The Gap

There is an historical gap between my post about the conference and when I actually left DC. That period was paper writing and saying goodbye to people from Koch and one of my other friends in the city. Doug and I also spent time hanging out with one of his friends from the Dept of Labor. During the course of that evening, we were able to share our faith with him, talk about evil and suffering, the historicity of the resurrection and other such topics. It was sweet.

The actual end of the program was sort of anti climactic because we all left at such different times. At the final banquet on Thursday, most were of the mentality that there would still be time to say goodbye. But not really. I hardly said goodbye to any of the Journalism program people and maybe a 1/4 of the ASP students. Comparing those goodbyes to the ones at the end of Ireland, this one was completely different. At ASP, we were not nearly as tight as a group since our time was spent at internships and doing our own thing with small groups of friends, rather than mobbing around a country in a bus. There were a few people I wanted to say goodbye to and was unable to, but on the whole, my world hasn't ended because I missed others. We are all on our own journey's and just happened to meet for 3.5 months in DC to learn more about what those journeys would look like.

There was a final banquet on Thursday where certificates were handed out, food was eaten and final words were said. The certificate ceremony was a good time. When they called our names we sat in a chair at the front and people would just say encouraging words to you or tell a story from the semester. There were also informal awards given out designating people "Most likely to be..." or "Brightest smile at ASP", etc. I got the "Adam Smith 2.0 Award." I was honored to be compared with the father of modern economics.