Hey dudes!
It is a wonderfully misty Wednesday, smack in the middle of our two-week Midterm period, so forgive me for being a little loopy :). Due to mentioned loopiness, I will not be delivering a thoughtful post this week… instead, prepare yourself for one of my easiest posts: the daily (ah, make that weekly) life of a Wellesley College student!
Before I really get into the meat of the week (which might not be as exciting as one would imagine, but I hold out hope that my schedule will spring into fabulously interesting material once scrawled on my Word document), let me describe how I’ve decided on this week’s theme :). Along with our two swimming recruits that we hosted this weekend, Grace and Tammy, I had another prospie who is a friend of my younger sister: Isabella! I have two conclusions from this; the first is that this make my middle sister Leslie really old (both Leslie and Isabella are juniors now. As I’ve already said once today [after a mind-blowingly rapid math lecture in which we learned that you can solve differential equations without integration if you can keep all the darn Taylor Series steps in order]: life is crazy.) Second, I got to see some parents! This has actually been a very parent-heavy weekend, as Caitlin (our 2015 blogger :)) already mentioned it was “Friends and Family” weekend. However, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen prospective student parents, so I had forgotten what it’s like to be really drilled on what Wellesley has to offer. None of this student-driven questioning stuff—we want to hear about how my expectations coming into Wellesley had changed and been transformed.
Well, I’m not quite up to how my expectations had been transformed (I’ll leave that for my next week thoughtful post :P), but I did get some easier questions; one of which a description of a typical schedule here. So I am gladly returning to my roots of last-year blogging, and describing my week. Not only does this make me look really good (because I’m crazy busy, which we all are, but it looks better with play-by-play commentary and occasionally helpings of hyperbole), but I’m legitimately answering a prospective student/parent question. Thus, after much introduction, I finally begin :).
Let’s begin on Wednesday, after finishing my last post :). I was located where I currently am, which is the Freeman living room (at this point I dutifully dig out my agenda, because I actually can’t remember a thing past two days ago). Since it was then 3:45pm, I made a mad dash to swim practice, which starts at 4pm. (Note: Having a bike this year has been proving useful—it’s a good investment for any Wellesley students who like to dash about madly, though definitely not a necessity for the non-dashing type.) We swam an excellent practice I’m sure (practice is always awesome if you are in the right mindset, which I thankfully have been in this year!) after which we tromped off to dinner at the Lulu, which finished about 7pm. After that, I biked down to the Science Center again, where I spent an hour studying, before returning to Munger to fall asleep. I recently calculated how much time I spend in the Science Center—it is happily less time than I spend in my room sleeping, but not by much ;).
After having gone to sleep early (before 9pm is ridiculously early—ask anyone here), I woke up at 5:45am to go to swim practice on Thursday. I have independent research on Thursday (see a little bit down this paragraph), so I have to make up swim practice. (We also have the option of making up on Sunday, but I’m already making up for Monday’s practice on Sunday, so Thursday morning it is. The problem is labs—labs often occur during practice time, so the more labs you have, the more time conflicts you run into.) Ika and Tiffany joined me around 7am, as they came for additional technique work and to keep me company. Here’s another note: Ika and Tiffany are two of our team’s pillars in both dedication to the sport and straight-out kindness :).
After swimming, I biked over to breakfast, then off to Psych 101 class at 8:30am. Classes are 70 minutes each, 2-3 times a week (except if you have lab, in which case you have an additional 3.5-hour lab some afternoon.) Psych 101 was followed by Neuro 200 at 9:40am, then at 11am I was off to lunch and to take care of any miscellaneous emails/homework prep. At 12pm I got on the free MIT/Wellesley exchange bus into Boston, and thereafter followed a 1.5-hour commute to Harvard Medical School, where I do independent research with Professor Bevil Conway (and more directly, with Galina and Rosa, who are both Wellesley graduates who work there full-time.)
After five hours or so of research (Professor Conway studies vision through computational neuroscience. I’m just getting started, so I’m trying to figure out how to use MATLAB, as well as reading literature papers to try to find out where our project fits in the scheme of vision science. I also just got my Harvard Med ID, which was quite a process so I’m very excited), I had a special outing with Galina and Rosa; we went out to dinner at a Chinese take-out place down the road. It’s been a long time since I didn’t have dining hall food… but had to pay for my food as well :). Nevertheless, it was Chinese, so I was happy. I then travelled back into central Boston, waited at the bus stop for a while (I’ve waited anytime between 30 mins to an hour and a half. The MIT/Wellesley Exchange bus is free for Wellesley students and is supposed to come every hour, but it gets a little inconsistent around rush hour), then arrived back at Wellesley at 9pm. After that, it was some homework, then straight to sleep. We don’t have Friday morning weights this year, which is great, except I accidentally was at the Sports Center at 6:50am anyway because I forgot this pertinent fact last Friday :).
So I was at the Sports Center early, and did some homework before going to breakfast and Chem class at 8:30am. I did more homework between then and math class at 11:10am. (You see a trend. I try very hard to get homework done in the little breaks I have during the day, and it’s usually moderately successful… but “usually” is the key word there, and it’s hard to get a lot done in hour-long segments.) Then I literally run to lunch before Chem lab at 12:45pm, which this week got done a whole hour early! That allowed me to meander to swim practice at 4pm, where I swam, ate dinner, and then hung out with the swim team and recruit, Grace, on Friday night, since it was not a midterm week last week and I could afford to do such lovely things as do no studying on Friday night :).
Friday night was actually loads of fun, and I have pictures to show you :). Tiffany, recruit Grace, Karina, me, Suman, and Erin all made pumpkin-chocolate chip-spice cookie/doughnuts; it was originally supposed to be pumpkin spice doughnuts, but we a) didn’t have a doughnut tin (uh, we barely had eggs, and only because Karina is wonderful and thinks ahead and bought baking stuff), and b) were conquered for our love of chocolate. (Chocolate and peanut butter are the hallmarks of the swim team. I never ate peanut butter before I came here, and thanks to a select group of swimmers it is now one of my staples.) We got a little bit creative with the pumpkin tin as well (who has a can opener on campus? Scratch that, who wants to go retrieve their can opener when it’s raining buckets and we’re cooking in the basement, e.g. stairs?), but scissor-stabbing was loads of fun. And in the end, we had a perfectly edible treat, which went fabulously with the extra ice cream that the lacrosse team, who were also hanging out in the Shafer basement, generously offered us.
Saturday morning was more carbohydrate-induced bonding… we had a team breakfast wherein we got to make pancakes :). It was a great start before our alumni pool party, which was itself great fun. I met an alum, Katie, who was an editor for a scientific journal (which is awesome! I’m in the search for some way to combine science and writing in my future life when I have a real job and live on my own and stuff. Good thing it’s a gazillion (about 11 years) away before I actually get my PhD, because this “stuff” is a still a little vague.), Mary-Ellen taught me to do a dive, we did a whole bunch of fun relays, and we got to eat more pumpkin/spice/chocolate/doughnut/cookie/things. Life is good when you’ve got swimming, alumni, team, and cookie things, guys. Life is good.
After a whole evening and morning of not doing work… I definitely needed to do work. I spent Saturday and Sunday doing homework (including five more hours of independent research), and essentially stressed myself out with the realization that midterms week wasn’t some distant unimaginable point, but this week. I unstressed a bit when I also realized that Fall Break wasn’t some distant even more unimaginable point, but rather next week. So I’m getting through this week and holding out for Monday and Tuesday off (ie FALL BREAK!!!), which will be excellent, because I have more tests next week and studying always puts me behind in classwork. Also, because breaks are awesome and I am always hopeful that something will come up that will force me to stop studying, and that something is usually friends and happens when I remember that social activities are great and get myself invited to a Bananagrams extravaganza.
Anyway, moving forward to Monday morning, when I was up at 6:30am so that I could lift a trap bar weighing 145 pounds and flat bench 80. I have no idea how that is comparatively, since I know no one besides athletes who actually uses these weights, but maybe that will mean something to someone out there :). Either way, they are heavy, but weight-lifting is actually a lot of fun when you have a whole team around you and good workout music on (warning: good workout music is sadly and consistently deficient in good [or even appropriate] lyrics. It’s an unfortunate trade-off, but we manage to suffer though.) Then comes bike-to-breakfast and bike-to-Science-Center and walk-quickly-to-Psych, then-Neuro-then-lunch, then spend 12:30-1:30pm in Math Office hours! Math is terribly difficult this semester by my opinion (I have heard that it is easy by one person, but there are always at least 15 people hanging on for dear life in and spilling out into the hallway besides his office on Tuesdays when the problem sets are due, so I maintain that I am right ;).) so I spend a lot of time in office hours. Then 1:30pm-5pm is Neuro lab (we had a very odd campus-wide internet failure last Monday, and because this is Wellesley, therefore everything completely fell apart… meaning we got let out early :)). From 5pm-10pm was me insanely studying chemistry and attending a tutoring session in neuro (the neuro problem set is due on Thursday. I think ahead, but I can’t do more than a week ahead or I’d go nuts). Then bed and up on Tuesday!
Tuesday: up at 7:45am, class from 8:30-9:40am, bringing Isabella and her family around campus from 10-11am (yay!), class from 11:10-12:20pm, lunch from 12:30-1:15pm, math office hours from 1:15pm-2:45pm, then swim lessons/swimming from 3:15-6pm. Then, studying like crazy for chemistry and psych (test on Thursday. AHHHH THAT’S TOMORROW!!!), taking care of many miscellaneous items (hey, I called my parents this week! It happens every so often :)), and going to sleep early, because I’m getting sick. I’m growing to realize that pretty much everyone on the campus owns sticks/pills/powder packets of vitamin C pills, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I’m converted. Currently, I’m participating the extreme-orange-juice-drinking and attempting to get to bed on time. I feel better today, so who knows…?
Then, today :). Weights from 7-8am, Chem class from 8:30-9:40am, chem studying until 11am, math class from 11-12:20pm, Conway lab meeting from 12:30-1:30pm (except it ended early today), lunch and here. Back in the sofa, back in Freeman Living room. It’s nice to make full circle :).
And so that’s where I’ll leave you, if you had the endurance to make it through my entire virtual week :). It’s a little bit tiring right now (if you could draw this out from my scrambled descriptions, the sum is that I have a Chem midterm on Friday that I’m terrified of, a Psych midterm tomorrow that I think I’ll be okay on, a math p-set that I finally finished, a neuro assignment that I really need to finish, and a chemistry lab that needs to get done before Friday.), and it will be similarly tiring next week, but once Midterms are done it’ll be back to normal business again :). I think I stress too much about exams, but luckily everyone else seems to as well, so we are all united in our pre-test haze ;).
Best to you, and as always I’m open to questions/comments! It’s always fun to indirectly complain about my life (heh heh. I never forget that I get to read and spout information as my full-time job. How many people are lucky enough to do that? Plus, swimming and blogging and friends and everything else I get to do :)), so if you want to as well, I’d be happy to hear it ;P.
Cheers and happy misty Wednesday!
Monica