International Honors Institute - Day Three

Today was especially exciting for me because it was my day to preside over the general sessions. Obviously, I woke up nervous, got ready a little bit quicker to get to where I needed to be a little bit earlier. As a group, the International Officers arrived at the Tsai Performance Center about an hour before the second general session. We got to meet our presenter, Sara Paretsky, and received a sign copy of her book as a gift. For those who attended, I'm sure you could tell that she was great through her presentation but, for those who were unable to attend, I just have to say that she was an incredibly intelligent woman and it was great being able to meet with her and talk with her for a brief period.



Anyway, I got to introduce this woman and she spoke on the topic of "writing in an age of silence." One of my favorite things that she said was that "everybody was writing but nobody was reading" - it was a powerful statement, to me, because her saying that certainly demonstrates the need for us to be better informed regardless of what it is we decide to do. This led to a great discussion within my seminar group (seminar 11) a fantastic group with such incredible Phi Theta Kappans as Scintillating Steve, Tenacious Tim, Magnificent Mike, Jumpy Jenny, Jealous Jerry, Amazing Aminata, Just Jeremy, Humerous Harmony, Tantalizing Tobi, Fantastical Falon, Awesome Amanda, Marvelous Mike, Rebellious Roberta, Lovely Leslie, Exuberant Ezra, Magnetic Mike, Loveable Linsey, and Audable April. We started with our introductions and the creation of our rules. We spent a lot of time talking about the news and whether it is possible to have a non-arbitrary news source - or even if we should. We also discussed how fiction helps us to discover the truth.

When I attempted to go to lunch, I realized that I had lost my keys (actually I ended up locking them in my room but I thought they were lost!) so I had to run to the dorms first and talk to security about getting into my room. It was definitely stressful, but it all worked out. I hope that nobody else has experienced this because it is not fun.



After lunch, the IO's had to deliver their speeches to the Honors Program Committee who gave us feedback on everything regarding the speech - content, delivery, other suggestions, really anything. This went right up until 5:30 so we were late getting to dinner but it was a a good experience - although it is not fun to sit in a chair in front of a room of people critiquing you, even though they were very nice and only there to help us out.



I got to introduce the third general session as well - Thomas Perls who was there to talk about Living to 100. He was a good speaker, very entertaining. There seminar meeting afterwards was another very informative. Something that Steve Shroeder does that I think is fantastic is that he assigns people to lead the discussion (people who want to anyway) and they facilitate the discussion that night. Somebody brought up something in the discussion that I definitely want to talk in a later blog entry. I fear that some people are confused about designing an Honors in Action project so I am going to address that a lot at a later date.

For now, however, I am going to go ahead and sign off.

Love,
Danielle