Shad Valley has so far been an amazing experience! Here at Carleton Ottawa, we've all been involved in so many cool activities and met with so many great people. I can't believe that almost two full weeks have passed!
So today, Friday July 9th, was a bit of a different day. This is because of our intense discussion last night that lasted till almost 3:00a.m.! After our discussion circle, most of us stayed up till 6:00am, just sharing stories and bonding to form a better community. As a result, the PAs allowed us to sleep in till 11:30am! I'm pretty sure that all of us took advantage of this opportunity to catch up on sleep. We then had "brunch" before officially beginning our day. (By the way, the food here at Carleton is absolutely incredible!)
At 12:30pm, we were supposed to do rec at River Field outside, but it was pouring rain (and Ottawa just got through the heat wave). Big change of plans - we did yoga indoors in the architecture pit. That was lots of fun, and after an hour, we were all feeling comfortable and relaxed. Personally, I think that yoga is the perfect activity for zoning out and just calming down. We then went through our Shadspeaks, and I've always enjoyed them because everyone here has picked the great topics that keeps all of us interested and wanting to learn more. This was followed by an interactive lecture about social networking from a business perspective, and we all learned that a good online profile may be the key to attaining the perfect job. At 5:30pm, it was dinnertime (amazing food once again), which was followed by a unique event designed to help us with the DE project. I don't know what projects other Shad campuses are doing, but our DE project is a simple challenge (oxymoron =D): to design a product for the aging population. We've already brainstormed and decided on three prototypes to choose from, and tonight, we had the DE Project Fair. The PAs invited a beginners band comprised of senior citizens to Carleton for us to chat with and interview in order to approach the DE project from the senior citizen's point of view. We talked with each member of the band and they shared so many amazing stories and really made us realize that there is no "typical" senior citizen. I was so inspired by the people I interviewed, as they were such active and involved individuals that I aspire to be. They gave us incredible ideas that made us realize that we all had to modify our original ideas to accommodate such a lively population. We then had a fun late night (Dance night, I think), and we all went to bed.
Shad Valley has been an incredible experience so far, and even though it's barely been 2 weeks, I feel like I've known my peers forever. I can't believe it'll be over in just 2 more short weeks.
Vivian Liu, Shad Valley Carleton University
Hometown: Mississauga, Ontario
