[MSJ] : How can three weeks feel like forever?

Well, when you're surrounded by smart and motivated people, taking a class that usually contains ten weeks worth of material taught by a UChicago professor, and living in a completely new way on a famous college campus, it happens naturally.

From the day that I first stepped on the UChicago campus, I was amazed at the idea that I would be living there for three weeks. I've been on college campuses before, I live 20 minutes away from UC Berkeley, and we had done a site visit of Northwestern just a couple days prior, but the idea of staying in the residence hall and actually eating in the cafeteria was brand new. This style of dorm life was an amazing experience that I am very glad I got to try before heading off to college for real. Small things, like eating breakfast and taking showers now require some planning. Will there be room in the showers? Do I have enough soap? Did I forget my towel? Is anyone already down in the dining hall eating or should I wait for friends? Some concerns are more serious and some are decidedly less so, but I would not have thought of these things if I didn't have the opportunity to go on this trip.

While I was learning about dorm life, I was also learning every day in the classroom about econ and out of the classroom about time management. Taking a very challenging class in a new environment was, believe it or not, difficult. I found myself studying after lectures a lot more than I do for any of my classes in El Cerrito. I also didn't dread going to class in the morning the way I do sometimes while eating cereal at 7:15 back home. Being able to take a class that I wanted to learn about, coupled with interesting lessons that moved quickly so as not to be boring was amazing, and makes me excited about college in a whole new way. While I learned a lot during lectures, I also had to learn to control myself when it came to homework and readings. Because I would often work in the lounge, full of distractions and reasons to not work, I had to learn to keep myself focused and manage my time effectively to get my work done before socializing.

And finally, this trip helped me meet amazing people. All the students there were intelligent, motivated and happy to be there. They weren't there because they had to be at school, they were there because they wanted to learn more about the subject of their class. I made a lot of friends with really awesome people, and those friendships will last a while.

This trip was an amazing experience from start to finish, and I want to thank the ILC for everything.