ACE Banquet
It’s 5:30 in the morning. I’m repeating my speech to myself as I eat a bowl of cereal. “Good morning ladies and gentlemen….” While the lucky charms are being crunched, I wonder if I’m going to freeze or stutter when I’m presenting. I hope not. Every student in ACE, their parents, and the board will be there and I just can’t afford it. Slowly it becomes 8:30 and my parents and I arrive at the ACE banquet where everyone is looking at our models and boards. My parents see ours and say it looks very nice. Others seemed to like it too so that’s a thumbs up.
As I go around the room, I begin to see what we could have done for our models and what bullets we had dodged. Some models looked as if they have been worked extremely hard on while others lacked effort. Many students around me seemed very happy to be here and some were just nervous. My teammates are staring at our model and a model that was obviously better than all the others including ours. I smile and say, “They had their whole team work on it. We had about three but hey, we made it.” My teammates look at me and smile back. Matt approaches me and after a brief hello, he jumps right into business; the speech. Him and I practice my speech once and believe that I should practice on my own a couple of times before I go up.
So I go in the auditorium where the presentations are being held and see everyone sitting down talking to each other. The first group is up and already as I hear them speak, I get a bit nervous. “Our train station will have solar panels…” says the presenter while all eyes are fixed on her. After their presentation is done, everyone applauds and shows their respect. As the presentations go on, I notice that no one seemed to be distracted; everyone was paying close attention. I feel like this time around it’s going a lot faster and effective than last year’s presentation. I think it was the way the presentation place was thought out. The auditorium has very little distractions compared to the Convention Center and one could go to fewer places too. So this way, we are listening to the presenter attentively. Aviva approaches our group and tells us to get ready for our presentation. My heart begins to speed up a bit as my friends tell me, “are you nervous Jesus?! Are you?!” I just look at my papers one last time before I walk into the stage and take a deep breath. “Lets go guys,” says Matt as he leads our way out to the crowd. I look up and see my parents smiling in the audience, their expressions full of joy. It calmed me down and I begin my speech. “Good morning ladies and gentlemen…” just how I practiced in the morning.
After a few minutes, I’m done and all the weight is lifted off my shoulders. My friends and mentors tell me I did well. We go outside to take our final group picture; the Downtown LA Team. After the presentations are done the scholarships begin to be passed out. In LASGS, Bryan Vasquez and myself earn a scholarship that will be used to help us out throughout college. I’m looking at my envelope and thinking how extremely thankful I am for the whole ACE experience I had gone through. We are all then aware that lunch is ready and we all rush to eat our sandwiches. This was the last time I would be part of ACE as a student. I just wish I would come back to the banquet but as a mentor, helping other young students gain interest in architecture, construction, and engineering.
Click on images to view each poster.
