Georgetown's Not For Me...

At 9:00 we met in the lobby to go get breakfast. We ate at the hotel restaurant, and then went off for our Georgetown tour at 11:00. Georgetown is quite nearby, less than a mile from the hotel. In fact, our hotel is even called the Holiday Inn Georgetown. When we got to Georgetown, it was very hot and uncomfortable outside. The building looked amazing and was very historic. In fact, Georgetown is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit school in the nation, and was the 1st school chartered by Congress, in 1789. Georgetown has a total undergraduate enrollment of 6,400. The four schools are Georgetown College, the School of Nursing, the School of Foreign Service, and the School of Business. As soon as I found out these were the schools at Georgetown, I was no longer interested. I want to major in engineering, and they don't offer a major in it.

The Undergraduate Admissions Office Building.

Other than that, I liked Georgetown, and think it is a great place to go to college -- for non engineering students. The location is great. It is far enough from the craziness of Washington, D.C, but is close enough to visit easily. I also really liked how they have guest speakers very often. This is also because of the location. When these important figures are in D.C., Georgetown is only five minutes away, making it easy to stop and speak there as well.

I also liked the Early Action process they offer. Early Action is non-binding, so if you get in early, you can relax because you got into a good school, but can still get accepted to a better one. The other members of my cohort really liked Georgetown, and already say they will apply there.

Mint Cookies and Creme Cupcake!!

After the Georgetown info session and tour, we took another short walk to Georgetown Cupcakes, the famous cupcake shop featured on the Food Network. The line was out the door and halfway up the block, and it was very hot with no shade. Fortunately, the line moved relatively quickly and the wait was definitely worth it. That cupcake was the best I had ever had, and probably the best I will ever have. I got the mint cookies and creme cupcake. The frosting was very rich, creamy and dense. The cake had a rich, delicate, airy flavor. As with any cupcake, the frosting was better than the cake, as the frosting has more sugar.

After the cupcakes, we decided to go to the Spy Museum. We caught the Circulator, and soon arrived at the museum. We knew we were going to have problems when we showed up and there was a line outside. It turns out there was a 40 minute wait to get into the exhibit. We had to leave in 40 minutes to get ready for our dinner, so we looked through the gift shop instead. This taught me to always look up places and research how crowded they will be before going over there. Granted, we would not know the exact wait time, but we would get a general idea of how busy it is over the summer. If we had known it would be extremely crowded, we could have visited more memorials or done something else instead.

We soon got back to the hotel, got ready for the dinner, and caught the Circulator to M street. The restaurant we went to was called the "City Tavern Club." When we got there, our host Sean Redmond, the President of the Club and the Georgetown Alumni Association, was there to greet us, along with Georgetown Alumni Paul Conner. It turns out the City Tavern Club is a historic tavern that dates back to George Washington's time.

Just after we arrived, the other two people showed up. They were current students at Georgetown who are the President and Vice-President in the Student Government (Nate Tisa and Adam Ramadan respectively). Before the dinner, we went on a tour of the historic house. Back in the 1700s, cities had taverns (basically hotels, but they had not gotten that word from French yet.) This tavern was constructed in 1796, and owned by Clement Sewall. The tavern served as a hotel for visitors, but also a meeting place for political activity like city council meetings, and even elections for mayor. George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited the tavern often. On June 6, 1800, John Adams gave his famous Georgetown toast.

Although it was a great tavern back then, by the 1900s, it was just a falling apart building. It was going to be torn down to build a parking lot, but two people saw the dormer windows on the backside, which signified its was a historic building. The tavern was then purchased, and restored to its original condition, reopening in 1962. At this point, it became a private club, which it still is today. Ronald Regan had his inaugural lunch there in 1981. There are currently 400 club members, and to become one, you must get two club members to recommend you. The City Tavern Club is a nonprofit organization, whose mission is to preserve the City Tavern building. 

John Adam's 19 toasts at the famous dinner.

My awesome Cobb Salad!!

Mmm. Reese's Peanut Butter Pie!!!

After the tour of the five story building, we sat down to have dinner. We spread ourselves out, so that each ILCer was sitting next to one or two alumni, and no other ILCers.

The dinner was excellent on two levels: the food, and the conversations we had. Unlike the previous ILC dinner, we were each given a menu with about twenty different meal options. Many of the entrees were seafood, or dishes I had never heard of, so I chose the Cobb Salad. That turned out to be a great choice. I was truly impressed when it came. Everyone else was too. They had all ordered smaller things like steaks and mini burgers that barely filled their plate, but my salad was huge. It was really good too. I like all of the ingredients separately, but together, they were even better. That was by far the best salad I have ever had.

For dessert, I (along with almost everyone else) had a slice of Reese's Peanut Butter Pie. I was quite surprised that a fancy restaurant like this would offer something like Reese's, but I figured the rich people must like it or it wouldn't be on the menu. It was better than good. It was fantastic. The crust was chocolate, and the filling was peanut butter. It tasted just like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, but richer and creamier, probably due to higher quality ingredients. Now it's hard to say what the best dessert I've had is. (The cupcake or the Reese's Peanut Butter Pie. Hmmm.. Decisions, decisions...) Anyway, enough about food. The important part of the dinner was the connections we made, and the things we learned. 

Talking to the Georgetown students and alumni was awesome. I learned a lot about life at Georgetown. They are very big on basketball. Virtually everyone goes to their home games to cheer on the Georgetown Bulldogs basketball team. They said even if you are not a basketball fan now, you will be by the end of basketball season your first year. They also each talked about their experiences at Georgetown. 

Paul Conner was a government major. He is currently working at a NGO that helps countries in Africa develop farms, and sustains the development by building stores to sell the goods, and ways to get to those stores. He really enjoys his job, but is always on the lookout for a new one, because he wants to try new things. He started out as a freshman in the Business School, but did not enjoy it at all. He took a government class, fell in love with it, and changed his major to Government. He studied abroad in Buenos Aires. 

Nate Tisa is the student government president. He is majoring in Culture and Politics under the Foreign Service School. He is minoring in Arabic, and went to Turkey for five months for his study abroad.

Adam Rahaman is the Vice-President of the Georgetown Student Government. He studied abroad in Buenos Aires as well. 

We mainly talked about college life in general, as well as some off topic things like In-n-Out Burger, and California weather. In general, their message was Georgetown is a great school that they enjoy/enjoyed, but really the experience is college. College will be fun and life changing no matter where you go, but of course it will be the most fun and life changing at Georgetown. After the dinner, we got a picture with everyone in it (All four Georgetown Alumni, Mr. Mannix and the four ILCers).

I felt bad that I was having a dinner and making connections with people from a college I'm not going to apply too, but I still learned a lot and made useful connections. I would much rather of had an event with UPenn alumni, but maybe I'll do that next year. Only time will tell...

Tomorrow we fly out of D.C. at 11:00, and arrive in Nashville at 1:50. The Vanderbilt portion of the trip is finally here!! I know I'm going to miss Mr. Mannix, since we've been with him for the past week all day, every day, but now we are not going to see him for three weeks.