Up, Up, and Delay!

Pack my bags, get ready for class, practice presentation, get breakfast, worry about presentation. These were just a few of the many things that made my Friday morning so hectic. Today was a very big day. I was very anxious about every piece of it. First we had our last class session in the morning, then we had action plan presentations, and lastly were goodbyes and our flights to home.

All the arm candy that we got today.

I didn’t know what to expect for class today, we weren’t told what we had planned. I knew it would be a sad day to but I didn’t expect this many tears to be shed. We started the morning off with an evaluation of the course. I only had good things to say as I loved the course so much! After evaluations Tina gave a really heart whelming speech and that was the start of the crying. We then started a new activity. In this activity we were each given a bundle of colorful string, we were to go around the room tie strings on friends and then give them a positive affirmation. Most of us got to talk to every person in the room and it was such an emotional activity. My teacher Tina, and TA Christine both said some really beautiful words that made me shed a lot of tears. The activity made saying goodbye to everyone so much harder. After dismissal we all ended up staying in the classroom to watch videos. My favorite video we watched was “We Should All be Feminists.” It made me think so deeply about the social construction of gender that don’t even notice we contribute to everyday.  On a less serious note, I also loved the video of the dinosaur ice skating. I headed back to my dorm a little late and ran over my presentation one last time was well as finished packing everything up.

After lunch, Lynda and I headed over to the action plan meeting. The meeting was fun, we got to see everyone and cheer for our RAs, TAs, and teachers as well as watch this really cute slideshow of our time in the Leadership Institute. This was a great way to send us off to present. I was in group M to present, when I met up with my group I had no one that I knew so this made it much scarier. We sat in this small classroom and got started pretty quickly with presentations. Everybody did so well and all their topics were very interesting. This made me very nervous and I couldn’t bring myself to volunteer to go next. Eventually, it was my turn and I went up to present. It ended up going very well, half way into my speech I got very comfortable. The audience made really assuring nonverbal gestures and this helped me to perform better. Before I knew it, my presentation was over and that was it. I got a lot of positive feedback on my presentation and then it was time to head back to meet up with the big group. This was where we said our final goodbyes, snapped some photos, and shed our last few tears.

I gathered everything from my dorm and headed out to go return my key. This process was very simple and quick, Lynda and I then headed out to wait for the shuttle. The shuttle came a few minutes early with Ms. Cruzat. We loaded it up and then took a short ride to the airport. Everything at this point felt so surreal. The flight was a little delayed so we had time to stop and eat something, I had a delicious meal from Johnny Rockets. While eating Ms. Cruzat gave each of us these beautiful bracelets that she got from Newport. I got to add this to my arm full of string from class today. I will miss Ms. Cruzat so much after this trip.

After finally boarding the plane to Atlanta we waited another 50 minutes to actually take off. Despite the great delays, the plane ride was very comfy. I was one seat away from Lynda and right next to a man named Armon who lives in Atlanta. Armon was telling me about the bad weather they’ve been having. He actually hasn’t had power in his house for the past week and was telling me all about it. It was a very comfortable and quick plane ride. When we got off the plane we had to run to catch our next one. The delays left us with very little to no time to make it to our connecting flight. We ran through the airport caught the train to Terminal A and made it to the plane with three minutes to spare. But the gates were closed and we were too late. The next flight home was at 8 AM. After expressing our frustration to our families on the phone and getting our new boarding passes we headed over to Ramada Hotel to spend the night. I am very glad we were able to spend the night in a hotel and not in the airport. I'm looking forward to getting home tomorrow and seeing my family.