NYC JAYwalk round 2

There is a method to our madness. Since the first NYC meetup was such a success, last Saturday, 20 or so JHU 2015 students convened around the clock tower in Grand Central Station, NYC, for a second NYC meetup.

As with the first time, we...
1) got lunch at Chipotle, taking over the place and blocking up doorways in that sweet and usual way of ours
2) ate in Bryant Park, putting the tables and chairs into the form of a J
3) walked all the way down from 42nd street to 14th or so to Union Square
4) got toasted marshmallow milkshakes at Stand4 ♥      so, so, so good. Strangely enough, just as we walked in, we saw the JHU Lacrosse team playing on the TV. Coincidence?

After we got fat on a round of milkshakes and fries, we wandered over to Union Square to see the events of the End of the World/Judgement Day 2011. It was... interesting.

• there was a giant wooden cross on which people could "crucify" themselves
• there was a chorus of Amish (?) people singing. one girl in our group was tempted to ask if she could sing with them :D
• quite some people preaching and yelling
• the same group led by the man who yelled out "I am Jesus Christ" last time at the other church group

We hung around for a while, waiting for 6pm, when the world was going to end and judgement come down from the heavens. Around 5:45, the skies got kind of dark, like it was going to thunderstorm. 10 minutes later, a flock of pigeons left the square.

6:00 we began counting down with part of the crowd in Union Square. Let me just say, it was possibly the most anti-climactic countdown ever. 6:01, we cheered and clapped because.... nothing had happened. 6pm had come and passed, and we were still perfectly fine.

So four people in our group fell over onto the ground -- we titled it "Hopkins Goes to Heaven."

Having survived the end of the world, what fun things could we possibly do next?

We went to St. Mark's... had frozen yogurt, hid from the rain, went to Five Points for dinner (potato pizza!). It was quite good, although many of us weren't even that hungry, having consumed the 1000+ calories of the milkshake.

We wandered out to Washington Square Park, where there were some really nice chalk drawings and some really drunk people. It's a big city, bound to happen, although I'll admit I was pretty freaked out by it.

I love these meetup things that we do. Ours, however, seems to be the only one that's been working so far -- some students on the JHU facebook page, perhaps after hearing our first success, decided to organize some where they lived. I've been invited to ones in DC/Baltimore, Miami, and North Carolina. ... To my knowledge, ours has been by far the most successful and the most fun. Although we began by following the same schedule of events as the first trip, we turned this meetup into something unique of its own accord.

Now... Round 3 anyone?

NATIONALS!!!! pt. 2

March came, and, as our teacher often likes to say, "it was nose to the grindstone time." Except... many of us didn't particularly seem to get it:

• We were slow in turning in our speeches. They were sloppy, forced through the languorous haze of senioritis. Half the units failed to meet the Spring Break deadline for final versions (my unit, however, got them done, partially because 2/4 of us were going to be away in Spain). One unit got their speeches in the day we got back from break, 4 days before we left for Nationals. Another was still arguing about a point in their speech 2 days before we left.
• We lacked specifics. While we were experts at BS, we could not give our follow-up answers substantial support.

But we're a smart class, and our work at nationals is a testament to our ability to work hard and achieve high results.

• Our speeches, as a team, were all commented upon by the judges as brilliant, impressive, well-prepared.
• My unit (Unit 1) had Magna Carta memorized (literally), could spew straight-up facts about the American Revolution, any of the current Middle East revolutions, and allude effortlessly to specific amendments of the Constitution. According to our teacher, one of our judges (and the writer of our textbook), Sue Leeson, loved us.
• Unit 2 had a student mention Osama Bin-Laden's death during a follow-up question, the morning right after President Obama addressed the Nation, when the news itself was hardly hours old.
• Unit 3 powered through a day's worth of competition with one member wrestling with a lost voice that rendered him unable to say the words "aspiration" and "suffrage" (both of which came up frequently).
• Unit 4 must be commended for their amazing ability to maintain composure even under the most difficult of judges -- an attorney who was able to bring up specific little details even our teacher hadn't anticipated, and an 80+ year old woman who helped found the competition and contributed to our textbook.
• Unit 5 were using specific case law as follow-up examples (i.e. Morgan v. Illinois) and throwing out direct quote after quote.
• Unit 6 had the sweetest, most touching answers, and did so well with their Sunday judge that she showed up on Monday morning to watch them again.

Sunday night, we all dressed up to the dance at the Pentagon City Mall to hear the announcement of the Top Ten. It was stressing. The units clustered into respective circles and held onto each other, waiting for New Jersey to be called. Each state that wasn't us only reduced our chances of making Top Ten. Given the fact that we were one of the most slackerish, most yelled at, most last minute classes, there was a true worry in everyone's mind that we wouldn't make it.

But we did.

I almost snapped a stiletto heel jumping up and down from excitement. We danced our way out of that mall, holding the New Jersey sign high, screaming and yelling. We had our own rave for a brief five minutes and celebrated. And then we promptly began to practice for Monday's final round.

Monday night, we dressed in our  best to the banquet/awards ceremony. Dinner wasn't particularly worth commenting on, but the awards section.... I thought announcing Top Ten was stressful. Monday night was worse.

The winners were announced backwards, from 10th place to 1st place. My unit -- Jess, Mike, Sue, and I -- sat together and held hands tightly, wishing each time that we wouldn't hear New Jersey until the very end. Sometime between 6th and 4th, Mike nearly passed out. Jess's hands were sweaty in mine. I saw Sue shaking, told her, and she promptly said "Jess, you're shaking so it's making me shake."

When 4th place was called, and it wasn't New Jersey, I literally screamed. Mike began yelling "We medaled!"

And so we, East Brunswick High School, New Jersey, won 3rd place out of 52 schools at the We the People Nationals Competition. All twenty-seven of us, including Mr. Brodman, marched up on stage and smiled for a thousand camera flashes. We got medals, which were only for the top 3. And I carried the plaque off the stage -- it was the most beautiful thing I had ever held.

NATIONALS!!!! pt.1

We the People: the Citizen and the Constitution. According to Wikipedia, it is "a yearly competition for American high school students... styled as a congressional hearing. Each team is divided up into six units... Each unit focuses on a particular area of Constitutional interest - from the philosophical underpinnings and Constitutional Convention to modern day implications. ... Each unit prepares three four-minute speeches in response to formal prompts ... and a panel of three judges will have a six minute questioning period to ask follow-up questions."
At the end of the 2011 Competition, the New Jersey Team placed third in the nation. The team? East Brunswick High School.

In November, the class was divided up into its units. I, along with 3 others, was in Unit 1, the "philosophical underpinnings" of our government. Bascially we buried ourselves in natural rights philosophy, read John Locke religiously, literally memorized Magna Carta, and covered every second of Western history from the Middle Ages to Obama's administration. In the beginning, it was really hard. Our speeches were long and redundant. We flatly missed the point of the question on one of our first versions. We got into hour-long screaming matches over the difference between a claimed right v. owned right.
As a class, we were yelled at often. We couldn't keep our mouth shut. Our teacher was ready to hit us at times. We slacked.

But in January, we made top three at Regionals and advanced to States!! (a word which until then had been referred to as the S-word).
Then came more work, until February 4th, when we went down to Trenton for the States Competition, and for the 23rd time, we, East Brunswick, came out as State Champions and advanced to NATIONALS (formerly known as the N-word).