A New Year

Good morning readers!

There’s just SO much I want to say, and only so much I can squeeze in before my 11:10-12:20 class begins :). I’ll do my best; please forgive any odd transitions that may occur!

First of all, it is great to be a junior. It’s in looking back to where I was last fall that I realize how much I’ve changed and matured. I checked in with one of my old professors, Prof. A., on Tuesday, and he agreed with me; since he only sees snapshots of my life, I trust him to comment on how I sit and present myself. Even in a domain where I always struggle to feel like I’m learning as much as I should—research—I can look back at my sophomore September and feel accomplished. Many things prompted this realization; one of which is the research scholarship I’m applying for, and the other is the presence of new first-years on campus. I feel like I’m finally in a good place to mentor them; it’s always helpful to hear advice from students a year older than you, but the effect of two years is significant and lends a whole different atmosphere to our interactions.

So too are my interactions with seniors changed. I was on my way into the Conway lab on Wellesley’s campus, when I happened to run into Liz, a senior working in the Haines lab one door over. “How are yous?” were mutually exchanged, and we discussed my classes before I asked how her senior year was. “Weird,” was her response. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Lots of things. Like, before I knew a lot of people. I knew the class above me, I knew people in my class, I knew the classes below me. But now a bunch of them are gone, and we have new first-years coming in. I can walk into a dining hall and not know anybody.

“And when I talk with the new first years, we’re discussing things on a different level. I’m thinking about fellowships and jobs after Wellesley, which is completely different from what they have ahead of them. It’s not something bad or good. Just weird.”

I asked her how her thesis was coming along, and she said she loved it.

“I’d so much rather be in lab, doing something, than doing a p-set [problem set] I don’t really care about. I love doing research, and it’s been quite a transition from working here full-time during the summer—8am to 4pm, no, 8am to 6pm—and now realizing I have to go to classes. In lab, I’m making this corporal document [her thesis] that will last forever, that summarizes all that I’ve done in the Haines lab since I got here. When people ask me, I could just hand it to them.”

And your thesis will live forever long in Wellesley College’s Science Library, I reminded her, and she smiled.

If you couldn’t already tell, Liz is planning to pursue a career in chemistry (probably organic chemistry) research, which in itself was a switch from last year, when she was pre-med. I remember many discussions between her and Professor Haines—who is a great mentor of Liz’s—about what she wanted to do, and what she could do with her love of research. There’s still plenty of room to grow in junior year too, but it’s cumulative, and I feel like every year here we come back in the fall as a different person, more confident and more decided in our aspirations than the year before.

Kaitlin had wandered up to us during our conversation. She was waiting for her SI session to start (she’s a Supplementary Instruction tutor—which means she answers questions and provides extra problem sets to students in a specific class, in this case Neuro 200.) “Do you have a job lined up?” was asked, when Kaitlin explained that she’d better have an idea of what she wanted to do in mind, since she is graduating a semester early, in January. “Actually, yes. I’ll be working for Bevil—Monica’s professor—for at least two and a half years.” Then after that she’ll be applying to graduate school in computational neuroscience—around the same thing I’ll be doing, and at the same time. Probably the same places as well, now that I realize it.

Liz congratulated her, and then they went on to discuss when the proper timeline was for applying for jobs, conceding on the month of January. I stood by during this part, not able to contribute—I still have another year before I worry about job prospects, and am quite happy to take classes (I differ a bit on Liz’s opinion; I love coursework) and wander through my days with one week ahead as my most advanced worry. That will change when I am a senior, but I’m not quite there yet. Happy to be where I am though. I can believe I’m halfway done.

Now that I’ve put all of us class years in our proper places (and how humorous that is, because we’re all around the same age) I’d like to turn to some new first-years I’ve met. On Tuesday I had dinner with Christine, who contacted me through the blog this summer, and recognized me when I was walking up the stairs to Stone-D way back during the first week of school. We’d been planning a meal for a while, but this was our first that occurred—and it lasted longer than the half an hour I had tentatively planned for, morphing into an hour-plus long affair with mimicry and stories. This is the first time I’ve clicked with someone who has met me through the blog, and that was very reassuring. The problem is that relationship I have with you guys is strange, because you know so much about me—and it’s a virtual me, which reflects a lot of the opinions that I express, but a lot too that don’t generally come up in normal conversation—and I don’t know anything about you to start. There’s that unequal footing to start out with, and then usually a year of an age gap, and then the bravery to post and seek me out, and then to sit down at an actual meal—lots of barriers to success, but I’m so pleased that it can work. And Christine and I will be planning to eat together once a week, so hopefully you’ll hear some stories from her in the future :).

Tiffany, Gabby and I have settled on Thursday lunch to get together, and I’ve just set up dinner for a group of old Chem-120 friends, hereby known as Stoney-D Wednesdays (drawled excitedly, if you’re Audrey). Oddly enough (and I’m still getting over the guilt on this front), this is currently my least-stressful, least-busy semester ever at Wellesley, so I’m finding I have much more time to hang out with friends. I expressed my concern over this to Tiffany (who is even busier than last year), who said I could be making up for the past two years. I expressed this to Kaitlin, who demanded “how many times have I had this conversation with you? Do what you enjoy!” I expressed this to myself for the utmost time, then told myself to give it up since I read an article somewhere that said that what the elderly most wish they could have changed about their lives was to stop worrying. It’ll doubtless crop up in a blog post in the future, but for now, I’ll just accept that I’m going to have a normal college existence and increase time spent with friends :).

Darn, darn, just so much I still want to say, but I’m out of time :). Let it be known that Wednesday was Lake Day, a Wellesley tradition, and we got to run around Severance Green eating fried dough, popcorn, and cotton candy, playing in a moonwalk, and enjoying the sunny weather. Also let it be known that I met some wonderful first-years on the bus back from Boston on Saturday, and that there will be an interview posted from one of them, Anna, next week. And let it be known that I love comments and questions, and that I’m quite determined to set my number of blog-friends up to two, if anyone’s willing!