Amazing Women

Today was the first day of our Amazing Women monologue presentations. Many amazing women were “present” in our class, including Harriet Tubman, Mother Theresa, and many others. My amazing woman, Alice Waters, was the last to be presented. I chose Alice Waters because she represents the cause of my action plan, she is a successful woman, and lastly, she is from the Bay Area and is a celebrity there. The best part about this project was actually having to research about her. The internet sources didn’t provide enough, so I had to go to the library, which I discovered is an excellent resource and study area. I also found some amazing books, and now I’m just upset that I can’t bring them home to California with me.
Unfortunately, the presentation itself didn’t go over that well. This was partly because I was going at the end of the day, and partly because there was nothing very exciting or shocking about my woman’s story. Most of it was my fault, though. I realized that presenting was much harder than I thought, and that I needed to be much more prepared in the future if I wanted to make an effective and memorable presentation.
After the presentation, a board of Brown students (all women) came into our class. Samantha was an undergraduate student studying international relations with a focus on health care in developing countries, writes for the African Sun, and is the president of the Cape Verdean Student Association. Felicia was in graduate school after studying at San Jose State and had her PHD in American studies and was focusing in Latina Pop Fiction, or “Chicklet Books”. Briana, an undergraduate student, was a sociology major with a focus on gender and sexuality, and was also an RA at Summer@Brown. Finally Jasmine was in her 4th year of medical school, had studied both biochemistry and ethnomusicology, and was interested in sports medicine. They told us about challenges they faced adjusting to college and gave us advice and their insight on being leaders.
For dinner, Mrs. Williams took the ILC girls out for Mariko’s 16th birthday dinner at a Japanese/Chinese fusion restaurant on Thayer Street. It was great to see Mrs. Williams again and even better to have such great food after two weeks of eating at “the Ratty”. At the end, we all passed around papers with our names, and everybody wrote something that they liked about the person. This was a great end-of-trip bonding activity, and I am so thankful to have such a sweet group of girls to share this trip with.
To finish off the night, we had a surprise birthday party for Mariko in one of our classmate’s dorm room. It consisted of a cake with no candle, half-melted ice cream, and a bunch of excited girls trying to hide behind dorm furniture. It was really nice to see all of us come together like the family we are, in order to celebrate the birthday of our very special sister, Mariko Whitenack.