Legally Southern, Part I

By Lauren Leist

December 19, 2006 10:48 am

— Several months ago an invitation for a mock trial seminar at Harvard was sent to my school. Emily Cegielski, Saige Pilgrim and I, being mock trial fanatics, knew we could not pass up such an offer. Before long we had plane tickets to Boston.
A few days before the seminar, Harvard Mock Trial sent case material and an information packet via e-mail. Eleven schools were on the list to be attending, including Boston Latin School, Pope John Paul II High School, Foreign Language School of South Korea and Laurel Christian High School. Our school did seem quite out of place next to South Korea, but we were proud to be the only representatives from Mississippi.
We arrived, functioning on coffee, bright and early at the New Orleans airport on Dec. 1. Our plane departure time was 10 a.m., but due to thunderstorms in the northeast, it was delayed for three hours. We landed in Philadelphia at 4:30 p.m. and received tickets for the next possible flight to Boston. Fortunately, the Philly airport is like a giant mall. We ate at T.G.I. Friday’s, shopped at the Gap, had our picture taken with Santa Claus and indulged on McFlurries. Five hours later, our plane departed.
We finally crashed in our hotel room, where milk and cookies were waiting for us, at midnight.
Cambridge is a gorgeous town, so we took a detour on our way to Harvard the next morning. Well, maybe the detour wasn’t exactly planned, but we did enjoy viewing the lovely townhouses and counting every Starbucks.
The Harvard campus is magnificent with its colonial buildings. It is different from any campus I have ever seen. There is no official sign that says “Welcome to Harvard — Home of the Crimson,” but instead, a giant cast iron gate proudly displays a sophisticated “H.”
After debating which one of the big beautiful buildings was Sever Hall, where our classes were to be held, the Harvard mock trial members greeted us and gave each of us a Harvard folder filled with information and a legal pad. We took our seats and scanned the faces of approximately 100 mock trial students from all over the world.
A brief opening ceremony was held before beginning the first class. The whole seminar was headed by the Harvard mock trial team members, who were all exceptionally nice and helpful. Each class was an hour long, taught by one of the Harvard team members, and focused on different aspects of a trial. My first session, the character witness workshop, was led by an animated junior who could imitate anyone from Mickey Mouse to a Keebler elf.
During our lunch break, we were pressed for time, so we met up with some of Emily’s family and raced to the first restaurant we saw. Out of all the places to eat in Cambridge, we happened to enter a Mexican/Cajun restaurant playing country music. Needless to say, I felt right at home.
That afternoon, we took an amazing tour of Harvard. Each building had a story tied to it, and we learned an overwhelming amount of history. The library has four stories underground in addition to the five stories above ground. My favorite building was the freshman dining hall which looks like the Hogwarts dining hall from Harry Potter.
The Harvard emblem has open books with “veritas,” which means “truth” in Latin, written across them. This relates to Harvard’s founding fathers’ theory about education. They believed that a man should know much about one subject and a little bit of everything else. Thus, students have concentrations instead of majors and are required to take classes in a vast area of subjects.
As the end of our first day came to a close, we took the subway, faster and easier than our rental car, back to our hotel. Riding the subway was the first time I realized how “legally Southern” I am. For someone who enjoys riding up and down escalators in the mall, a subway was a big step. That concluded our adventures for the first day.
We went back to the hotel in anticipation of what the next day would bring.

Lauren Leist is a Teen staff writer who attends Laurel Christian School.

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