3rd Day - Monday

Today was another day of waking up at 5:30 in the morning, so by the end of the conference I should have about one night's worth of sleep. After we grabbed another "boxed breakfast," (which was still horrible) we boarded the buses and headed over to the Newseum, a museum all about news, the media, and the first amendment. After that, we came back to the 4H to have lunch. We were supposed to get in and get out really quickly, but it turned out to be about a forty minute wait and so I wolfed down some food in about 4 minutes. Then we went to Al Gore's speech about the three biggest crises in America: international affairs, the economy, and clean energy. He spoke about how if we find new sources of clean energy, that creates jobs, which stimulates the economy; also the energy would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and fix the conflict in the Middle East.  His speech was good, but Al Gore really didn't make it sound like anything new; it really sounded like a speech he had given numerous times previously. However, that's understandable, since he was given a Nobel Prize for those same ideas, and the same speech was turned into a movie, and he's probably been all over the country giving it. Even so, it was an inspirational presentation and I enjoyed it and those same ideas are always in my thoughts. After the speech, we met with our groups to discuss what Al Gore had said. Then we had dinner at the University and went back to the place where we heard the speech to see a documentary about these kids who run for president at their school. It's called Third Monday in October. The movie was supposed to teach us about leadership in a way we could relate to, but I didn't really enjoy it or find it very inspirational. There was too much "drama" too really take the movie seriously. Then the cast from the movie came and discussed it. They talked about their experience making the movie, and their leadership positions since then (the movie was filmed in 2005, I think). I found myself relating to them a little more than I could with the movie.