These past two days have been hectic for me. I have been rushing to finish my final weekly reaction paper and my reflection project. I still have yet to finish my reflection project. However, I did find time to attend the college fair. Boy, was that a LONG line. When I say long, I mean LONGGG! The line was nearly stretched out among two blocks, possibly more! We heard from some people that they had been waiting for an hour and a half. That is absurd. Luckily for us, we did not have to wait that long.
When we did get into the gym, I was in for a shock. It was crowded with hundreds of people from all over. There were a bunch of tables set up and colleges around. I did not know where to start at all so I started from Reed and went down the road from there. It was catastrophic in that gym; there were too many people and too little space. However, I did learn some interesting stuff and I even across schools that I never heard of. I was disappointed that we were unable to get into a deep conversation with the representatives because there was just too many people waiting to speak with them so they kind of had to push us aside. Other than that, I think the college fair was a big success.
As for myself, I have been thinking about this whole experience. How can I bring what I have learned here back to my community? Well, I can almost guarantee that if we were ever to have an enormous college fair like this at Richmond, there would not be as much people. Therefore, I was shocked how many people cared and took time off of their day to attend this college fair. I hope that I can go back to Richmond High and inform students about the various opportunities out there. I will try to motivate people to think about college and go beyond high school. The conversation about the CAHSEE test at the dinner have encouraged me to stand up and help my peers who needs help in this area. I know a number of students who are unable to pass the CAHSEE. I do not want any of my friends to be denied the right to graduate and walk the stage just because they could not pass this test so I want to help as best I can. I will even offer tutoring assistance. I will do this by incorporating the leadership skills I gained from coming to Brown last summer and from what I have learned this summer. I will combine both of these experiences at Brown and implement it in my school, community, and home.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Meuy,
Thanks for your impressions about the college fair. We’ll be providing opportunities to visit several college fairs this fall when they come to Northern California. Last year we bussed a bunch of students up to Sacramento and also to Modesto. We also carpooled a bunch down to Palo Alto for a large college fair with more than a hundred schools.
I don’t know if you attended the college fair held in Oakland’s Chinatown a few months back where we bussed a couple hundred of our students to this event. I overheard quite a few of our students as they were leaving and it seemed that they really got nothing from the experience. The main reason they got nothing from it, at least from what I was overhearing, was that they really had no interest in attending to begin with. Way too many of them appeared to be there because it was an outing where they could go somewhere with their friends or they were pressured into going by counselors, teachers or their parents. These were NOT motivated students and I suspect that a large number of them won’t even attend college.
At the event you just attended, these were all motivated students so they definitely had a vested interest in being there. Also, I think that because it was held where there was a captive audience of so many students pretty much guaranteed a large showing.
I hope you join us at the fairs this fall, Meuy. I think you can get a lot out of the experience.
Post a Comment