Project, project, project. Thats all its really been for the past while, and I guess in the end everyone agrees: «ça vaut la peine». After pulling an "all nighter" (during which most people left, and everyone eventually slept) to finish up the project, everyone was up early to get those final details in their presentations. Almost everyone was running on empty. I've never seen so many people stumbling around so quickly at that time of morning, but I guess thats what Shad is all about. After 4 hours of «finalisation» and a quick lunch, it was project time.
The presentations were great, amazing even. Considering that we had tried to solve major problems of aging in about 10 days, the ideas ranged from water filters to bed ramps to exotic retirement villages. Every group was drilled with questions that they had never expected, which wasn't a huge surprise to me. My group, just like every other practice presentation, didn't finish within the 15 minute time constraint so we ended up getting cut off without conclusion (again).
With presentations over (and Nic, our co-ordinator, telling us that we had all been set up for failure from the start of the project), there was mass cheering and hugging. Kind of like graduation or like finishing that last exam of high school. Everyone went back to residence, and I decided to bring out my soccer ball and soon I was up at the soccer field at PEPS (the campus sports complex) with 3 other guys. We all had to run back in order to get changed for the banquet.
The banquet quickly became a festival of random acts with food/drinks. As it turns out, coke and apple juice aren't that great together. The centrepiece of the table turned out have epsom salts in it (sadly, they wouldn't dissolve easily) and soon the small electric candle was buried amongst the salt to make a creepy glowing centrepiece. It also turns out that you can drink the small cream / milk cups that come with coffee if you put them in your mouth whole and bite down on them.
After the banquet was a dance party, of course. The 4th I believe, I wish we had more. At first, there were tables with everyone's picture on one page and each person wrote a memory / impression of that person (inside jokes all over the place). Dancing began slowly, but picked up with time. Like the last party, it didn't last nearly long enough. Back to reidence to "sleep" at about 11:30, although as it turned out everyone was tired for some reason (it's hard to believe, I thought everyone would sleep really well in the computer lab). With the nightfall, everyone rested their heads thinking of the last 3.5 weeks, and thinking of the next 3 days.
Ryan MacDonell, Shad Valley Université Laval 2010
Hometown: Belnan, Nova Scotia
