Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Just a few more days....

Just thinking about the trip to Rhode Island brings a smile to my face. I am so exited to be in the east coast for the second time in my life, but this time it will for more than a week. I cant wait to see what my class will be like, if I am going to make any friends in my class since I am the only one from Richmond High taking that class. I wonder if Introduction to Bio-medical Science will be as hard as it sounds or am I going to understand the subject. But most of all I wonder how Harvard, MIT, Wellesley and the two important dinners will be like. Am I going to do a good job in researching Mr. Sydney Frank an Ms. Ruth Simmons? So much to think about I can bearly sleep at night just thinking about the trip.

With all the activities that Mr. Ramsey and Ms. Kronenberg have planned for us I am sure that the trip to Rhode Island will be a blast!

I cant wait till Saturday!

2 comments:

Madeline Kronenberg said...

Carla,

Here is some information to get you started thinking about Ruth Simmons:

Her background:

No one Ruth Simmons knew had gone to college, and certainly no one yet in her family had been college educated. But Ruth set her sights on higher education. Her high school teachers sent her money during her early years in college to help pay for the cost of her education at Dillard University in New Orleans. When she had nothing to wear to college, a teacher took her in her closet and gave her clothes to wear to school. Simmons wrote: "These were people that wanted me to succeed in the worst possible way: they knew the odds out there, and wanted me to overcome them." She graduated summa cum laude in 1967.

(Sound like the Ivy League Connection?)

Two quotes:

"I was intent on doing something productive and on being everything my parents taught me to be. Their values were clear: do good work; don't ever get too big for your breeches; always be an authentic person; don't worry too much about being famous and rich because that doesn't amount to too much."
--Ruth Simmons, from her essay "My Mother's Daughter: Lessons I Learned in Civility and Authenticity," Texas Council for the Humanities Journal, Spring-Summer 1998.

And:

"We are all flawed. We all face the same great challenge: to try to learn how to overcome the uncivilized instincts that come so naturally to us, instincts to distrust, belittle, and attack anyone who is different."

And, for Mr. Frank:

Frank, though he went to Brown only one year, landed an engineering job at Pratt & Whitney in part because someone there had gone to the school, said his daughter, Cathy Halstead. The company sent him overseas and he worked on Allied airplane engines during World War II, she said.

Mr. Frank's "connection" with Brown (just because he had briefly attended) got his career started.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/05/25/brown.graduates.sidney.frank/




(Get the "connection" part?)

Carla Ramirez said...

Thank you Ms. Kronenberg these are a lot of help in understanding more in depth who these people are more than what I've read so far.