July 22, 2008

Today’s the day! Today was the day of our project presentations. Everyone was extremely tired at breakfast, having stayed up until 2 am the night before. People could be seen reciting their speeches to themselves or madly trying to finish their PowerPoint presentations.

Although today was no regular day, it started off with two lectures as usual. However, they were not regular lectures. They were our last lectures at Shad MUN. These lectures on Science and Ethics, and Performance and Goal Setting did not fail to provoke debate and expand our knowledge.

After lunch we had three hours to practice our project presentations, or in some cases make last minute additions to their prototype! Each team was given a time slot when they could run their presentation in the room we would be presenting in, and be given feedback from the Shad staff.

Next, we had physical activity, which was a yoga class. Although I wished we had more time to prepare, I was extremely grateful for the time to relax and de-stress. My favorite position was the “corpse pose”, where we lay on our backs and closed our eyes. Five people fell asleep and needed to be woken up at the end!

After dinner it was time for the presentations. Each group had 20 minutes to present followed by a 10 minute question period by a panel of accomplished judges.

While watching everyone’s presentations I was so impressed with all the work we had done. Everyone’s passion for his or her project really came through. I could not believe that we came together as a group of strangers and had become co-workers, business associates, and best friends in just four weeks. As with every competition there had to be a winner ... congratulations YELLOW house!!

After the presentations everyone was literally jumping up and down. I have never been in so many group hugs. Everyone was so proud of what they had produced as a team. We had grown so close in the hours, days, and weeks we had spent working together. SHAD MUN 2008 will be memorable for what we learned and for the lifelong friendships that will continue beyond the final day.

Lauren Cuthbertson
Shad Valley Memorial University
Hometown: Lions Bay, British Columbia