Presidential Shit

30 June 2006 - 7:28 PM

Oh fuck. Alright, now that events have calmed down a bit, I should be able to sit tight for long enough to write out the experiences of last week. Here we go...

Saturday, June 17th
My flight was scheduled to leave at 12:40 in the morning. Naturally, I didn’t sleep the night before. I was too busy packing and making sure I had everything. My dad wanted to walk with me all the way to the gate, so he had to get a pass that would allow him to go that far with me. Even though I was the one who hadn’t ever been through security checks around anything that has to do with an airport, my dad was the one who had the most trouble. First, I had to go back to the car to get his license so he could get the pass to go in. Then, he had to hide his Victorinox Swiss Army Knife because that was obviously not permitted through the checkpoint. After that, he kind of refused to take his shoes off when he walked through the metal detector. Keep in mind here, he wears steel-toe shoes. Ha! They made him go over and get frisked, and in the end, he had to take his shoes off anyway. We waited over by the gate, and when it was time for the plane to board, we said our goodbyes.

If you’ve ever packed clothing in one of those garment bags that folds in half with your clothes hanging in it on hangers, I want to you imagine the size of that right now. Now I want to you imagine a bag inside of that, another separate bag filled with my laptop and most of my electronics, and a dolly to carry it all. That is all I had in my possession to take on the trip, and that’s what I took on the airplane as ‘carry-on.’ That’s right. I didn’t check any bags for fear of lost luggage. It took three trips from the front of the plane to my seat to get it all situated, and in the end, I left my changeover ticket at the front of the plane, most likely to get thrown away. Luckily, my tickets were electronic, so all I had to do when I landed in Dallas Fort Worth was show my license and they were able to print me another ticket. I watched the majority of National Treasure on my PSP for the first flight. After I changed planes in DFW, it was getting very late for someone without sleep. So much so that I fell asleep during takeoff. When I woke, I watched the rest of my movie and it ended just in time for us to land. I got off the plane and made my way to the meeting point for Presidential Classroom kids to take the shuttle to the hotel.

Even as early as the bus ride from the airport to the hotel, I was meeting new people. I met and talked with three people on the bus as we traveled to the train station to pick more people up and then to the our hotel on the campus of Georgetown University. It was too early to start checking people in to their hotel, so we placed our luggage with the luggage of the others and introduced ourselves in one of the conference rooms. Out of the entire program, it turned out that I was the only person from Las Vegas, with one other Nevadan from Virginia City. Naturally, I earned the nickname ‘Vegas’ for the week. I also turned out to be one of the most electronically-equipped scholars in the program for the week. Go figure with the choice of program (Science, Technology, and Public Policy).
We got electronic room keys and materials for the program, and after that, I went up to check out my room. After about ten minutes, one of my roommates, Rich, showed up. I tried to put on some music that he’d like while we unpacked and got organized. He left after unpacking, but I was in much need of sleep after only getting a few hours worth on the plane. I crashed on my bed with my luggage next to me. When I woke up, another one of my roommates, Colin, had shown up, and he started talking to me right off about how soon dinner was going to be served downstairs. I took a shower and started getting dressed. He had read our daily schedule wrong, and I hadn’t read it at all, so we both started dressing in business attire for dinner. After awhile, Rich turned to us and asked if we knew that we only needed to be dressed well for the welcome seminar, which was about an hour after dinner. Colin and I felt stupid, but there was no way I was going to re-dress if I was going to be getting into the suit again anyway. Dinner was alright, and afterward, we returned to our room to meet our last roommate, Nick. He lived very close, and later in the week, he had his mom bring us snacks. He was the only other in the room with a laptop, but it was very old.

The opening session for the program was pretty laid back. We got introduced to all the instructors and volunteer assistants. Afterward, we were dismissed to our caucus meetings. I had been designated to Caucus 2, a great group of 39 people from the program with whom I worked with to complete our project for the week. Curfew followed the caucus meeting. My roommates and I stayed up for a bit more, but had to get to sleep as early as we could manage, considering we had to wake up at 8:00 the next day.

Sunday, June 18th
There were two optional activities this morning, one being Catholic Mass. Well, fuck that. I wanted to sleep in as much as possible. I got up a little after 8:00 and got dressed before going down for breakfast. This was the last day that we were allowed to wear casual attire, but I hadn’t brought any of that, so I just wore my suit slacks and my red dress shirt. There was another session of all scholars about getting the most from our week in D.C. and then another caucus meeting. At 11:30, we split off into our separate crossfire sessions. These were the debates that we had chosen topics on when we registered for the program. Everybody had to do the first one, which was Media & Science. I hardly said a word the entire time. I wish I had actually researched the topics that I was supposed to be debating.

Lunch followed, and after that we left by bus to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport. We had a bus with a broken air conditioner. Meh. That, coupled with the heat and humidity, made us all happy that we didn’t have to wear business attire yet. I took tons of pictures at the museum - most a little blurry, but it’s all good. Upon leaving the museum, we made our way to the Pentagon City Mall, where we were given food vouchers to choose our own dinner. I made the best effort to try food from places I hadn’t seen in Vegas, even though it was all fast food. If you ever get a chance to try sushi from Kabuki, go for it. It’s pretty good. After we got back, we were to dress in business attire for the rest of the night. Our first guest speaker was alright, but didn’t have as much knowledge of the technological side of things. Our caucus meetings followed the seminar, and the rest of the night was reserved for student lounge, where we just hung out downstairs and socialized. After curfew, we decided to watch Batman Begins on my laptop while using my Logitech speakers. Most of us fell asleep right off, but Colin watched all of the movie before he fell asleep.

Monday, June 19th
Even earlier than Sunday, we had to wake up at 7:30. After breakfast, we had a speaker from an inventor. She was able to answer the groups questions more than the man the night before. I never asked any questions to the speakers throughout the week. I didn’t know what to ask. We rode over to Grant’s Statue to take the group photo, which you can find a scan of in the Myspace group that I started after I got back from the trip. It’s not that great of quality, and if you get the larger file from me directly, it still won’t be perfect because I had to Photoshop five sectional scans together to get the full thing into one file. Anyway, we had lunch at Union Station – kind of. We had to be back on the bus ten minutes after arriving because we had to get to our caucus’s onsite visit destination at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Our bus driver was kind enough to let us ear our lunch on the bus. We weren’t allowed to bring phones or cameras into the building because everything was pretty much classified.

The speakers inside the building weren’t that interesting, really. Many of us started falling asleep from fatigue combined with boredom. At the end of their presentations, they gave us a couple of souvenirs such as 3-D glasses, a CD with 3-D pictures to look at with them, and a tear-resistant, water-proof map of southern Nevada. It was probably more interesting to me because I am from Nevada. We moved to another room to check out some of their equipment and such, and watched a few segments of a documentary on a race in which the cars were driven through the desert trail by programmed robots. When it came time for us to leave, we discovered it was raining outside. Not only that, but our bus – which had replaced the one without air conditioning – had broken down. This is where we came to the conclusion that the world was against Caucus 2, and I at one point said, “This sucks caucus.” Luckily, we had received those cool water-proof maps, haha! They didn’t completely cover us, but they helped. We ran to the bus to get our things and then ran to our third bus in two days to start driving back to the hotel. Note to self: Wool suits do not smell good when they’re wet.

Another crossfire session followed dinner and an optional seminar on college life, which I again passed up. My crossfire topic was Energy and the Environment. It really addressed the question of what to do about America’s limited energy sources. Caucus meetings came next, where we finally started working on our project, which was to be presented on Friday. Our chosen topic was space exploration. I volunteered to be on the publishing team because I had a laptop. After student lounge and curfew, I packed my dirty clothes and went to sleep.

Tuesday, June 20th
Once again, our wakeup time was set earlier, this time at 7:15. Our first seminar of the day was on the National Security Agency. Two short presentations followed. The ones I was assigned to were biometrics and language at the NSA. Our final crossfire came before we left by bus to the Smithsonian. Finally, this was a crossfire that I was more interested in because it addressed computers as opposed to medicine. We talked about which operating systems will flourish in the near future and other computer-related information like that. I started hanging out at the National Air and Space Museum with a group of kids from my caucus who had already gotten very close as friends in the first few days. We only got to tour the National Air and Space Museum because we didn’t have time to trek to other buildings.

Before heading back to the hotel, we took a trip to the National Academy of Sciences for a seminar by the president of the National Academy of Engineering. He was informative and witty. The auditorium we were in was awesome, too. All of the architecture in that city is beautiful, really. It’s just the humidity that kills me. Anyway, some people asked extremely stupid questions, such as the ones that regarded teleportation and time travel. Pffft.

After dinner back at the hotel, we had yet another seminar for the day from a director of Research & Laboratory Management for the Army. I suppose he was pretty interesting, but I could barely hear him way in the back, where our caucus was supposed to sit for that seminar. He did do something cool, though, where he stabbed two pieces of Kevlar, one of which was impenetrable because it had some kind of liquid dried on it that closed gaps between the fabric. A short overview of the next day’s activities left us to our caucuses, where we went into more detail and then did more research for our caucus project. I ended up typing up my part of the research back in my hotel room while my roommates slept. I didn’t get to sleep until 2:00, which, in my next sentence, will prove to have been a bad move on my part.

Wednesday, June 21st
As if it weren’t bad enough for me to have gone to sleep at 2:00, our set time to wake up today was 5:45. Oh fuck. Just after breakfast, we adjourned to the buses and headed out to Capitol Hill for the day at 7:00. Our first stop was the U.S. Capitol Building. Once again, all cameras and cell phones were collected before entering because it is, after all, a business building, and peace is needed. We got to sit on the floor of the House of Representatives. What an honor, really. There’s so much to learn about that single room. Everything has a meaning – from the busts of lawmakers on the walls to the state seals on the ceiling; gas masks under the seats; bullet holes in the ceiling and one of the tables; where the presidents sits and the process of voting on a bill. The place is a lot smaller than you’d think from watching the State of the Union Address on television. We had one man speak on an impromptu notice because the senator who was supposed to speak was late. She arrived after he was done and gave an inspirational speech.

Congressional appointments were made for every scholar who attended the program. I got to visit the offices of Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign and of Representative John C. Porter. While they were all out and busy with other tasks, I did get to meet with their staff and learn about them. Aside from that I was able to visit the Supreme Court, Library of Congress, and botanical gardens – where I got a few pictures and videos of some cute squirrels who were begging for food.

After the buses left Capitol Hill, we still had time for more touring before dinner. I got to see the Vietnam Wall, Lincoln Memorial, and Washington Monument. A few friends and I played with the squirrels again because they were fun, and would occasionally try to attack you. Soon, we realized we were late for the bus, and had to run back to the location. I was the only one of the four of us that was able to hop over a fence without touching it with my feet. The others needed help. We must’ve run a quarter of a mile to get back to the bus. Luckily, it was late. Still, I had to strip down as much as decently possible to cool off before we showed up at H20, a restaurant and lounge located near the marina.

The food was decent, but the noteworthy thing was the entertainment. The Capitol Steps, a parody group that came together decades ago, was probably the best group of people on stage that we sat and listened to. If you look at their site here, you can listen to some of their songs. A friend and I split the price of four of their CDs, but after I came home, I found out that they have many more than that. I wrote the CD images to my laptop and let the other guy keep all the physical CDs. The caucus meeting didn’t involve much work today, since the project directors were the ones with the most work to do.

Thursday, June 22nd
Yay! We finally get a break from the ever-earlier wakeup calls. 7:45 was our time today. The first speaker for the day did not seem very knowledgeable. Some of the pictures on his PowerPoint presentation were just Photo-Shopped pictures. Lunch was a bit early at the Ronald Reagan building. We were supposed to have general touring time before we went to our onsite visits, mine being the American Red Cross – Don’t look at me like that. Everything else was taken by the time the signup sheet came around to me. Anyway, that’s later. I fell asleep on the bus ride from the Ronald Reagan building to the area in front of the White House, where we got dropped off. When the group was getting off the bus, someone tapped me on the shoulder and woke me up.

After taking some pictures, I started walking around to the back of the White House to look around. See, I was under the impression from the daily overview sheet that I had to be back at the bus by 1:15. Well, as I was talking on the phone with my brother on the other side of the White House, I got a call from the instructor, who was on the bus with everybody else waiting for me. Apparently, while I was sleeping, everybody else was told to be back at the bus by 12:30. Oh fuck. Now it’s five minutes after 1:00 and I’m running once again, fully dressed in a suit, through hot and humid conditions, from the back of the White house to the front. When I finally arrived, I found out whytf I was considered late. I also found out that I would’ve gotten left behind if I hadn’t given my business card out to some new friends, because without it, they wouldn’t have had my cell phone number.

So obviously, we didn’t have any more time for touring. We weren’t late for the presentation at the American Red Cross though… luckily… I suppose. We actually went between three different buildings, one of which was like, four blocks away. The overviews of the intricacies of what the organization does really weren’t that interesting to anybody in the group. It was really more like touring an office building, complete with cubicles. We were given a few small souvenirs, but that’s about it. After returning to one of the other buildings, someone gave us a presentation on safety in cases such as floods, hurricanes, and things like that. It really wasn’t that interesting, either, but the guy who gave the presentation had a very amusing chuckle, which he let out every now and then when he thought he was saying something witty. I’m not sure if he knew whether or not we were laughing with him or at him.

Finally, we headed back to the hotel. Dinner preceded our last seminar – one given by another man who really didn’t know how to capture the attention of his audience. He really shouldn’t have been reading the definitions on his PowerPoint presentation word-for-word. We had plenty of time in our caucus meetings to address the poor quality of the seminars of the day.

Friday, June 23rd
Another 7:45 wakeup call, we were all excited about the day ahead of us. Each caucus presented their project. A lot of other caucuses proved to have had more fun than we did in making our presentation. It’s cool though. Whatever. We had brief touring at the World War II Memorial and Jefferson Monument. Lunch was at the Pentagon City Mall again, where I actually bought a pair of shorts for myself at American Eagle Outfitters because I only owned one pair of shorts back at home and felt the need to get more. Because we wanted to listen to music after we got off the bus, I carried my bag and laptop with me when we arrived to tour at the Arlington National Cemetery. In retrospect, it was a bad idea. It was especially hot on this day, and long walks up hills and steps did not help anybody walking in a suit. Now add fifteen pounds to the load. Grrreat. I got to see JFK’s gravesite. Somehow, the guys I was with managed to take an extremely long route to the Tomb of the Unknowns, where four of our scholars were to take part in a wreath-laying ceremony that followed the changing of the guard.

We left immediately after the wreath-laying ceremony. We had a couple hours to pack after returning and were given time to get dressed up for the night’s banquet and dance. The banquet was awesome. Food was good, but in small portions, for some reason. We were entertained by a band consisting of drums, fifes, and trumpets. Graduation speeches were given by four of the seven caucuses. We had a final caucus meeting, where we all said a small goodbye to the rest of our peers, and in our caucus, had a surprise by presenting one of our scholars with a birthday cake! I didn’t eat any, however, because our meeting got out later than scheduled and I wanted to get to the dance as soon as I could.

The dance went from 9:15 to 11:55, and it was awesome! I surprised a lot of people with what they thought was good breakdancing, when really it didn’t have much style at all. Still, it felt good to be recognized. The slow-dance songs were a bit awkward. I made my best effort to find the ones who seemed lonely at those times. It’s probably not the best idea to put this up here, but I would’ve tried to find a girl to hook up with if I hadn’t been involved in a relationship back here at home. Many of the other Presidential Classroom kids will agree that there were many smart, stunning young women there, and the girls will say the same about the guys. But, I do have a girl back here, and she’s great for me. I’m not one of those guys that would give up a good relationship with one girl for a short night with another. Finally, back in the hotel room, I managed to setup my tripod and get a picture of me and my roommates, which is currently loaded on my Myspace. We probably didn’t go to sleep until 1:45 or 2:00.

Saturday, June 24th
Well, what a week. One of my roommates had already left by the time I woke up. The other three of us hung out downstairs for a bit while we waited for our bus to leave to the airport. I only had to wait a couple of minutes to get my ticket printed out at first, but when I went to get checked at the gate, a woman wouldn’t let me through with my garment bag. I didn’t understand at first why she made me check it when I had taken it on my flights before, but after waiting 20 minutes in line to get another ticket to check my bag, and then heading to my gate, I found out that the plane I was on was much smaller than the ones I took to get to D.C.

While waiting at the gate for my plane to leave at 11:00, I ran into another scholar from my caucus. Apparently, her flight got cancelled, and her next flight was either going to be at 7:30 that night or 6:30 the next day. I felt bad for her. I hope she didn’t have too much trouble after I had to leave her. I changed planes in Nashville, where the next plane left two hours after mine landed. The woman sitting next to me on that flight out happened to have changed the same plane as I did. We were both heading to Vegas, but had another stop in DFW, where there was another hour of waiting. All in all, my flight was ten hours with changeovers and stops. My dad picked me up at 6:00 PM Vegas time and we picked up pizza for dinner.


Congratulations. You just read 5½ pages worth of my experience at Presidential Classroom. If you think you’d be interested in attending a program like this, let me know. I can recommend you to it through their website. As for now, I’m sure you won’t have a problem waiting for my next blog, which will cover this week. Hmm… it always seems like I’m a week behind…

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha