction of what we will have read by the end of the course) I am more excited than ever to take the Grand Strategies course.

An image that almost made its way unto the blog site
This past Sunday I met with my cohort, and of course Don, for the first time since our interviews. Despite our originally planned location, Starbucks, falling though, the Peet's just down the street worked just fine. After a few hours we finally assembled our blog site, and I for one am quite pleased with the result. We worked together quite well as a team, making decisions together, splitting up the work load, and generally getting along.

I am very excited to be a part of the ILC again, and I expect this time the be just as good, if not better, than last time. I like my cohort, and I cannot wait to get to know them all better. This Thursday we convene again, this time for dinner, to meet the Yale chaperone. Then a few weeks from now we have our fancy dinner in San Francisco, then orientation, and before we know it, we will be off to the East Coast. It is good to be back with the ILC.

To Blog Or Not To Blog

My fellow Grand Strategy cohorts, Don, and I planned to meet at a local Starbucks at 2:30 PM. Don was the first to arrive, I was second, Eric Wilson was third, Liam Guevara was fourth, and Joshua Ko was fifth. When I arrived, Don greeted me and pointed out that there was absolutely no room in Starbucks. After everyone arrived, we all decided to go to the Peet's Coffee across the plaza. Luckily, there was a counter for all five of us to work there. 

This was the first time that we reunited after the interviews in December. I was a bit nervous at how we would all interact. Thankfully, it was not awkward and we all spoke with one another comfortably. The day was quite beautiful, seventy degree weather and not a cloud was seen. We enjoyed some drinks at Peet's Coffee and proceeded to work on our blogs. I was never the one to be interested in computers, so setting up blogs is a bit foreign to me. Fortunately, Don and my cohorts are perfectly capable in that area. We all decided on the banner and background. The area that gave us the most trouble was the margins. It was necessary for us to repeatedly go back and change the width, but in the end, the blog turned out wonderful.
Don and I on our laptops
For inspiration and ideas we went to the older blogs of some Ivy League Connection alumni and to the blogs of current Ivy League Connection cohorts. We pieced and puzzled backgrounds, schemes, colors, font, font colors, banners etc. That was the easy part. One very difficult thing was the Internet connection. Liam and I decided to connect to the Fed Ex wifi unlike everyone else, who bought a drink and received an access code from Peet's. The slow connection made looking up pictures and refreshing the blog a painful snail-paced task. 

After about four hours we finally finished. I was the first cohort to arrive and the last to leave. I was and am extremely pleased with how our blog turned out. I began to show the blog to my parents and friends. I hope that this blog will receive many views.