Thursday, July 16, 2009

The College Fair

Hello!

Today was the college fair and it was VERY crowded. I think the college fair was open to everybody, not just the Columbia students. I was able to find two of the six schools I mentioned yesterday, Carnegie Mellon and Tufts. I signed up on their mailing list and some other schools that looked interesting. I can't wait to find out more about them. A lot of the tables only had mailing sign-ups, not brochures and pamphlets so it was hard to tell what was offered at the schools. I'm really happy that I was able to go to a college fair here because I would never have heard of a lot of schools in the East Coast. I wish there could be more college fairs in the Bay Area that had representatives from many different schools on the East Coast and other parts of the U.s. come over and present rather than just the top colleges (Ivy Leagues, etc.) because everyone's already heard of those schools.

In class, we worked more on the final project. As I've mentioned before, I have always been able to choose my project group so I've been able to choose people that I work well with. This time however, I have someone in the group that is very hard for me to work with. It's a new experience for me and I knew it would come eventually. I'm glad it's come while I'm still in high school so I can learn how to deal with it. It's just a small step in my path towards college and beyond. I'm adjusting the way I interact to better smooth out the rough edges and avoid head-on conflicts. I've also learned that I do not have to like the person I'm working with as long as we can finish the work. I've also learned that interacting with people in a relaxed setting is a lot different than working in a group with them. I'm sure that once we aren't working together in a project, it will be much easier to be around the person.

Tomorrow is our last day in class. I can't believe 3 weeks have gone by so quickly! On our last day, we're going to be presenting our final project to the chemistry department. I wonder how it'll go.

Julie

1 comment:

Don Gosney said...

Julie,

It really sounds like some of those college fairs are real madhouses. At many of the fairs we have in the Bay Area they pretty much require you to pre-register so they can accommodate the crowds with seating, refreshments and brochures. Were you asked to pre-register for this fair?

Of course, you already know that one of the reasons that we don’t have many of those east coast schools come out our way is economics. They have to make calculated decisions based on their own history asking themselves if the number of applicants they get is worth the expense of sending a recruiter out on tour. Of course, you could easily respond that if they sent out a recruiter so people might know about them, maybe they’d have more applicants.

I’m sorry that you got saddled with someone difficult to work with. That can make your efforts very stressful. The saving grace for you is that at least your grade isn’t dependant on what your team puts together. One of our Hotelies at Cornell had a similar problem where ten minutes prior to their presentation one of her teammates refused to go along with what they had put together. Their class was graded for college credits. I have to credit her for not shedding any blood over that incident.

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