A Successful Tutorial, Despite Setbacks

I got to De Anza High School, where the tutorial was held, at around 7:45 AM. Don, Evan, Cameron, and Madison were setting up the ILC sign with Don’s fake college insignias on the front gate.  Everyone else started arriving soon after, and the majority of the group had arrived by 8:00 AM, at which point Don led us to the computer lab to begin the tutorial.

The exterior of De Anza High School

The tutorial seemed to be well-planned and would probably have progressed really smoothly if the technology in the room had worked. First, a lot of people had trouble actually logging on to the computers, so there was a lot of movement as people tried to find functioning machines. My computer, thankfully, was serviceable from the start and for the rest of the day, so I was in the same seat for the whole tutorial. Because of the technical issues, we only really began the tutorial close to 9:00. While we were waiting, Cameron (who was sitting next to me) and I looked ahead at the tutorial packet. Honestly, even though Don had sent us an email mentioning the heftiness of the packet, I was surprised by the depth and detail of it. It was 52 pages of information covering everything we needed to know about our trip from blogging protocol to what we needed to pack to security.

The first thing we learned about was the blogging process. Don explained to us the importance of formatting, and analyzed both good and bad examples of how our posts should look. After his explanation, we wrote our own quick little posts just to make sure we understood everything he said. I wrote about the snacks he brought, which were Red Vines, chips, and cookies, because I was kind of hungry and food was all I could think about. The blog post, which was essentially a throwaway, actually helped me to realize what exactly makes Twizzlers more appealing to me than Red Vines (Twizzlers are more plasticy, which makes them more entertaining to eat).

After we learned about blogging, Don taught us a little about photography, post-processing, and the importance of having a camera besides the one on our phones. We then went outside to take some photos. All of the other cohorts took photos in front of the ILC banner with their group, but we decided not to because Jahnvi wasn’t there. I took one of the school and a couple of Noor.

Noor casually kneeling on a street curb

We went back inside after our little photoshoot, and Don taught us how to upload to Mediafire, which is the storage platform that we will use to share our photos with him and the rest of the cohort this summer. My photos were NEF images, so it took a while for them to upload. Even so, I still managed to get them up. Not everyone had the same luck. A lot of people had to move again at this stage because of the finicky school connection. After everyone finished uploading their images to the shared Mediafire folder, we inserted photos into the blog post Don had us do  earlier to make sure that we could all properly format a blog post with images.

After the Mediafire situation was figured out and Don was happy with everyone’s posts, we had another break. After the break, Don started telling us about what kind of items we could/should loan for our trip and the purpose of each of these items. My personal favorites were the Gorillapod and the security cable. The Gorillapod is basically this mini tripod that has flexible legs, so you can wrap it around objects like poles or trees or just use it normally to take clear photos at slower shutter speeds. It seems like a cool extra to have just in case you might need a tripod but don’t feel like carrying around 3 feet of metal and plastic. I had never actually heard of a laptop security cable before the tutorial, and it looked really useful. The cable itself has a “lock” end with a small rod and a combination lock and a noose end to help anchor the cable. The way it works is that the cable is tied around a chair or table leg, and the rod is inserted into a small port on the side of a laptop. If the rod is forcefully removed from the laptop, it pretty much ruins the whole computer, so it’s fairly effective at deterring theft.

The tutorial was concluded at around 1:00 PM with a demonstration by Don on how to use a laptop security cable. Before I left, I took down the banner out front with Zunarah and Cecilia. I thought it was an interesting coincidence that the first ILC-related thing I witnessed was the raising of the banner, and the last was the tearing down of it.

All in all, the tutorial wasn’t a bad experience, although it definitely would have been more pleasant if all of the technology was functioning from the beginning. I learned a lot about writing and formatting blog posts and about the different loaner items available to us, and I also got closer to some of my fellow ILCers.