Today had to be my favorite day so far. First we traveled to the Corcoran and listened to Chief White House Correspondent for NBC Chuck Todd. He was very interesting and I really liked the insight he gave into covering the world of Politics, and actually made it sound very interesting. He gave a lot of advice to incoming journalists to “show up” and “work hard” and things will fall into place.
After Chuck Todd finished, Dean Flagel spoke about college admissions. He is a really good public speaker and was really funny. But he shed a different light on college admissions for me. He told me things that my guidance counselor never did, like how there might not be only one college that is perfect for you and in fact there may be many. It made me more inclined to check out the lesser known schools on my list, because they might be the ones I like the best, and the success you have doesn’t come from what school you go to, it comes from the work you put into your work. He talked about college admissions from the college’s point of view, even though I know all college admissions people aren’t like him, I realized that the college admissions process shouldn’t be as stressful as we make it. I agreed totally with everything he said about the SATs, and most of it I had already thought of, like “what is the point if we aren’t going to take the SAT ever during college?” and the fact that good students don’t always score really high on the SAT, and just the over all ridiculousness of the SAT being so important. My English teacher always said that grades and SAT scores are only numbers, it’s the knowledge you gain, the work you do and the person you are that will determine the success you have in life, and I think Dean Flagel agrees with that just a bit. I have quite a few more colleges to visit, and I can’t wait to play “make the admissions officer cry” by asking really outrageous questions. Hmm, I wonder how it would affect my chances of getting in if I actually made them cry…haha.
After his speech we went to Pentagon City Fashion Mall. I bought a couple pairs of sunglasses to replace the ones I broke last week. Then we went over to the Capitol. I love taking pictures of the Capitol. I think it is a beautiful building and I love walking around it and taking pictures from all different angles. Taking a tour of the inside of the capitol is something I haven’t done before. It is a gorgeous building on the inside as well. We had a really cool tour guide who took us places that weren’t on the tour. He was really funny, too.
The speaker after dinner that I went to listen to was Tobin Beck. He was interesting, but I was pretty tired so I don’t really remember a lot of what he talked about. He did mention a few things about how we can tell what we people to know and what people just want to know.
The guys singing “Don’t Stop Believin'” on the bus to the Capitol:
The entire WJMC in front of the Capitol, Courtesy of Pat Mazur/ WJMC:
Some of the girls in my group on the stairs in front of the Capitol:
Favorite pictures I took of the Capitol:
Also, it seems a little misunderstanding happened on the bus today. I don’t know how I was made out to be the bad guy in the whole situation. I just want to say that I’m not mad, nor I was I mad at the time, I was just trying to explain my side of what happened as I will now. I was sitting in the back of the bus with the Smith Family (proof: video above) on the way to the Corcoran. When I got on the bus after the speeches, there was someone in my seat, so I moved up to the front to an open seat (I didn’t remember which seat because I had no intention of staying there the whole day) and I had no problem with moving.
After we had lunch at Pentagon City, we got back on the bus, and once again these people were in my seat. I moved forward to another seat, but apparently that was someone else’s seat. When someone on the faculty asked where I was sitting originally, I said in the back of the bus and I was told to move back to my original seat. When I went to the back of the bus to sit in my ORIGINAL seat, the people in my seat were like “no you weren’t sitting here, blah blah” and I said I know that, I had to move because you took my seat. Then apparently I became the bad guy demanding my seat back, and they became all defensive telling me that it didn’t matter and that I should just go sit up front again, which I had no problem with, I was doing what I was told in going back to my original seat. I, again, moved up to an empty seat in the front of the bus. I didn’t mind, nor do I mind now, I thought I would just share how everything went down from my point of view.
Edit (additional info 7/22): You might say that I cared enough about it to post it here on my blog, but I honestly didn’t then and don’t care now. One of the people who took my seat was in the room we had to share a bathroom with, and she didn’t talk to me directly for the rest of the week. I don’t mean to be bitchy, I just don’t want to be walked over, so I stood up and said that I wanted my seat back.
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