Harvard University

Rather than slink off to our rooms, we spent Friday night in the lobby, our suitcases piled by the wall, the couches shoved together into makeshift beds, blankets strewn over every surface, until finally each of us gathered his belongings and left. The last week had passed in an instant, and though we were exhausted, none of us wanted it to end. There were sixteen of us in the lobby, fifty sleeping upstairs, and another batch of sixty-six scattered around the world, waiting to replace us the next week. We had been chosen from a pool of nearly five hundred applicants for the Iowa Young…