Emergency in my Education: the Final from Hell

It's been awhile, and I'll tell you why: FINALS.

They're not quite over yet, but the worst one is, and some excellent celebrating has followed. But first, the Final from Hell!

My course for Education in Emergencies was only 7 weeks long, and the entire course was focused on the completion of a huge project. We had to create a project in response to a RFA from USAID for community-based education in Afghanistan. The whole class was divided into 7 teams, and I was extremely lucky to be put into a group with Annie Smiley, Stephanie Bengsston, and Jennifer Kim. Annie is perhaps the nicest woman alive and a very bright PhD student at TC. Stephanie is also working towards her PhD, and has the varied background of being Swedish, growing up in Zimbabwe, and getting her BA at Harvard and MA at Cambridge. Jennifer was in my conflict resolution course back at the beginning of the semester and wears some seriously killer heels. So I was a bit intimidated, specifically by the PhDers at first. But we all really enjoyed each other and had an excellent team called Come Unity (I designed the logo!).

So the actual writing of our project took forever. At least a week filled with 10:30 am to 11 pm library meetings. We pulled it all together the last night, and I had thought we were pretty shabby, but I found out that other groups had actually been up working on the project until 3 am, and one group even until 8 am before having to turn it in at 9:30 am. We ended up being very proud of our 60 page project called the CURE (Come Unity Radio Education). Yet, as stressful and time consuming as the written project was, it was nothing compared to the presentations.

The presentations went from 9:30 am to 6:30 pm, with an hour break for lunch. That alone would be rough, but we were presenting in front of our classmates as well as a panel of our professor, and two professionals in the field. And they were brutal. They would beat a question into the presenters until it was just uncomfortable to watch. Come Unity was the third group to go, and we actually did incredibly well. The questions didn't phase us, we were hardly interrupted, and when we sat down our classmates really cheered for us. It was the class vs. the panel! It might be important to remind you all here that most of us hadn't gotten much sleep that entire week, and certainly no sleep the night before, so tolerance was low. Towards the end, one female presenter left the stage bawling.
After class we hightailed it over to The Heights for drinks! I bought a round for Come Unity and then some appetizers and we all sat around and just really enjoyed each other. It's so crazy that I had never gone out with TC people before. Next semester, I'm starting out on the first day of classes inviting people to the bars, not the last. It was a really great night and a well deserved break from the most stressful single class I've ever had.