Locked Doors at ECHS

You'd never think it would take me almost ten minutes to navigate my own school, but it did.

When I went to the meeting our chaperone Mrs. Lilhanand had called last night to go over paperwork at El Cerrito High, I made the mistake of suggesting we go in the back way instead of through the front doors. “Look, the gates are open!” I said, and my dad shrugged and got out of the car. We'd arrived early in good ILC fashion. The gate to the parking lot was no issue, but then the doors to the A building (where the meeting was held) proved to be locked. So were the doors of the hallways connecting to the A building. We spent ten minutes trying every (locked) door we could find, and ended up giving in and circling around to walk through the front doors, which, thankfully, were open. I was more than a little embarrassed to find all the other students, even those from other high schools, already there enjoying pizza.

The meeting itself was pretty standard. Mrs. L went over information about our travel plans, what we would do in the days before the class started, possible weekend excursions with our RAs, got some helpful hints from parent's who's children had been involved with ILC before (Thanks Mrs. Wang!), and filled out paperwork. When my father saw the forms we were filling out and recognized some of them as forms he had had to fill out for our school district during every single year his two children had been enrolled in school, he laughed and asked me why the ILC couldn't have just gotten them from our files at the high school. I laughed and shrugged; its the way of things, filling out identical forms multiple times a year. We gave Mrs. L a copy of our IDs and a copy of our medical insurance card as she'd asked; we all promised to give her a copy of forms we had filled out for Columbia (that I still have to find!); everyone said “See you Wednesday!” and we all left.

Of the students there, I knew Masao from school, I had spoken to Will before, and Eric was my other classmate from the ILC so I had met him at the interviews. It was my first time meeting Beilul and Milani, the other two girls in the Columbia cohort; although I didn't really speak with them much during the night, they both seemed really friendly. I'm looking forward to talking to them at the dinners and functions and such that are required of the Ivy League Connection students, as well as spending time getting to know all of my classmates while we are back East.