One of my favorite things about the summer has been weekly Thursday group meetings that we have been able to organize. The events are always interesting, giving us chances to be leaders, express our interests with the group, and have a time during which the entire cohort can engage with each other socially. Furthermore, the Thursday meetings have served as a great marker of progress for the group. My favorite Thursday meeting has been the most recent trivia session that Dorian, Michael, and Flora organized. It was a fun activity, and I really enjoyed the questions that were asked, but most of all I enjoyed seeing how far our group had come as far as social comfortability and bonding. For the first few weeks of the program, the cohort had very apparent social divides, and there was an obvious lack of camaraderie among us all. We addressed this during the discussion on race and Detroit, hosted by Tierra, Nick, and Will B. Stewart, and since then the change in the group has been significant. I think that we’ve all bonded to an extend, and we’ve definitely gotten past the initial stiffness that the initial weeks in Detroit brought, if anything. I enjoyed the trivia because the difference between the race talk and now is a difference that I honestly didn’t think would be so striking, and I enjoyed it a lot.
