An Evening of Information

Last night was the orientation for all of the ILC participants. It was at Pinole Middle School, which is usually a 10-15 minute drive from my house, but it turns out that during rush hour on weekdays the drive looks more like half an hour. Because of this, I would have been late if I hadn’t double-checked the directions on my phone before I was planning to leave. As it turns out, I got there in time, but I was kind of stressed from the unexpected length of the drive.

Madeline Kronenberg was the person who started off the orientation.  She spoke to us about the opportunity that we’ve all earned in our respective ILC programs, and how we should treat the whole experience as an adventure. She then told us how blogging well could be helpful in our application process; apparently, our Blogger profiles are supposed to be among the first results when we look up our names, which makes it really easy for admissions officers to read our blogs and develop impressions of us based on them. My dad told me to Google my name as she was saying this, and sadly, my Blogger profile was near the end of the second page of results, apparently less relevant than a pumpkin patch I participated in when I was 11. Overall, her talk was really enthusiastic and motivating, which was good for raising my morale before facing the hour or so of information I was about to go through.

After Mrs. Kronenberg concluded her speech, Don stepped to the front of the room and started speaking. He congratulated us for making it to past the selection process and stressed the importance of responding to emails and communicating with our parents. He then talked about how we were likely to experience interactions with kids from more affluent backgrounds and the importance of representing ourselves and the district well. After this short introduction, the chaperones introduced themselves, then we split up into our cohorts and went to different parts of the room to be addressed by our respective chaperones.

The chaperones introducing themselves.

The UChicago group gathered around Ms. Sciacca at one of the tables in the front row. We were supposed to go over the attractions that we definitely wanted to visit as a group, but we had already discussed what we wanted to do on Saturday over pizza and Ryan, who was supposed to give us insight on the city and his experience living in it as an ILCer, was waiting outside of the gym because of a miscommunication, so we didn’t spend much time on that. Instead, Ms. Sciacca took us through the rough draft of the itinerary and answered some questions we had about that. After that, we signed some forms and then kind of sat around. Eventually, we started asking Jahnvi questions about her experience at Vanderbilt last year, because she was the closest thing we had to a UChicago ILC alum. After around half an hour, Ryan finally came to answer our questions. He gave us some suggestions on where to go, such as the Shedd Aquarium, which I hadn’t previously known about, and broke down how he balanced his coursework, blogging, and free time. Based on what he said, it sounds like it’s not that hard to find others to go places with, which is a good thing because I like hanging out with a variety of people.

Filling out forms during the cohort info session.

After the cohort information session, we reconvened as a group, where Don started telling us about the various types of loaner items that were available and what they were used for. A lot of the stuff had already been covered in the tutorial we had way back in April, so I was kind of half-listening until he held up the toiletry bag and started talking about it. Even though it was hot pink and technically for the girls, it had all sorts of empty bottles and containers inside that looked really useful for travelling, and I was instantly enamored. After he wrapped up his presentation, I went over to go look at the bag and wondered if he would let me borrow it. Unfortunately, my wishes were shot down almost immediately; Don caught me eyeing the female bag and told me to choose one from the boy pile. I relented, and chose a handsome brown bag that seems functional enough, but still doesn’t have all of the travel-sized bottles and liquid containers.

I went home after taking the toiletry bag. This meeting was my dad’s first time experiencing Don speak for an extended period of time, and he was amazed by Don’s ability to back up almost every one of his points with some sort of anecdote. We didn’t have much free time during the orientation, and almost everyone left pretty quickly, so I didn’t get to talk to that many people. We did, however, go over the prospective attractions again, and seeing them all written out on paper showed me just how many things there are to do this summer in Chicago. From this orientation, I got a toiletry bag and was also reminded of some of the activities we’ll be doing in our free time this summer, so I’d say it was a decent experience overall.