Calculating Route

Wow, what a day.

In the morning, I woke up early to check my final report which would be handed out in conjunction with my final presentation...only to find it was the old version, not the one I had spent three hours editing the day before. Given that I had carefully planned out my day, starting from when I was waking up to when I was leaving work, with no room for error, I was in full panic mode. I'm pretty sure I spent the whole hour-long train ride praying.

After getting to work, I opened the document on my laptop...to find that all the changes had saved! Thinking back on it, I'm still confused. It doesn't make sense to me how on Wednesday afternoon I could have saved the document with the changes to my laptop, closed out of it, attached what I now know as the old version of the document to an e-mail, and then on Thursday morning opened up the updated version under the same document name. I'm sure there was some sort of divine intervention.

My presentation also went better than expected. Funny how with all my experience doing debate that public speaking can still give me nervousness-induced nausea.

Then was the culmination luncheon for all the interns and their managers catered by California Pizza Kitchen. Ironically, whenever we get catered food from there, it's pasta and salad, but it's always amazing. And they have the best salads; this time they had a Caesar salad, one with sliced pears, dried cherries, and walnuts, and one with avocado...I'm totally drooling as I'm writing this.

The keynote speaker for the luncheon was Wayne Winsley--I think he gave a twenty minute speech with the fluidity of reading from something, except that he had no notes. His speech was titled, "Brave Enough to Fail," and he talked about how people are often too scared to act because they're afraid of failure. But the part that stood out to me was his analogy of a successful life to a GPS. You can never be lost with a GPS because you always know your destination. If you make a wrong turn or a mistake, your GPS tells you "calculating route" and figures out another way to get to the same destination.

Then the business coordinator for my company gave her closing remarks. She ended with a beautiful quote:
"Success is using the talent God gave you to elevate others." -Ben Carson

After that busy half day at work, I got home only to head to Bryant University with Abben and Felicia for the retreat. Since it was Christina's birthday, her uncle had gotten her a delicious mango cake from an Asian bakery in Boston. I know now where I'm getting my birthday cake....