The One with the Three Cups of Tea (part 2)

Today is when an event the Americans call 'Convocation' occurs. As far as I can tell, it's just a gathering of various alumni, staff and people important to the university sitting together and having a sort of ceremony where various awards are given out. It takes place in the Convocation Center, on the East side of campus. This is also the venue for basketball games.

First there was the processional, with the brass band playing and all the alumni and staff dressed in robes and caps, and everyone had to stand while they filed in and sat down. Then the chancellor of Appalachian came and spoke, and handed out various awards including student employee of the year and a couple of honorary doctorates.

Then came the big event. Every year, the university has a book which all the freshmen have to read over the summer, and then they have various discussions about it. In a previous blog I talked about how I sat in on a discussion about the book 'Three Cups of Tea' by Greg Sorenson. Every year they get the author of said book to come and speak at convocation. It just so happens that since Greg is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and has been on the Times top 100 books for 134 weeks now, he is in high demand to go and speak at various events. We were extremely lucky to get him to come, seeing as he had just returned from Afghanistan 2 weeks ago. Because of his popularity, people from all over the state came to see him, some people even drove 10 hours to come. There were about 7 different school groups there too, all in all about 3000 people.

He spoke extremely well, mixing stories from his life and his incredible experiences with motivational speaking and a little bit of humour. He kept everybody's attention and was extremely humble considering all he had achieved. He was very up front about his failures, and modest about his successes. He had me teary eyed in quite a few places, and I truly felt like I was priveledged to be sitting there listening to him. It's not every day that you get to hear a Nobel Prize nominated person speak. So anyway I was quite inspired, and it was lucky because I wasn't even going to go originally but my Pop Culture professor Larry is giving us extra credit if we write a one page response to his speech. Even more reasons why I love Larry :) Everything else is fabby, first football game and tailgating on Saturday - very excited!