Hello everyone!
I have to say, not a lot is going on in my life… since it’s spring break! Very fortunately, Wellesley’s spring break lined up almost perfectly with MIT’s this year, so I have been able to enjoy my week off :).
At Wellesley, not a lot of students stay on campus during spring break, because they close all the dining halls (well, that’s my reason for not wanting to be on campus ;P), but I always stay. My first year, I went up to New Hampshire with some friends, and then to NYC with another friend. (NYC is a day trip—it takes ~6 hours by bus to get there by my memory, so you can leave early in the morning and get back late). Sophomore year, Gabby, Suman, and I planned a trip to San Jose, CA, where we stayed with my uncle Bill. This year, I kind of kept hoping something would crop up, and things did :). This weekend I was invited back up to New Hampshire to ski with Ika and her mom, and then Tiffany’s family adopted me for the week. I’m eating better than I am at Wellesley under her mom’s wonderful care!
So this post will be pretty short, and just describe what a Wellesley student might do if she decides to stay on campus :).
Wellesley’s break started on a Wednesday this year. I know several students took the opportunity to go out to eat in Boston, to get reduced tickets (special for Wellesley students) to the Science Museum, to go to the Museum of Fine Arts (free for Wellesley students), to go to free lectures happening in Boston, and generally hang out in Boston. During the break, the Wellesley campus is pretty quiet, but the school keeps the free shuttles to MIT running every hour, so it’s very convenient to get off campus. And spring break provides an excellent opportunity to attend some of the weekday, daytime activities Boston provides, which many students aren’t able to attend when school is in session.
MIT’s break didn’t start until Saturday, so from Wednesday until Friday I was busy working on homework that really should have gotten done a lot earlier than it did. I’m still not sure why I was up finishing a story that was due for English at 1am on Friday night/Sat morning, but that’s what happened… ah well. The week before spring break is always busy, and my friends were very kind in waiting for me to finish before heading up to Ika’s. We spent a marvelous few days—Saturday through Monday—eating, cross-country skiing, exploring, and doing homework (Ika and Tiffany doing MCAT studying, me doing writing for English) together before heading back to Wellesley.
The bunch of us :). me, Keelin, Ika, Tiffany.
Success!
Ika and her mom 🙂
Tuesday I hung out at Tiffany’s house, and Tiffany’s mom drove me to get my hair cut. Wellesley chop, everyone! It’s almost tradition for Wellesley students to cut their hair off sometime during their stay here—it’s not mandatory or anything, but I have noticed that compared to MIT, many more Wellesley students have short hair. Tiffany saved her big change for Wednesday—she got a cartilage piercing. I don’t think piercings are that common on campus, but cartilage piercings aren’t unusual.
Dimsum!
So on Wednesday we took the bus into MIT, found a new dimsum place in Chinatown (yay!), got Tiff’s ear pierced, and witnessed the barrage of fire trucks needed for the fire on Beacon Street… heartfelt condolences to the firefighters who were injured and lost their lives. It was extremely windy on Wednesday, which I read contributed to the fire—you could see the smoke from where we were waiting at the bus stop. This break has also been informative in that I’ve had time to catch up with the news…
We were not involved in the fire though, and returned home safely on Wednesday. After dinner, Tiff’s family drove me home to Wellesley, where I worked on research and was informed that I should come into Harvard Medical School the next day, to learn a new research technique from Jane. So I spent all of yesterday working with Jane to learn how to label anatomical MRI scans with visual area regions, which was a lot of fun. The physical lab space at HMS is pretty small, but we had six people in there, all working in pairs. When Prof. Conway came in to check up on us, he was so pleased—he loves when his lab is buzzing :).
Today, after I write this blog, Tiffany and I are going to go to the 2014 Boston University Brain and Music Symposium—it’s a free symposium that Tiffany found (the intersection of music with science, especially neuroscience, is a passion of hers). I’ll probably do some research after, and then this weekend I definitely need to get down to homework business :). I ran into an MIT friend on the bus to HMS yesterday (she does kidney research at Brigham’s and Women’s Hospital) and she agreed—we definitely work best under deadlines, and those are coming up shortly. Luckily, I don’t have a physics or math pset due next week… but my family is coming out to Boston! My younger sister has been accepted into Wellesley, and so my whole family is road-tripping it from Minnesota to Boston during their spring break next week to check Wellesley out. So excited!
That’s all I’ve got, guys! For other things to do during break, I know some people are doing research, some are shadowing doctors, most have gone home to be with their families, many people are taking advantage of Boston’s Restaurant Week, and a lot of people are hanging out, watching TV/sleeping/talking/etc. Lazy days before school starts up again on Monday, and I know I’ve been incredibly lucky, surrounded by two kind and generous families who have made this break wonderful for me. Thank you to Ika’s mom and Tiff’s family!
Wishing you all the best, and please send me more questions! I just answered the ones that had been building up—I hadn’t been checking (*bad Monica*) but now I’m back on top of it :). Send me topics, concerns, whatever!
Happy break,
Monica
