In my senior column for the Collegian I said “Thank you to all the students, professors, bosses, colleagues, friends and family who made my college experience an experience. When I look back on my years at Penn State I will think of you, not Old Main.” I originally wrote that as a little dig at Penn State’s administration, but I realize now it’s actually very meaningful. I spent the last week on a half-dead campus and realized that Penn State is just a place on a map with a lot of buildings that probably won’t be there in 15 years (let the fundraising begin for IST II Building). College has been more about the people who shared these four years with me. So without further ado, shout outs to the people who made my college years special. (Feel free to skim – this is ridiculously long)

Frank Whitehead was more than my manager at the pool, he is also a great teacher and friend. I appreciate all his career advice and assistance, even after I left the pool. Also thanks to Joe Pardini, who was the greatest first boss anyone could ever have. Thanks to Caitlyn, Maureen, Steve, Tim, Emily, Craig, Jess, Alicia, Marta, Kelsey, Dan, Rachael, Dennis, Lydia, Amanda, Joey, Dennis, Brian, Lori, and Megan and whomever else I’m forgetting for all those summer memories.

Tony Pasquarette and Jean Denis at GE – Transportation gave me a meaningful introduction to the corporate world last summer and I thank them for their time. Also thanks to my fellow interns Vishad, Yaara, Jon, Chad, Trevor, Ross, and Scott.

IST Learning Initiatives was a great opportunity for me to stretch my legs in design and learn a little more about education. I thank Larry Spence and Lisa Lenze for all their support and I thank Tory, Stephanie, Prerana, Angelica, Liling, and Dan for being fun and easy to work with.

The Daily Collegian has a number of professionals who work behind the scenes to make our lives easier. Special thanks to Tom, Sharkey, Becky, Dave, Candy, Patti, and Gerry.

John Harvey, news advisor, is a great teacher and I believe he was one of my biggest advocate’s within that organization. Rick Simpson, Collegian systems manager, is one of the busiest people I know yet was always willing to answer any question Chris or I had. I hope we were more helpful than we were a headache. Thanks.

The lifeblood of the Daily Collegian is its students. Thanks to Krystle, Kayur, both Kathleens, Alex, Meg, Terry, Jess, Andy, Travis, Halle, Devon, Dan, Sirage, McGill, Lauren, Spolar, Horan, Rossilyne, Billy, Prah, Pfister, Sarah, Heather, Freel, Weeden, Adrienne, Jim, Kyle, Greg, Brandon, Sarim, Serpiello, Kim, and all the other people whose names I am forgetting. You accepted me and were responsible for bringing to life some of the stuff Chris, Ali and I dreamed of and welcomed me into your family – so thank you.

Jimmy Young brought me back to the Collegian as a Web intern and Jeanette Hannah supported us for a year. Erin James, though, ultimately pushed me to finish something and gave us free reign to change the organization. It was a risk to let a let someone with only a semester’s worth of writing experience and no editorial skills become an editor and I thank her for that.

Ali Busacca, Web editor, brought energy, leadership, and voice to the Web project. If we accomplished anything, it was because she pushed us and the rest of the staff. Chris Bajgier probably ranks among the most remarkable people I have met in college – hearing his story made me realize how much I take for granted. He is also a technical leader who is responsible for some of the most sophisticated work we’ve contributed to the Collegian. Both Chris and Ali have been great partners and friends to me, so thank you.

The College of Information Sciences and Technology has been a great home and community for me to pursue my undergraduate studies in. I would like to thank Jim Jansen for being an ever patient thesis supervisor and a great teacher. I would also give a shout out to Dr. Santoro, Dr. Wang, Dr. Mitra, Dr. Mudgett, Dr. Fronseca, Ms. Mahar, Dr. Tapia, Dr. Lucas, Dr. Maitland, Dr. Smith, Dr. Sawyer, Dr. Kavsny, Dr. Clark and Dr. Bagby for helping my learning experience. Also thanks to Dr. Supon and Shawn Knight for all their helpfulness and advice.

I also owe thanks to all the group members I have had over these 4 years at IST. I hated group work in high school and last semester I was actually leading a group. I won’t even attempt to name you all, but thank you for all your help. Special thanks to Dana Kracaw, Jason Scott, Rishi Das, and Mark Poblete for hanging out in class together, you guys truly represent the sense of community I am talking about in IST.

Mike Logan instilled in me a passion for film and DVD collecting that has become a passion for me. I’m sorry we didn’t see as much of each other this past year. Ditto for Dan Kerins, the puniest man I know and a fellow Sunday brucher at the dining commons.

I thank Greg Lathbury interjecting humor, oddity, and some real wisdom into our lives. I thank Boots for inviting me to my first real college party and just hanging around with us these last couple years. I thank Marc Kordell for hanging out as well and putting up with my frequent button pushing.

I thank Cat Cornett for letting me tag around with her and Rob these past couple years. I enjoyed the SameTimes over the summer and the little whiteboard messages on my door. I also give her a lot of credit for being the hardest working student I met in IST.

I thank Chris Somers for being my best friend at Penn State for four years. I know I’m kind of a downer and anti-social at times, so I give him a lot of credit for hanging around with me all the time. I enjoyed all the intellectual debates we got into, as well as the personal conversations, so I appreciate him listening. I told him it takes a lot of balls and brains to continue studying some of the most complex energy problems our society faces as a grad student and I’m sure he’s up to the challenge.

I thank Rob Shedd for also being my best friend and my roommate for four years. I told him he’s been the model of an academic and a professional for me and I meant it. I’m not sure how many deadlines, assignments, and events I would have missed if I couldn’t just turn around in my chair and ask him. I’m really proud of all his work and I’m sure he’s going to keep amazing us. I thank him for sticking by me for four years – I hope he’s gotten at least a fraction out of knowing me as I did from knowing him.

Last I turn to my family, who have been in the background supporting me all the way. Pat, Caitie, Chris, Brian, Michael, Kevin, Jack, and Billy are also my best friends. I really enjoy being able to come home and get immediately swept up into your lives. I’m proud of everything you guys do and I hope you forgive me for being a jerk sometimes. I also thank all my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for their interest and support along the way.

Finally my parents, the most generous, unselfish individuals I have ever met. Every time worry, get paranoid, or mess up they always support me and comfort me. For example, my mom first pushed me to go back to the Collegian to work on the Web site – I probably wouldn’t have done that on my own. Likewise their encouragement when I started looking at jobs that would take me further from them was really amazing. I never realize how much my dad cared about his children until he started hassling me to call home more often (even when I was calling every other day ). I’m glad to hear you guys are proud of me. I feel like I will be successful in life if I can even attempt to match your honesty, kindness, and selflessness. Thanks for all the sacrifices you’ve made to raise me the way you did and help put me through college – I will always be grateful to you.

And that wraps up my ridiculously long thank you note. Sorry for the sloppy writing – I’m finishing this after midnight after compiling it these last few days. I apologize to anyone who I forgot – I know even this list is not comprehensive and I could have written more about everyone.

I also want to congratulate the class of 2007, I am proud to know you and share this time in my life with you. And finally I wanted to encourage everyone to keep in touch with me. I am headed to ESPN in Bristol, CT on June 2 to work on their Web site as a technical producer. It’s an exciting opportunity and a fresh start, but I don’t want to lose this amazing network of friends I’ve made in college. Feel free to contact me at steve.clancy@gmail.com and check my Web site at http://www.steveclancy.com as I start to blog again in the coming weeks. Thanks again for all the memories. May God Bless You All.

Last fall I spent my first night back in State College watching the movie Accepted.

Given that I spend most weekends in a movie theater with my friends, it seemed like the appropriate start to the school year.

In case you haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a bunch of lovable losers, led by the “I’m a Mac” guy from those commercials, who accidentally form their own college.

And much to their surprise, students start showing up and, beyond all logic, start paying the founders’ tuition.

After the initial shock, the founders do something that’s actually quite extraordinary.

They take the students’ tuition money and invest it in equipment for their area of study.

Photographers get SLR cameras, cooks get kitchens and skaters get half pipes.

OK, so maybe study is a broad term here.

Naturally, a small portion also goes to the administrative costs of keg parties and tiki bars.

The whole thing is kind of a magic moment that could only happen in the movies. But it got me thinking.

What would I do if I could reinvest my tuition?

I am an information sciences and technology major, so I would buy myself a pretty nice computer setup and some teach-yourself programming books — although the For Dummies series does not really cover how to protect a database through sui generis intellectual property rights or the potential for information technology to enable globalization in the third world.

(I’m sorry, am I showing my IST major here?)

But I couldn’t buy the relationships and connections I have made in college.

In addition to meeting policymakers, innovators and legends, I have also made some lifelong friends.

Still, the best part of Penn State is also the best part of Accepted: the message of learning through experience. That is what I have gotten out of working at the Collegian.

I imagine people in some of the other student groups would reach the same conclusion.

I have built Web sites on my own before, but none have the reach that The Daily Collegian Online does.

In addition to our print circulation, some 300,000 people visit our Web site every month.

It’s pretty nice to go into a job interview and meet an alumnus who reads the Collegian every day online.

I’m equally flattered when friends tell me their mom reads our Web site.

It’s easy to take a class on organizational studies, but it’s a little harder to transform a traditional newsroom into a group of Web-savvy journalists.

But we’ve taken our Web site to a new level, and I can say I helped do that.

These are the experiences I’ll be carrying into my job.

That’s why I am worried every time administrators talk about making Penn State a “student-centered” university.

In my book we already had one.

I cannot think of a better example of grassroots community building than the one I witnessed in Paternoville, which got reduced to a university-sanctioned booster club last fall.

Likewise, Thon is the most successful student philanthropy in the country.

Yet apparently it could be improved upon by shortening it two hours.

USG tended to create more conflict than it resolved, but what better preparation is there for real world politics?

At least it attempted to represent student interests.

Sometimes these organizations (including the Collegian) make mistakes.

These are teaching moments too, though, and the university should embrace that, rather than running to their lawyers to “protect” student from themselves.

So, thank you to all the students, professors, bosses, colleagues, friends and family who made my college experience an experience.

When I look back on my years at Penn State I will think of you, not Old Main.

In addition to having alarms in every hallway, the University has recently installed alarms in every room. The noise is so loud you cannot think, let alone sleep.

A flood of horrible images rush through your mind as you try to get yourself out of your room. I grab my wallet and keys of the desk. Two planes hit the twin towers. I throw my shoes on my feet. Millions infected with AIDS in Africa. I grab sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Justin Timberlake brings sexy back.

I can only imagine what other uses this alarm system could provide. Perhaps guards could use it for prison escapes or even a new form of torture in Guantanamo. Every time I hear that alarm, I really wonder why they couldn’t just let me die in my sleep.

I feel like a real veteran to have the wherewithal to grab my sweats before running out to the cold morning air. Many were not so lucky, coming out tired and underdressed. One girl wrapped her comforter around herself and a shirtless guy. I saw two guys do the same, which may be an even more extraordinary gesture.

One RA told me he tried to write up a fire alarm as a community program, since you get nearly everyone to participate. It is funny how neighbors go day in and day out ignoring each other, but will begin to converse with each other while shivering outside at 5 a.m.

A girl who appeared to be an authority figure, an RA perhaps, comes around and yells for people to back away from the building. “This is not a fire drill!” she said. Duh. If she announced it was just a drill, I think someone may have hit her.

For a second I grasp the potential seriousness of the situation as I imagine all of my belongings exploding out my window like in Fight Club. I think I left my CD collection in the car, but I doubt any insurance company would reimburse me for my giant DVD collection.

Fortunately while this wasn’t a drill, this wasn’t a real fire either. Most likely it was the act of a drunken student or a technical issue with the fire alarm. I remember a year ago a similar event was set off by a wiring error in the attic.

Atherton Hall is listed on some maps as “Centre Halls”, but it seems it is miles away from civilization whenever an alarm goes off. In the course of 45 minutes I never saw a fire truck or even a maintenance van pull up.

The alarm eventually stopped and people started to move towards the doors, but I waited. I’ve been burned by fire alarms before. Sure enough the alarm starts up again for a few more minutes, an aftershock I guess. We finally get the go ahead and return to our rooms.

Appropriately enough, fire prevention week will start next week. So if you don’t have the misfortune of a major university being liable for your fire safety, perhaps you can take the opportunity to get some smoke detectors and test their batteries. And don’t worry, smoke detectors have a much nicer ring to them.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the sport, lacrosse is a game where people throw and catch balls with sticks and attempting to shoot the ball at the net for a goal. It is a fun game and I want to make clear that nothing about the sport of lacrosse itself prompts people to commit crimes.

Lacrosse, however, is also a sport of privilege. It requires at least $300 in equipment to begin with, plus fees for tournaments and indoor leagues. It is a relatively young sport, so it is still very regional. It is most popular in areas that predominantly upper middle class and white. The suburbs of southeastern Pennsylvania are among best areas for lacrosse. Duke has removed the roster from the athletics website, but I would guess at least a few players came from my area.

While I enjoyed playing lacrosse, I noticed with some hesitance the growing culture surrounding the sport. It is an elite sport and it attracts elite young men who form strong bonds outside of the game. Thus has emerged an old boy’s club where young men, not surprisingly, make poor decisions.

The Duke incident recalled a specific event during my final season. Lacrosse is an aggressive sport and altercations occasionally occur. In one game a black athlete from an opposing school punched one of my teammates.

I did not witness the event firsthand, but another player recalled with amusement on the bench that the altercation was precipitated by my teammate calling the black athlete a n—–. Knowing my teammate to be a moron and a racist, I believed the story.

A day later no one seemed to remember what happened, especially since someone filed a complaint and the school suspended my teammate. Many team members wore athletic tape with his number on their jerseys as a sign of solidarity. I did not, nor did a few others who likely suspected the story to be true. In the end my teammate was suspended for a week and forced to give a short speech in which he gave a non-denial denial, lamenting the situation and apologizing for any grief he had caused.

What impressed me was not my teammates’ bigotry, but how quickly my other teammates were willing to stand up for him – even when they knew he was wrong. Similarly the Duke lacrosse players have banded together and will not discuss the incident. This is teamwork at its worst.

These problems are not isolated to simply lacrosse, but any exclusive group that puts protecting itself above common decency. It speaks to the need for diversity throughout our academic community. 46 out of the 47 Duke players were white and many came from elite prep schools. It is unlikely they have had much expose to anyone outside their socioeconomic group. Perhaps if they had they wouldn’t view women, specifically black women, as sex objects.

Hopefully the players will eventually learn their lesson, but in the meantime we can all do a better job of being more inclusive in our lives.

Update: Corrected number of white players above. See comments for details.

VeriSign

VeriSign is a fairly successful company that manages the DNS servers for .com and .net, as well as providing communications and security solutions. They are based in Mountain View, CA but we saw their office in Dulles, VA. I think they weren't really sure what to do with us, so they showed some promotional tapes and took as around their facilities. I was amused when they said they wanted to be "the GE of the 21st century", since I am going to be working for the GE this summer. They work out of a couple office buildings called Lakeside, named for an artificial lake that they all share. Apparently the lake is only for decoration, as there were plenty of warnings of what you could not do in it. Their offices seemed fitting of a dot-com type company, with lots of cubicles and most employees still strolling in around 10am. They also appear to have a cult-like admiration of their CEO Stratton Sclavos, who has an awesome name. They also has a TGI Fridays and Olive Garden right next door – reminding me of Office Space. Frankly, I was half asleep by the time we got to VeriSign so I can't remember much else than that.

Computer Science Corporation

Computer Science Corporation (CSC) is a company with such an unassuming name, I didn't really recognize. I remember now that my cousin actually has done some internships with them in the past. Anyway, they are apparently a large global consulting/outsourcing firm that does a bunch of giant contracts for the US Government. They also treated us great and gave some great presentations.

They started by explaining how relevant our IST curriculum was to their work (a change from the usual talks where we are sucking up to them). Then Lem Lasher, VP of Innovation, teleconferenced in from Paris to talk to us. I thought it would be a sort of novelty hello and welcome, but he actually gave a 15-minute presentation (Powerpoint and all!) about the changing nature of innovation. He noted up till the 19th century innovation was a personal achievement, in the 20th century it became a group/corporate one, and today we were seeing innovation becoming a global phenomenon that everyone contributes to and benefits from. Pretty neat stuff.

Next they had a marketing director talk about branding, which seemed like an odd choice for technology students. Basically he took us through how they construct their brand, how it changes, and what all is involved. It was actually very interesting and got me thinking about how I could use it in my projects. Then they had managers and recent Penn State grads talk about their work. Basically all these projects involved millions or billions of dollars and many times the new hires played important roles in these projects.

They ended by taking us up to their executive dining room for a lunch. Our table became a students only table by accident, including myself, Rob, and Cat. An amusing part of the trip were the bathroom breaks. Everywhere we went we were being fed and given stuff to drink, so bathroom usage got to be pretty heavy. The demographics of the trip were heavily male (only 4 female students by my count, which is a shame) there were actually lines for the men's room. Not an everyday phenomena. Anyway the lunch was nice and CSC sent us on our way with a free "Team CSC" backpack. Apparently their racing team is #1 in the world and they're expecting their guy to win the Tour de France with Lance retired.

Washington Mall

We drove all this way to be in DC and we only got 45-minutes to walk the mall, a major downside in my book. Our gang ended up going to the Washington Monument and the WWII Memorial. There are picture available on Flickr. We were amused with ourselves since we were the only tourists wearing business professional. Apparently it was the first time my Collegian cohort Chris Bajgier had ever been in DC and seen the sights. It was nice while it lasted, but I wish we could have seen more.

Blackboard

Blackboard has appeared a number times IST's career fairs, which I always thought was odd because Penn State does not use their academic suite of e-learning software. I only recently realized that Blackboard is also responsible for the card readers and cash registers which are used extensively around our campus. Anyway, they were really nice and talked to us about different parts of their business. Their customer support manager explained how he built their service from the ground up after the company experienced rapid growth. They also showed off their e-learning software, which looked similar to ANGEL but nicer. 

Then they had recent college grads show us around their offices and talk about their jobs. Apparently a lot of the new hires do consulting work, traveling to campuses and doing custom installations of the Blackboard software for their clients. Their offices are in downtown DC, which I thought was pretty cool. The offices themselves were pretty nice and you could tell it was a growing company with a unique, college-like culture. I could have seen myself working there.

So that was the Washington trip in a nutshell. The trip could have been better, but I think it was worthwhile. I'm really behind in sleep now though – perhaps late night blogging isn't the best solution. Tomorrow I'll talk about today's event – a leadership event hosted by GE. Good night. 

Still as a guy I got a little ticked off at the notion that getting accepted into colleges was easier for us. I got rejected from good schools as did my friends and I never noticed any visible difference between the schools guys and girls got into. The whole thing raised a lot of questions for me, so I am going to just throw these out there for discussion:

• If young women are better students and are outnumbering men on campuses, why have we not seen this translate into more women in leadership positions? Is this just old fashioned sexism or are there other issues in play?
• If talented candidates are being rejected purely because of lesser performance in metrics such as SATs and GPA, what good are these statistics? I found that very interesting, because I have heard that standardized testing and grading models typically favor girls’ learning styles.
• Do they have the same problems at MIT and CalTech? Or is this a phenomena exclusive to liberal arts schools like Kenyon? Note I am not arguing that women cannot succeed in math or science. Fewer women study technical fields though, so perhaps the problem is all these strong applicants are interested in the same fields. Women in the sciences and technology is an important social challenge that we need to fix.
• Likewise, who is to say that the girls who are rejected from Kenyon and other schools can’t succeed elsewhere? I go to a large state-affiliated public school and am getting a first-class education. So I’m not crying a river for the girls who are stuck at a Big Ten school after getting the thin envelope from the Ivys.
• Back to over-qualified applicants, isn’t it kind of ridiculous how much “experience” some of these high school students have? I kind of find all these trips and councils and things that have been invented to bolster college applications ridiculous. They also favor people have the time and money to participate.
• Isn’t it just as alarming that young men are often weaker applicants, can we do anything to fix that? I don’t believe gender equity is a zero sum game and I think that there’s plenty that can be done to encourage academic achievement among boys that would keep them at least on a par with their counterparts.

I think those questions sum up my thoughts and I’d love to hear some answers if someone wants to comment. Higher education is one of the strengths of our country, but I think we could do an even better job. However, the one point I think we can all agree with Ms. Britz on is that getting the thin envelope sucks.

While this week I am putting out a lot of fires, I have been doing a lot of long-term planning lately. We’re only halfway through the semester and I am already being forced to look past that. I accepted an internship this month for the summer, which will require me to live in Erie, PA for about 10 weeks. I’m hoping the lake weather will make up for being far way from home. At the Collegian we’re making some progress with development, which means we need to start thinking about how we’ll implement it all over the summer for the fall. I am also narrowing in on a thesis topic for next year, which will involve newspapers’ adoption of IT. I even have a thesis adviser who wants to work with me.

Tonight I had to sit down and figure out what classes I’ll be taking next fall. It’s hard to believe at this time next year I’ll be preparing to enter the “real world”. Suffice to say, I am looking forward to a relaxing spring break. I got my tax refund recently and some of that spare cash is going into some great DVDs, including the new Controversial Classics DVD set, which includes one of my favorites: Network. That should be fun. Back to my earlier discussion – I can see my college years slipping away. So I guess I got to make the best of what I have. I also need to get to sleep, so that’s all for now.

I had no finals today, so I did study quite a bit today. Still I feel like I could have done a little more. I have an interesting problem in that two of my exams require less studying but are more important. The third exam appears to have less of an impact on my overall grade, but will be more difficult – it is an open book essay exam based on several volumes of globalization literature. I am focusing on the first two right now – Japanese civilization and IT project management. Fun stuff. The project management one is especially nice since most of the terms look similar and have similar definitions. There are also a lot of pointless theories named for different people that I could care less about. The good news is, we supposedly have the questions already to study from. I am not sure if I trust this though.

In other school whining, I was very disappointed to find out that my $100 textbook on organizational theory is now work $9 if I try to sell it back to the bookstore. It will be coming soon to an Amazon.com near you. Otherwise, I am hesitantly optimistic about grades at this point. Regardless of what happens, I get to celebrate the end of finals Wednesday night with the premiere of King Kong.

In minor blog news, I noted today that 1/2 of all my posts came from the first week. I have been a little busier, which explains part of the problem. I hope to add more real soon though. Also I am testing out ecto again, which apparently now works on WordPress.com. I went back and spell checked my blog entries. It’s always embarrassing to see my poor spelling, but the fact that it has been on the Internet for so long is even worse. Oh well. Good luck to all other students with finals out there. I’ll be back with more later in the week.

Egypt: This man talked about how the country has changed a lot from a communist society to a more open, democratic one. His most interesting thoughts were explaining polygamy in Muslim culture. He explained how marriage requires a man to provide for his family, thus someone who marries twice has twice the households to provide for – not very cost efficient. Women who work are still not expected to provide for the family. Most cases are people taking care of families where relatives have passed on or in the countryside with really old men. Women have to give their husband permission to marry a second wife, otherwise they can get a divorce. The explanation for men being able to divorce easier than a woman is that they have to leave their family well off and provide for them afterwords. A woman can get a divorce, they just have to go through a process so they aren’t just taking their husband’s support and running. It’s different and probably not the best way of handling things, but its interesting and its culture. He also noted that his wife, his sisters, and sister-in-law all work.

Russia: This woman was also very interesting. She noted the differences between the communist state and the current one. She seemed to lament the change. Under communism, she said, one felt secure. There were police everywhere and from her point of view their presence was welcome. She noted, however, that under communism the state dictated everything you received and there was always shortages. The current lawlessness in Russia is very disturbing to her and she said in some ways she would welcome a return to dictatorship. This kind of flies in the face of our American view that democracy is always better.

Bhutan: This guy was very funny and very excited to talk about his country. The king of Bhutan has relinquished some of his power recently and is moving the country towards a constitutional monarchy. He also talked about their plan of moving towards a higher Gross National Happiness, as opposed to trying to compete with large countries Gross Domestic Product. One of the students noted that he kind of glossed over a refugee crisis that has been going on between Bhutan and Nepal. It seemed like this guy was really optimistic for the future, or at least wanted to put on a good face for his audience.

Sierra Leone: In a contrast to the man from Bhutan, the woman from Sierra Leone was pretty negative about her country. There is a governance failure there, she said. When our professor said that is probably due to the civil war, the woman smiled and said government failure is why they had the war in the first place. They struggle to maintain schools and infrastructure. When we asked what happens to the money from their famous diamond mining operations, she simply shrugged her shoulders and said it has been mismanaged. She also shed light on a battle there between feminists and traditionalists.

All in all it was a very interesting discussion and could have gone a lot longer if we had more time. It opened my eyes to the fact that news and historical descriptions of events do not always match the first-person view of them. In the future, I would like to hear more first-person perspectives of events along with the general overviews.