As I promised in my last post, hello from Florida! I got here yesterday afternoon and the weather has been perfect. The sunshine can be blinding. As my brother noted, “That’s what sunglasses are for.” Divided highways are everywhere! So are gated communities and amusement parks. I’m hanging out with my brother and his girlfriend and giving my sandal tan…
Category: Macy’s Blog
Free Teeth (For 26 Hours)
I got my braces off on Tuesday! This was, by far, the most exciting part of my week. I had braces for a little over two years, plus jaw surgery in May, so I’m immensely glad to have finished treatment. My teeth look like a whole new set. For 26 glorious hours, my teeth were free. I ate popcorn and…
Middle School Lessons on Stress Culture
Middle school was the first time I got letter grades. Whenever a teacher handed back a test at the end of class, a whisper of “What did you get?” broke out through the room. Some kids stuffed their graded papers into their folders, while others smiled smugly and showed the number in red pen to whoever would look. I fell…
Walking
Walking is built into my life at Wellesley. It seems like it’s a seven or eight minute walk to get anywhere—the library, the science center, the academic quad. The gym and campus center are three or four minutes from my dorm. On days when I work out in the morning, I’ve somehow already spent roughly thirty minutes walking by the…
Time to Breathe
I took my only exam on Tuesday afternoon, and my mom brought me home that night. When I don’t need to pack lightly, I don’t, so getting everything in the car was a bit of an ordeal. I brought home my guitar, ukulele, dirty laundry hamper, a small suitcase full of odds and ends, my friend’s goldfish, and a rowing…
Study Break
There have been so many fun study breaks this week that for me, studying has become the break. Classes ended on Tuesday, but I couldn’t let my guard down, given all the assignments still on my to-do list. Since Monday, I’ve given two group project presentations, turned in my final sociology paper, taken the last CS quiz (test), and completed…
Last Full Week: Snow, Holiday Party, Work
Wellesley is covered in snow, and it’s beautiful. Growing up, I spent snow days shoveling my long driveway, and the labor involved took all the fun out of snow. But here, where I’m not responsible for clearing it, it’s not so bad. When I got to work on Tuesday afternoon, the only task for me was to take pictures of…
More Fun Things Than I Possibly Have Time For
On some Sunday nights, I realize I spent most of the weekend doing schoolwork. I’ve gotten better at finding a good work-fun balance, which I’ll go into in a future post. But this past week, I realized why I tend to do so much work on Saturday and Sunday. It’s because I do so many fun things during the week. …
Behind the Scenes of Claflin Bakery
I’m the food rep for my res hall, Shafer. Once a month, all the food reps meet with folks from Wellesley Fresh, our dining service, to learn about what’s going on and share feedback. Every other meeting is an interactive; we get to go behind the scenes. This past Thursday, we got a tour of Claflin Bakery, the on-campus bakery…
One Big Course
I came to college thinking I might double major in English and Spanish with a minor in math. I’m not taking classes in any of those subjects. The course catalog turned out to be way too broad and deep for me to stick to what I already knew and liked. My first-year seminar—a discussion-based class just for first-year students—is in…