We've all been gone from campus barely 5 hours as of my writing this, and I still don't think it's really set in yet. Today really started at 11:00pm last night with the end of our Variety Show. We all ran back to our rooms to pack everything within an hour. Needless to say, much panic ensued, and when that dust settled, we had to clean up after all of the Open Day stuff, from posters to signs to chairs and more.
We then went on a silent walk to reflect on our month and all that had happened to us, sharing what we thought being at Shad meant to each of us. Afterwards we all came back to the residence, where we sat down, got our monthbooks and proceeded to spend the rest of the night/morning signing everyone's autograph pages. Finally we stumbled outside and watched the sunrise over the St. John river.
Throughout this entire experience, we had been clinging on to every last shred of sleep we could get, and yet on this last day we gave all of that up for a few more hours with each other. And it was totally worth it!
I want to take this opportunity to give a special thanks to all the P.A.s for their hard work in making sure that we didn't miss a minute of the Shad experience. I also want to extend a massive thank you to our Program Directors, Ian Fogarty and Dhirendra Shukla, for all the hard work they put in to designing the spectacular program we've had this month, finding us all those incredible lecturers and creating a fun-filled, if stressful, schedule for us every day.
As we look back on the month we've had here at UNB -- building robots, designing Rube Goldberg machines, learning the ins and outs of the stock market, working tirelessly on our CT projects, and learning about exploding dinosaurs -- I can't help but think about the importance of what we've all been through here. Everything you do in life changes what happens to you, changes the course your life will take, and though it's usually something small like turning left or turning right at a crossroads, sometimes it's something bigger. Shad was an absolutely massive change, and to have been a part of this experience, and to have it change us the way it did, words could never do justice to what this whole month has meant to us, now and into the future. We started this month as 58 high-schoolers -- confused, bewildered, and a little nervous -- but we leave here as 58 Shads, and that's something that I wouldn't change for the world.
Alex Perelgut, Shad Valley University of New Brunswick '11
Hometown: Etobicoke, ON
