On Sunday, January 5th, we had our Life Course Scholars Retreat at the Martin Johnson House down at SIO. It was my first day back in San Diego coming from winter break and I was excited to start the quarter off by attending the retreat. The venue was extremely nice as it was surrounded by an ocean view and the weather was close to perfect as it was sunny yet chilly. Making the event right on time, I first spotted a familiar face upon entering the building. It turns out that my brother’s friend, Leeda, is also in the program! What a small world!
We then started the retreat shortly after by first introducing ourselves. It was really cool to see the variety of majors and interests people had in our small cohort. Professor Lewis and Bussell then introduced the program and we did a fun little icebreaker to get to know one another. Short lectures were then given by the two professors and I found some of the facts/statistics quite surprising about the aging population. After that we had a delicious lunch and more time to mingle with each other. Then we proceeded to move our bodies and took a short walk around the location and the view was just breathtaking. We even spotted multiple dolphins that afternoon and continued our conversations among the group outdoors. Dr. Patricia Benesh was also invited to speak at our retreat at one point. She had great insights on the elderly population as well as on how to write a meaningful memoir. Her presentation was genuine and heartfelt, and it further motivated me to do my project on my extraordinary person (EP). We ended off the retreat by playing a fun board game, similar to the game of life, but a bit more realistic. It was cool to see that the game had so much uncertainty, which is in a sense true, since that is what life is all about :P. Upon ending, there was a last activity for us to individually write on what we wanted to be like when we were 80. I thought this was an interesting prompt and began to fill my blank pages with determination. Then we said our goodbyes and parted with anticipation until our next meeting.
We then started the retreat shortly after by first introducing ourselves. It was really cool to see the variety of majors and interests people had in our small cohort. Professor Lewis and Bussell then introduced the program and we did a fun little icebreaker to get to know one another. Short lectures were then given by the two professors and I found some of the facts/statistics quite surprising about the aging population. After that we had a delicious lunch and more time to mingle with each other. Then we proceeded to move our bodies and took a short walk around the location and the view was just breathtaking. We even spotted multiple dolphins that afternoon and continued our conversations among the group outdoors. Dr. Patricia Benesh was also invited to speak at our retreat at one point. She had great insights on the elderly population as well as on how to write a meaningful memoir. Her presentation was genuine and heartfelt, and it further motivated me to do my project on my extraordinary person (EP). We ended off the retreat by playing a fun board game, similar to the game of life, but a bit more realistic. It was cool to see that the game had so much uncertainty, which is in a sense true, since that is what life is all about :P. Upon ending, there was a last activity for us to individually write on what we wanted to be like when we were 80. I thought this was an interesting prompt and began to fill my blank pages with determination. Then we said our goodbyes and parted with anticipation until our next meeting.