“Whatever the human mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve”
The day started with a lecture from Sam Dube, the last lecture from this eccentric but highly intelligent man. As cheesy as it might sound, all the Shads were anticipating his lecture. However, today we were not treated to any of his intriguing questions of parallel universe or time traveling; we were taught instead, the 21 steps to goal achieving. The quote above was one of the many inspirational quotes thrown in the lecture. At the end of the lecture, the Shads felt a sense of direction and collective enlightenment.
But we were not able to dwell on the lecture for long, for the schedule at Shad did not allow for any free time. We quickly shifted to our next activities. Lunch, for me, was eating quickly, and spending the rest of lunch looking for my choir members for the variety show.
The House Game after lunch, it was revealed, was Amazing Race! The 60 Shads at Carleton were split into groups of 5, and were given riddles containing the location of the stations. Prizes, the main motivation in any competition, of course were promised to the winning team. My team developed a quasi-strategy that worked quite well. We were able to decipher all the location, not all by ourselves. We utilized the Carleton students and staff, we had to sing and dance to “Single Ladies” before the staff at the information desk would tell us the answer. It was a fun detour that we all laughed about for the rest of the race.
We finished the rest of the race with speed, confident that we would grab the big prize. But like every classic movie, the drama happened just as we were about to finish the race. We followed our second last clue, and arrived outside Mackenzie Building. We were sure this was the location, but there were no one in sight. No welcoming grey staff t-shirts, no crowds of other teams crowding to complete their tasks, there was absolutely no one.
The sense of anxiety and stress steadily rises as we looked everywhere in Mackenzie Building. As sweat starts to pour down from the heat of the afternoon sun, we decided to head back to MPR, the last station. Imagine our disappointment, learning that the program assistant left the station early. Although we could have finished first, we still finished fifth. And like another quote from the lecture, “in every adversity there lies a seed of equivalent or greater benefit.” Although we did not win the competition, my team were able to develop a stronger bond with each other (yes, even at this stage of Shad, we can always be closer), and we were able to learn from this experience. Tomorrow is the dreaded DE project presentation. Everyone is scrambling for computers; I wonder how many dreary faces I will see tomorrow morning.
Grace Gao, Shad Valley Carleton University 2010
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
