Summer 2014 Orientation

This evening, all of the students accepted into the Ivy League Connection and our parents attended an orientation at Pinole Middle School. In the upcoming days before this event, it was stressed to us that we had to arrive on time and tardiness wouldn't be tolerated. Before I get into what was discussed at this orientation, I feel like I need to vent about what I went through to be there on time. I had agreed with my mother the night before that I would come pick her up from work and we would go to the middle school together. She works in Oakland and I didn't realize how bad traffic was until I noticed that it took me about 40 minutes to go pick her up. To make me more anxious about being late, she wanted to say goodbye to every last person in her building and that took another 10 minutes. Finally we were en route to attend the meeting and by this time, it was 5:10 PM. It took everything I had to not break any laws but we were lucky enough to get there on time with a couple of minutes to spare.

Now that I got that off my chest, we can move on to the important thing, the orientation. We were welcomed into the multipurpose room by Tour Guide Don and we took our seats on the picnic style tables. Tour Guide Don wasted no time and he jumped right into his presentation, wanting to keep things moving. He explained to our parents what was expected of us from the program and what change they could potentially see from us. Tour Guide Don also suggested to us what we should pack and what not to pack. The other schools get to refer to the blog posts from past students who have been to those schools about what they should bring. Since this is the first time anybody from the Ivy League Connection is going to the University of Chicago, we get to be the first to share our experiences from there.

We broke off to smaller groups after about the first 45 minutes. Here, our chaperon went over our itinerary with our parents. Since we aren't leaving for another month, everything on our schedule is subject to change. This itinerary gives us an idea of how packed and busy we will be going all over the Midwest and the East Coast. If it's even possible, all this talking made me even more excited to go. Once this smaller group session was over, we went back into the multipurpose room and last minute questions were answered. After this was over, we were dismissed and everyone was allowed to go home. I am happy to say that on this ride home, I didn't have to try so hard to not break any laws.