Eeee! Snow :)

Hello readers 🙂

I don’t know if you’ve heard… (of course you’ve heard!) but we had a SNOW DAY on Friday! Wellesley College doesn’t close for 27 years, and then it closes twice in one year! I hear the weatherman in Minnesota (where I’m from) is quite jealous of our blizzard. From Friday to Sunday noon, there was no transportation in or out of campus, and the lines for food went out the door. Yet the dining hall staff made us all food, the grounds staff plowed the major walkways, we had internet, we had a whole bunch of people working tremendously hard behind the scenes, and we are so thankful. I love this school—the adults even organized a snow ball fight for us, though we didn’t need help with that ;).

I personally got a lot of homework done (ah, homework. I was reminiscing with Tiffany yesterday—remember in high school when we actually went home from school to do homework? Then again, I had a ton of it then too, so it’s hard to be nostalgic :)). I also got dragged out into the snow, after which I proceeded to have a great time. I injured my elbow on Thursday morning—hyperextended it while sprinting into the wall, and terrified my coach—so I wasn’t really allowed to use that arm. But we went trooping through knee-high snow, and I made Tiffany climb some monster hills since I didn’t dare do it without a cold cushion :). Then we walked around, and some of the swim team participated in traying—if you haven’t heard of it, it’s sledding down hills on dinner trays—and basically had the best study break ever. Like I said, I love this school :).

I also have great friends :). Since we weren’t allowed to have practice on Friday and Saturday, the swim team was itching at the bit to get in the water on Sunday. Sunday was sunny and snowy, my favorite, and the water felt wonderful. Between 2 and 5pm, the entire swim team came in for optional practices, coupling up with lanemates and cheering each other on whenever someone looked like they were trying hard. Exercise might be hard by yourself, but it’s not with the team.

After practice, we all carpooled together to Tiffany’s house, where Tiffany’s family had decided to treat us to a New Year’s meal! I can’t believe what the swim parents do for us even here at college… last week, at our senior meet, they had a reception where they made us Wellesley Swim and Dive mugs. And this week we were able to stuff ourselves with amazing food, were given red pockets, and some of us even improved in our dumpling-making skills! I do not count myself among those hard-working dumpling-making members… I was too busy eating all of the lily pad seeds ;). But thank you to the parents, who support us in so many ways even at our home away from home :).

I am very sad to say that this will be the last week when the swim and dive team is united this year. We only have one week left until the season is over! However, we’re not done yet, and we’ve still got our championship meet, NEWMACs, to finish up our months and months of hard work together. This Thursday through Sunday (we miss class), we camp out at MIT for a few days and swim, and it’s going to be awesome. I’ll post all about how NEWMACs goes next week; I’m swimming the 400 IM, 100 free, and 50 free, plus relays. I’m hoping that the elbow recovers by then; for those of us who don’t make it to Nationals, and even those who do, this is what we’ve been preparing for all year :).

Hmm… *I’m humming happily.* Last week, I was honored to have my blog post about research show up on the Wellesley facebook page. I was telling Suman to go read it, since she was talking about her biology class and I told her that I wrote a post about how school was hard and we all struggle but I think we’ll make it through. It turns out that both she and Tiffany had already read it. And then Nathalie came over to me in the science center, and said that it had touched her. And then I was sitting on the second floor of the science center, and an acquaintance of mine offered to help me with my chemistry homework. And then I was eating lunch yesterday, and people from my First-Year Mentor group, who I hadn’t seen since first-year, sat down and started talking with me yesterday. I don’t understand how I can have so many caring, wonderful people in my life. 🙂

So that’s where I am right now, with school going great as well :). Neuro320 and Orgo II are both challenges, but good, my engineering for humanity class is a blast, and my MATLAB course is so much fun. I love programming, and swimming, and the people here and snow, and Wellesley and food, and the future and now. I want the sun to come back out, since it’s bright in my mind. Weird similes aside, I’m happy where I am :).

Please ask questions, and I love comments too! Best to you all,

Monica