Good morning, everyone. A lot has happened since I last wrote. Somehow, we have reached the point where my thesis deadline is in NINE DAYS. It is an honest to god thrill to think that the end is in sight! I still have a lot of writing to do, but I think I have passed the hardest part. It’s like…
Category: Eleanor’s Blog Archive
To 2022, from 2018
I have been thinking a lot lately, about you, New Purple Class of 2022. As a member of what will soon be the Old Purple Class of 2018, we have more in common than just the color purple, although that is the best class color, you should know. We, you and me both, are beginning new and unfamiliar chapters of…
Spring Break Sunshine
Hello from sunny Miami! It’s spring break, and yours truly is finally having a much-needed reunion with warm weather and a few days of relaxation. I’m writing to you on the tail end of my vacation: I’m spending five days in Florida forgetting about my many responsibilities… and five days in the thesis lab back in Boston, trying to get…
Surviving Wellesley Exams: Tips from a Senior
Hello dear readers! My earnest apologies for leaving you hanging for so long- my academics, doubled in scope by my rapidly approaching thesis deadline, have had to be my priority. Since I have spent so much of the past couple weeks studying, I thought I’d share with you some study tips I wish I had known earlier in my Wellesley…
Twenty Two
I turned twenty two last Thursday. At first, I woke up and looked out the window and felt a little older. And then I immediately remembered that I had left my Western blots in the wrong buffer last night leaving the lab, and hoped they were okay (they were). Maybe that’s what being twenty two is. A combination of feeling…
The Progression of My Day (and sea urchins)
9:50am. Developmental Biology. Today’s lecture is on how cells differentiate into different tissue types. How do cells become neurons, or muscle, or blood? The concluding message is that potency, what a cell can become, is greater than fate, what a cell will become. I find this very poetic, and moving for some reason, and it is so beautiful it makes…
What I’m taking my last semester
Already we’re into February, and the first week of classes has breezed by. I’m taking three classes this semester: Biochemistry, Developmental Biology, and Game Theory. Plus, I have my senior thesis project at my Brigham and Woman’s Hospital lab still ongoing. Each day ticks closer to the April 27th thesis deadline, and already this week I have had two long…
Vasilopita. The Good Luck Cake.
Second semester senior year is realizing that you have an 8:30am biochemistry class Monday morning… approximately 12 hours before the first day of class begins. Yes, this was an actual thing that happened. Let me explain. You would think that, as a second semester senior, I would be coming back from a month long Wintersession break refreshed and put together.…
Ice Cream Making and Moss Art (the last week of lab)
When I went to the train station today, there was a carpet of turquoise blue rock salt…snow is coming! It was quite beautiful, the whole corridor along the train coated in crystals. And, of course, with my Chem 205 background I couldn’t help but think that they were probably CaCl2, which has a higher Van’t hoff factor of 3 and…
Silver Linings
Somehow, it’s December already. On one hand, I’m excited, because it’s now socially acceptable to listen to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.” On the other hand, all I want for Christmas is to make it through two fifteen page papers and an inorganic chemistry final intact, so I can go home and lie on the floor…