Thursday, July 9, 2009

Coming to an End...

It's finally hit me that I'm leaving in two days! I've already turned in my last reading reaction email and paper and had my last floor meeting. And I just finished my final reflection. I can't believe this experience is about to come to an end. My roommate, Kim, and I recently talked about how we're just getting used to our routines and now we have to leave. Of course I'm going to love being back at home with my own room surrounded by my friends and family, but I'm truly going to miss my time here at Brown.

Anyways, today after dinner, I went to the college fair at the OLMAC. The line just to get into the building was enormous! It was even more hectic once I finally got into the gym. There were stations circling around the indoor track and several people trying to push their way through the crowd. As I was approaching the track, I didn't know where to begin. Unfortunately, I only had about an hour to go to the different stations and the colleges I wanted to see (like Columbia) had massive amounts of people around the table. Thus, I decided to look at the smaller colleges that weren't getting as much notice. One college I learned about, College of Mount Saint Vincent, is near New York City and supposedly has a great nursing program. I'm not sure if I want to apply to this school, so I'll need to do a bit more research to see if it's right for me. Overall, the college fair went well and I was able to look at a few colleges I never even heard of. I'm definitely glad I went to the college fair in St. Mary's last April since I had more time and more chances to speak to the college representatives.

Final goodbyes && college fair

Today was dean Thompson's last day :(
We went to the green house and learned about medicinal plants which was very interesting. We got to see the plants, smell them, and learn about what they do.
In the afternoon we had a guest lecture on Diets. Not as in loose weight diets, but eat healthy and keep a normal weight diet.

College Fair!
Wow it took Mercedes and I about 2 and a half hours to go all the way around the gym asking questions at most tables. The line was huge! We waited about an hour in total to get in!
My Favorite colleges from the tables that we went to were: Albertus Magnus College and Stonehill College.
Apart from the fact that Carey Schmidt doing an excellent job in explaining the school I really liked the fact that the school is really strong in many different areas specially in science! I also liked that SAT scores don't matter too much. I liked Stonehill for similar reasons. It is optional to send in your SAT scores and they are looking for students who are strong in academics but also have other activities that they do.

Overall summer @ Brown was an incredible experience! I learned that even though I don't want to attend Brown I did get to visit other schools that are at the top of my list like Wellesley. This was something that was truly life changing and I appreciate all the hard work that many people did in order for me and other students from wccud to attend pre-college programs.

One Busy Thursday ...

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.

The longest lab

Today was an exhausting day. I woke up feeling more tired than usual, even though I'd gotten more sleep. Then, I went to the lab.

I got to the lab at nine am, and finally finished us for the day after six. We started working on cloning our DNA into a vector.

We had to design the procedure ourselves. I'm the only one in my class following the same procedure, because most of them chose an easier, less reliable method.Because of this however, I was able to get a few minutes alone with the instructor. She is still working on her degree, and is researching methylation patterns in an animals. However, she doesn't want to do research. She wants to help bridge the gap between lay people and scientists, so that the everyday person knows why a doctor is doing something, or understand the studies in the news. She wants to help people get informed. She also loves Kurt Vonnegut, a sympathy I don't share.

When I finally got out of the lab, I was very pleased by how the lab went, despite a few setbacks. Hopefully everything goes well so I can get some of my DNA sequenced.

Until then,Joseph Young