The Savvy Seven

Today was the first time the whole cohort met each other and the chaperone. Lisa, Monica, Emily, Justin and I already met during the con law interview. Instead of going to a restaurant, we all met at Ms. Thrift's house. Her house was very unique and cozy, which made our bonding experience even better. At first, we sat in the living room and talked about miscellaneous topics. Ms. Thrift's husband joined us and added a lot to our discussions too. After everybody arrived, we moved to the dining table which was perfectly set up for eight people. 

Brunch!

Monica and Emily

While we ate lunch, we continued our conversations. We discussed different books and talked about what we looked forward to doing. Ms. Thrift brought up Freakonomics, a book about hidden aspects of economics. It sounds really interesting, so I made it my goal to read it sometime. We even talked about conspiracies, debate, and being away from home. Everybody contributed to the conversation and I felt like there were waves of intelligence radiating throughout the table. Everyone in the cohort is very well-read and opinionated. I'm not too familiar with the other cohorts, but if the ILC had some sort of team debate, I'm pretty sure we would win. By the end of our meal, we all knew a little more about each other and the fact that we'll be on the East Coast soon really sank in. We even learned that we'll possibly visit Harvard and Yale before going to Columbia!

Lisa, myself, Justin, Ms.Thrift, Monica, Emily, and Kendal in Ms. Thrift's backyard

We took a few more pictures before people started to slowly depart. Lisa, Monica, and I were still waiting for our parents so we waited in the living room. Monica and I will be speaking at the dinner in two weeks so we tried to coordinate our speeches to be different from each other. Ms. Thrift also spoke to us about being a teacher and how it can be difficult to stop students from walking over them. She seems really passionate about being a teacher and I'm glad that she's our chaperone! Overall, I'm just really excited for our upcoming trip and thankful for having such a cool and savvy cohort.