The Thanksgiving That Was

Since we did not have class last week, I am going to write about my Thanksgiving break and other random stuff. I would say that I had an excellent break. I went home early Wednesday afternoon and carpooled with a friend from high school that goes here. Her class got out at 11:10 so I picked her up at 12:00 at her apartment. Thankfully she is a talker so she kept me awake on the ride home. There was so much traffic on I-45! It is understandable since everybody was leaving for vacation but the highway was super crowded. I don’t like driving on crowded highways since the opportunities for accidents increase so much. It also increases the driving time since there was so much traffic. It didn’t rain at all during the drive. Which was good because rain and Thanksgiving traffic don’t seem to mix well.
My friend who rode with me was excited to see me since we hadn’t hung out in awhile. She was one of my best friends in high school but I haven’t gotten to see her much in high school. She is at A&M to study to be a vet. Understandably, that takes up a good portion of her time while in College Station. We were very close in high school and we have a good amount of stories to tell from those days. She always feels the need to update me on the status of the girlfriend I had in high school. This is weird because my ex is a nice girl but we don’t talk at all and haven’t talked in years. But thanks to my friend, I know all about how her college life is going.
My friend mentioned one of the best memories we had in high school and it made me reminisce about it. During our senior year, we participated in an organization called We the People. It was sponsored by the State Bar of Texas and focused on spreading Constitutional awareness in high school students through competitions modeled after trials. It was one of the most high pressure activities I have ever done. Teachers at our high school handpicked some students to participate in the competition. For whatever reason, I was chosen. We had to memorize tons of important Supreme Court cases and their significance. It was grueling. I spent many hours before and after school looking over cases and practicing making speeches before mock panels of judges. The actual competition was very much like a panel before Congress. A small portion of our team, usually 4 members, would go before a panel of judges and other people knowledgeable about law and answer their Constitutional questions using cases in an oral presentation. It was hardcore.
Like I previously mentioned, I spent many hours poring over the material for the competition to make sure that I thoroughly knew it. Any break during the day, I would look at my notes. I remember the mock trial we had at my high school one day to prepare us for the difficult competition. My teacher brought in a lawyer friend who went through a mock presentation with us. He was very hard on us. Looking back, I think the difficult nature of the preparation allowed us to be ready for the competition.
Finally, the day came. Our whole team, around 15 students, piled onto a yellow school bus with our two teachers/coaches and one assistant principal for the school. We traveled down to Austin in style! Not really, but we did incessantly quiz each other and read notes. It was fun at the same time though. (By the way I am writing one long blog instead of two!) My team also joked around a lot and took naps. It seemed to take forever to get to Austin for the competition but 4 hours was a long time to drive for a college student.
At long last, we arrived at our hotel. It was the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in. The school district had given us a large amount of spending money for this trip it seemed! It was right in the middle of Austin and not too far from the Capitol building. After waiting awhile for the teachers to get our rooms ready, we all got our room keys and took our suitcases up to our rooms. Then we all loaded back onto the bus and went to go eat at Chili’s. It was paid for by the school district as well. This was all crazy stuff for a guy who only played jv sports and had never really experienced this.
After eating, we traversed the short distance back to our hotel and went straight to studying. We probably studied four to five hours that night. It was exhausting but we knew we needed to know the cases back and forth to do well the next day. Mr. Bowser, our AP, even helped us study though he knew nothing about the material. I could tell our two teachers were very worried about the next day’s competition but they were excited about it as well. Around midnight, the teachers told us that we should go to bed to make sure we were rested for tomorrow. Well, my group decided that this wouldn’t do for us. We were determined to do well at the competition. So, after we had been checked into our rooms, me and my roommate ducked out of our room and went down the stairwell to the girls room two floors below. It was a bold move for sure. I usually don’t do something so stupid like that. But we went and reviewed some cases with the two girls in our team for about 30 more minutes before heading back to our rooms to get some sleep.
The next day was competition day. There were two rounds in the competition. There was a first round and then a second round in which only the top three teams participated. It was intense. There were probably 20 schools there from all around the state. The stakes were big because the winner of Texas got to go to nationals which were held in Washington D.C. later that year. We were all nervous because our high school had never been to this competition and we weren’t sure what to do. However, all of our hard work paid off and we ended up advancing to the 2nd round of the competition. Sadly, we won third place because one of our team members did not know the Alaskan “Bong Hits for Jesus” case that made a buzz in c. 2005. We were all ecstatic though! In our first year of competing, we had beat out most of the state of Texas to win third place.
This blog was a total tangent but my Thanksgiving was excellent. I loved spending 5 days with my family and getting to see a couple of my good friends from back home. I can’t wait for Christmas break. There will be two hectic weeks before that is eminent but it will be here soon enough. This week is extremely busy between work, tests, presentations, and everything else that is going on in life!! However, I get an extremely long weekend and that will be nice. Although, I am sure I will have tons of work to do during the weekend.