Hello everyone!
This was what the weather looked like yesterday:
Yup. With no photo editing. The cottontails were floating around serenely (I now have fluffballs in pretty much all my clothes), the leaves were being picked up by gusts of wind… it made me just want to throw my arms above my head and run as fast as I could. Which was fortunate, since I was running late to a class, though running with a backpack is much less fun than running without one :).
Luckily, I often just leave my backpack under a table in the Science Center, so I am free to run as fast as I wish! There are limits to the Wellesley Honor Code (my bike just got stolen, but I left it unlocked on a Friday night at a high-visitor traffic area), but within the buildings, especially the Science Center, it’s still one of my absolute favorite things about Wellesley. I hope the students who came for the Discover Wellesley event last weekend discovered all sorts of other wonderful things here for themselves!
Shout-out to those who are frantically trying to finish everything up by Nov. 1st for applying to Wellesley Early Decision :). Or probably not frantically scrambling, actually—Wellesley prospies are a whole new species of creature, and I’m continually mentioning how self-cognizant and motivated they are. My reasons for choosing Wellesley were the small class sizes, great professors, women who were welcoming and enthusiastic about whatever they did (and the diversity was huge), and great organizations (swimming for me, specifically :)). I’d add onto that that I love that people here come from so many different backgrounds, the research is astounding for a non-research university, I have a collection of peers that will push me to work as hard as I can, and I have access to wealth of amazing opportunities (for travel, for organizations, for leadership, for lectures, for pretty much anything you can think of.)
Speaking of opportunities, I have good news! This Wintersession, I will be spending two weeks in Nicaragua! Last semester, I took a new class at Wellesley called Making a Difference through Engineering, where we worked with community partners in Nicaragua to engineer cheap solutions to problems there. The class was based on MIT’s D-Lab, which I encourage you to check out—it’s a wonderful concept :). Essentially, students at MIT collaborate with people in the community to improve lives through the application of engineering (for example, by making a charcoal press to facilitate the construction of charcoal bricks). This means that instead of having a solution delivered to them, the community participates in a dialogue that results in a product that does exactly what they want, and that they will be able to construct and use independently in the future.
Happily for us, Professor Banzaert, who was an MIT D-Lab: Energy professor, came to Wellesley last year and created and taught my Making a Difference through Engineering class. She has long-time connections with several groups in Nicaragua, and this Wintersession we shall be going back to visit them! We’ll be checking out how old projects are faring, and deciding what needs to be improved to increase their utility, as well as figuring what new projects should be started once we get back in the US. That’s all the detail I have for now, but I am very excited for this winter :).
Changing topics, do you remember how at the beginning of the semester I was whining about and then accepting and then really appreciating how much extra time I had? Ha—that’s gone! (I’m giggling at the computer screen right now.) My semester has just become as insanely busy as it usually is, and I couldn’t quite figure out why until I realized that I do in fact have six classes: Computer Science 332, Math 205, English 203, Psychology 217, Physics 107, and neuroscience research. As usual, I’m happily on top of things until tests come up, when I start spending time studying instead of doing homework and then fall behind. I’m not so busy that I feel like I’m scrabbling atop of a growing homework heap (it’s an image that came frequently to mind last spring), or that I have to be performing at 100% all the time (again, last spring—Organic Chemistry and Neuro 320 was a tough combo) but I’m definitely busy. However, it’s a good busy, and I feel like I’m learning a lot in all my classes, and am being stretched and challenged through all the different topics.
My busiest time, though, is yet to come!
If I haven’t sold you on the “Wellesley-has-amazing-opportunities!” spiel yet, I have another one to blow your mind :). The annual Society for Neuroscience meeting (SFN) is the world’s largest gathering of neuroscientists, and this year is taking place on November 9th-13th in San Diego, CA. And… Wellesley will be funding me and two other members of my lab to attend and present at the conference!
Along with the other students from neuroscience labs that Wellesley is supporting, pretty much all of the people I recognize at Harvard Medical School (where Professor Conway’s main research lab is located) will also be attending through their own labs’ funding. That’s a good collection of people I know, and “30,000 colleagues from 80 countries” who I don’t, all of whom I’ll be seeing in California this November. We’ve bought plane tickets, we’ve booked a hotel, I’ve talked to all of my teachers, and I can’t even express how unbelievable this is. A ton of work, certainly, since I’m missing three days of classes, but absolutely unbelievable that I get to attend something like this an undergraduate, and I don’t have to pay a cent.
So that’s a major reason why I’m busy, as well—tests next week, the week after that spent prepping for the five days I’ll be taking off (i.e. finishing two assignments early and taking a test early), the week after that in California, and nice and calm again from then on out :). I’m a natural stresser, so I’ve no problem getting anxious about this, but I’m so excited that I’m able to attend SFN this year. I want to be a neuroscience professor, so the people attending this conference really will be my colleagues someday, my grant-reviewers someday, motivators for my specific research someday. I have no hope of meeting the vast majority of them, and my experience will obviously change with time, but I’m intensely curious for my first interaction with what will my future scientific community!
One other great thing that’s happening this week—I’ve been invited to do a campus interview for the Goldwater Scholarship, which provides undergraduates with funding for research. Wellesley goes through an on-campus review before submitting selected candidates to the national competition; both selection processes are very competitive :). Even if I don’t get through this internal interview stage, like last year when I applied for the Beckman Scholarship, I’m finding the process of writing about my research, and why I want to do research, extremely helpful in clarifying my goals and future plans. Wish me luck, and even if I’m not successful, it’s been a great experience to try!
Man, I didn’t even realize all of the shenanigans that I’ve been up to before writing this post. The funny thing is, I know none of them could have happened last year, because they are all built on my specific experiences up to this point. It makes me very hopeful for everything that could happen in my last two years of college, so appreciative of everything Wellesley has given to me, and proud of the things that I have applied for and been accepted into. And of course, since I’m a shameless representative of the Admissions Office and love writing about Wellesley: come here, prospies! Opportunities await!
Best to you all, and hope you have a great Friday :).
Monica
Some adventures from Mole Day, which the Chemistry Society puts on every year. Making liquid nitrogen ice cream!
