Wednesday. The day of our presentation had finally arrived. To be honest, I wasn’t that nervous, though public speaking is one of my greater fears. First, my previous presentation had gone well, and I was now comfortable with my classmates and professor. Second, we had given more or less this same presentation on this same topic at three points during the summer so far – and all were smooth and easy. Finally, this was a group presentation, which for some reason relieves the pressure and/or direct attention from the audience. Anyways, the day had come. I headed over early to print out my notes and run through one last time.

When we got into class we found out that my group was first. This was kind of a joke because in every other presentation we had done so far, we had always been last. Originally, it was just by chance, but the past few times had been by choice. It was time for the Dream Team, as we liked to call ourselves, to shine. Andrew started off with a great intro relating the Tiber River in Italy to the Los Angeles River in Los Angeles and then highlighting the need for change. Then, Robin took over and discussed the problems with the current status of the LA River and what USC could do to help these problems. It was then my turn to speak and I covered the implementation and the benefits. My portion went well and I was able to say everything I wanted to reasonably well. We received individual grades on the presentation part of the final project, but a group grade for the written proposal. So, all that really mattered was my own performance, but my fellow group members did great – we are the Dream Team, of course.

After our presentation, which lasted almost 20 minutes, we answered some questions and then took our seats to listen to the final two groups present. The first was proposing the use of biometric technology, specifically fingerprints, as replacements for student ID cards at USC, modeled after security systems found in Italian banks. The second was about the health education of students at USC and eventually across America. Apparently this group felt that Italians had a better sense of a proper diet, but I’m not sure I agree. Anyways, the presentations were interesting and it was a relief to be done with ours. We went to a celebratory lunch of – you guessed it – paninis, followed by gelato. Then it was back to class for our final ISE quiz. We started immediately and it took about an hour to finish. It was again challenging, but most of us had already determine what we needed to get in order to still maintain an A in the class, around 50% for most of us, so we didn’t worry too much. Again, it was a relief to get it done.

Back at our apartment, it was time for me to crack down on my portfolio. My revisions of my ethics paper and Illumin article were due Thursday and I had procrastinated long enough. I spent about an hour on each – probably the minimum time required – and made the necessary changes. I had received A’s on both already, so I wasn’t too worried. For dinner, we decided to go out to eat, because Becky was leaving Thursday morning, so this was her last night. We went to a restaurant around the corner, the same place we went for Bondor’s birthday dinner. It was really good again and it was very nice to celebrate the completion of ISE and near completion of writing. We had a good time and had fun reminiscing on our time in Rome and throughout Italy. I got back to work for a little while after dinner, and at some point I ended up on the terrace of one of the apartment buildings to play cards for a little bit. Then, it was off to bed.