I had the honor of being one of the five NC State delegates to attend the 2023 Atlantic Coast Conference Leadership Symposium from February 17th through February 19th. This conference was hosted by the University of Pittsburgh and delegates from universities across the mid-Atlantic and neighboring regions came together to divulge ourselves in this year’s theme of “Forging a Future For All”. I will be giving a recap of how my first day went at the conference!
Day One (sorta..)
Guess who was up, bright and early, at 4 am? Me. Being the very unprepared person that I am, I had to pack my carry-on that morning. Once I was done, I left my house and drove to the pickup spot where our advisor would be to grab us. He came and we were all set to head to the airport. Checking into the airport wasn’t so bad, thank goodness, as the line was pretty short. We were in and out very quickly, then headed to our gate after I made a short pitstop at Popeye’s.
The first flight was short and sweet, I literally slept the entire time. The only thing about it was that the turbulence near the end of the flight woke me up and that kinda freaked me out a little bit, but all was well when we landed. We had a relatively short layover, boarded our connecting flight, and landed in the great city of Pittsburgh right around 1pm! We took a mini coach bus to the wonderful hotel we would be staying at and got ourselves checked in. In the lobby of the hotel, we met some other students who were attending the same conference as us and made friends with them.
We reached the floor where our rooms were located, so my friends and I started looking for our rooms. We found them at the very end of the hallway and our rooms were right across from each other. Now listen, I was tired and just wanted to get into my room, drop all of my stuff, and take a fat nap. The funny-not-funny thing is that when I tried my keycard to open the door, it wasn’t working. Like the door light would turn green, but once I tried the handle, it wouldn’t budge at all. We thought that maybe my roommate was already there, so I started knocking but got no response. I tried so many times to open it again and then had my friends try too, but they couldn’t open it either. I literally wanted to break down and cry at this point because I thought I was going crazy since I couldn’t open my door.
We were making a lot of noise while trying to open the door the guy next door to me opened his door to see what was going on. We explained what was going on to him and he decided to have a go at the door. I warned him about the door possibly being stuck, but before I could finish my sentence, he opened the door like it wasn’t just causing us to start thinking of body slamming it so as to open it, making me look crazy. I thanked him, got my things inside, and plopped down on the bed. I had to catch my breath for a second because that was rough.
I got a message from the group chat saying that a couple of people were planning on getting lunch, so I decided to tag along. It ended up being a large group of us, from different universities, and we head into town! We walked through the area around the University of Pittsburgh, looking at all of the shops and restaurants. We finally ended up at a stretch of restaurants, where we all went to a Korean restaurant that served some pretty good food. We ate, chatted, then went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner and the first speaker.
The first speaker was amazing! There were a lot of inspiring and challenging thoughts that were shared that I will hold onto. He had a positive and refreshing outlook on life that I am glad I had the honor of being present during his talk. After the seminar, we went on a tour and then went down to the “basement” to hang out with all the other delegates for the rest of the night! There were LOADS of free snacks, slushies, a guy that was doing caricature drawings, karaoke, and so many games. I had lots of fun but got tired so I went back to the hotel and got some sleep.
And that, my friends, is the conclusion of day one. I hope you enjoyed reading this and hopefully, I’ll find you all on day two!