#56. Servitec (Thursday, July 26, 2007)

What was your best day…of nailing a presentation?

I betrayed the Latin roots with that one. I initially wanted to call our company Servitam: a combination of “servare” in Latin, to save; and “vitam” in Latin¹, life. So that’s what we went with originally. But then Colin (from Kingston) thought “Servitec” sounded cooler (which it did, despite making no sense) – so I agreed to go with that.

This was all part of the conclusion to a month-long high-achievers’ summer program I did after my junior year of high school, known as Shad Valley (#83). It was held at twelve different university campuses across Canada, and I was assigned to the Thunder Bay campus at Lakehead University with about 60 other students.

That month at Lakehead, despite its relatively remote location (we got warnings not to wander off the immediate campus grounds because of bears) and the school’s low rank, was simply a really, really good time.

We attended daily lectures by various university faculty. In addition, each of us had to do our own thirty-minute presentation on a scientific topic of our choosing. I did mine on the electron microscope², and it turned out to be one of the best in the group – though my suitemate neighbor³ Clark (from Calgary) overheard me practicing under my covers for several nights, and found that to be the funniest thing in the world.
We did outdoors stuff like tent-camping and rafting on the river. One time, deciding that standard rafting wasn’t fun enough, Clark and I decided to race ahead flipping over each others’ rafts. A series of hijinks ensued that resulted in him getting bit on the shoulder by a leech and being in extreme pain for the next few days (I was spared).
We also went to the movies twice. Once for Transformers, where Matt (from Toronto) held a grudge towards me for the rest of the camp for not waking him up as he somehow slept through all the second half action.
The other time was for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix⁴. Basically, that morning the program director tells us we’re going to the theater tonight to watch The Sound of Music, this classic 1950s film. And despite Harry Potter having come out just a few days ago, everyone seemed to believe him and was vocally complaining for the length of the day. All the way until we get to the Cineplex and walk in to the Harry Potter film.
A week or so before the end, we have this ballroom dancing class as an activity. So we’re supposed to all pair up in guy-girl. But there’s an imbalance, so a few of us guys have to pair up. And I end up pairing up with Tim (from Vancouver), this 6 foot 8 giant of a guy (I was 6 foot 2). So I guess I assume the female role for the entire night. The counselors snap a bunch of photos, and everyone agrees that we were one of the best-dancing couples of the night⁵.

So the big activity for the month is the Shad Cup, where six teams are formed and they’re tasked to create a business plan (and present it to all these business people) for a company under this year’s theme of “Zero Waste”. One of the girls in our team, Allison (from Markham), comes up with this idea of compostable diapers, and we run with it. The whole thing includes several late nights researching and writing⁶…and finally the day comes to present.

It goes really, really well. My part of the presentation on the financials is especially spotless, and the finance guy evaluating is nodding his head the entire way throughout. And on the last night of Shad Valley, when they announce the awards, Servitec wins for best presentation.

As for best overall⁷: the consensus is that it’ll either be me or my Ottawa buddy Jake Ryerson’s⁸ team – which included my crush⁹ Samantha Kubiak (from Brampton). And, of course, it’s them.

But otherwise, a month in which just about everything went right.

In the accusative case, i.e. the spelling if you were using the noun as the object in the sentence, which here I was.
I just repurposed the most recent physics project I did for school.
And best friend, for that month at least.
Speaking of Harry Potter, the seventh and final Harry Potter book also came out while we were there. And we couldn’t access any bookstores, which forced a lot of the other students to hunt online to find out what exactly happened and whether or not Harry died. (I, not knowing anything, once joked that he died, and a bunch of the girls believed me…they were not pleased at me when they found out the truth.)
We actually were pretty good.
I kind of end up being the one coordinating the whole 50-page plan together, and hence writing up those inevitable five or six sections of the plan that we underestimated and had to rush to complete at the last minute.
Which then gets to compete against the winners from all the other campuses in a few months, for the final Shad Cup.
He went to a different school, but I knew him from trivia. He was basically a slightly more outgoing, slightly less savant-like clone of my best friend Nigel, so I got along with him very well.
Just for that month.