Crashing With Some Engineers Pt. 2

The next morning Evan, my two other Juntos Podemos buddies (that's what this weekend trip was called) and I woke up at 7 AM which was waaay to early but I woke up really quickly. We went to an on campus classroom where we had bagels while listening to a presentation of a UVA alumni. After that we went to the admissions building and this admissions officer started talking about the procedure in general and we got to ask questions about what we should do to get an edge in the admissions process. Then the fun part came and we went on a campus tour!

The Lawn

I'm at the far left, third row in white

The first part that we visited was "the Lawn" which is just a big grass quadrangle in the oldest part of the University (UVA was founded in 1819 btw!). On the sides are student rooms for fourth year students and the tour guide said that it was very competitive to get one of those rooms and only students who have really given back to the UVA community get them. We also took a group picture at the Rotunda and went to see the amphitheater that had hosted a concert the night before (I met the band players at the house party the night before. They were from Manhattan).We also saw the Whipering Wall which is a perfect half circle and when you whisper at one side of it you can hear the whisper loud and clear at the other side!

 

In one of the Chemical Engineering Laboratories.

 After that we went to eat at one of the Dining Halls. It was still pretty early (like 11 AM which is "early" for a college student) so there was mostly breakfast items. The food was okay, but we apparently ate at the worst Dining Hall. After that we went to the bookstore where I made sure to purchase some UVA gear (I bought a t-shirt and some pin buttons). Once I finished shopping we toured all the engineering buildings. Now I'm going to be honest here, I wasn't really that interested in engineering, but after talking to some of the Chemical Engineering teachers my interest spiked a little. This graduate student in the Computer Systems building also had this really cool original research project where he created a database of 10 million textures that video game companies can use to create the landscapes in a video game.

Once that was over (it was around 2:30 PM now) we went back to the classroom we were in that morning and the some of the mentors sat in a line and we had an "academic panel", where we got to ask them about campus life and being a college student in general. Then once that was over we had a competition! We had to build rockets in groups of 4 with the materials they gave us and we could alter them in any way we wanted. After a very frustrating 45 minutes my group finished (It was me, my friend Eva, a girl we met named Ana and some guy who's name I quite frankly can't remember) and we went to go launch them.

I must be destined to become an engineer because we got second place somehow! We got a UVA tote bag, a portable coffee mug, a stuffed football that opens up and has a little bear with a "Virginia #1" jersey, and a UVA Engineering baseball cap as a prize. We ate pizza for dinner and then it was time to say goodbye =[. I had a really fun time and learned so much about the University. I was a little reluctant to apply to UVA before but now I'm sure that this is somewhere I would want to go. Something just clicked and I could see myself on the Lawn throwing a Frisbee or studying like these people here:

Students playing volleyball.

Overall I'm very glad I went and I plan on doing the program again next year (there's also a summer program for a week that I think I'll apply to) because I really enjoyed myself. Well this post is long enough so I'll end it by saying that thankfully we got home a little faster =]

UYL
Andre