What To Expect From Summit Week

Oh, Summit Week, where do I begin?
First off, you'll make new friends. TONS of new friends. And you'll be depressed at the end of the week because you miss all your new friends so much. Trust me!
I'm not an overly social person, (actually, I'm the kid who eats lunch in the library because I'm too shy to eat with the other kids) but I made more friends than I can count!! We shared inside jokes, TONS of laughter, and by the end of the week I had totally lost my shyness. The Summit Week is an amazing, enthusiastic week that will keep you on your feet and it's totally impossible not to fall in love with all the people around you who are so pumped up about life and changing society for the better. 
So, I'm warning you, you'll make TONS of friends during Summit Week.
You'll also discover new things about yourself, new ways of improving your leadership skills and how to make a difference in your community.
You'll meet lots of inspirational people. During my summit week, I had the honor of meeting one of my personal heros, famed Pulitzer-prize winning photographer David Kennerly. For me, this was monumental, since my main hobby is shooting & developing old black and white 35mm film. Getting the chance to hear, speak with and hang out with such an iconic photographer was a dream come true for me.
We also met a lot of big names in the nonprofit industry, and the likes of Barbra Bush (daughter to George W. Bush.)
We had seminars to improve ourselves, seminars about how to improve our communities seminars about how to improve America, and seminars on how to improve international affairs.
You'll get several opportunties to tour DC, and plenty of time to visit almost any museum you'd like.
Mock Congress was my FAVORITE part!! :) We got to role play and experience first-hand what it's like to be a congress-person. We did this the night before meeting our real-life representatives in Congress.
Being so close to government was really amazing!! It's definitely not something I'm ever going to forget.
During Summit Week, you have a close-knit group of people, about 25, called your "workshop." This workshop becomes your Student Leader family. I'm alot closer to some of the people in my workshop family than I am to people in my own school. We laughed, we cried, we shared our deepest secrets, fears and hopes.
You'll be tired after Summit Week and don't expect to have tons of free time. You have about an hour of free time every night, but you won't want to go to sleep. Every single night, I went down to the Student Lounge & played board games with some other Student Leaders and it was SO much fun.
At the end of Summit Week there's a big dinner and a dance. You'll party it out and probably cry a little and hug a lot. After all, it's your last night.
One thing I can promise you is that you'll leave Summit Week with a LOT more people in your phone contacts. The biggest part of Summit Week is the networking factor. You'll want to stay in touch with all your new friends.
Oh, and don't worry, the food is incredible. Literally, you have enough to feed a small army, some of the BEST desserts I've ever tasted and enough variety for all religions/creeds/tastes/lifestyles.
You won't go hungry, they feed you five times a day. Oh, and there's a constant suppy of FREE caffiene, if you're worried about that.
No, you won't be able to use the pool, but during my summit week, you were allowed to workout in a group & go to the park in the morning if you so chose.
Summit Week is all about Serve, Inspire, & Change. Thanks to Bank of America, those words will forever be engraved on my heart. <3

-Mary Di Valerio