Hello again dear readers! I hope you have all enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving holiday and are easing yourselves gently back into work this Monday. For Thanksgiving, I took my beloved Northeast Regional train back home. There was a particularly beautiful sunset along the New England coast that afternoon, made even more poignant by the fact that I was listening to the beautiful and American Barber Violin Concerto (which I’m playing). Home for the holidays, I baked my first apple pie, made a beautiful centerpiece of dead grasses and yellow maple leaves, and laid on the floor with my dog. I also wrote four essays for Copenhagen housing applications, but that’s what you get when you leave things for the last minute. If there’s anything this semester has taught me, it’s how to pull five hundred words an hour out of my head. It was still a delight to have a few days to relax and brace for the finals storms ahead. Thanksgiving is a holiday that gets better as you age, I’ve decided.
The beautiful New England coastline at sunset.
The all seeing pie
I can’t remember the last time I was this well rested. On the train back, I had the best train sleep of my life. I put on my chamber music playlist and slept for three hours as the gradually bleaker countryside streaked by. When I arrived at Wellesley, I took another nap. And then I slept eight hours last night. I can’t recommend getting enough sleep enough, honestly. The sun is high in the sky this morning, streaming into the library where I sit writing this, and I feel great. Of course, part of that may be due to the fact that I received my best grade of my Wellesley career on my Cognitive Poetics midterm this morning. I do my best not to need grades to validate what I do, but as science major deliberately choosing challenging courses, that validation is often hard to come by. So I celebrate what I can, and keep pursuing what I love regardless of its difficulty and demanding nature that threatens to pull me down.
This moment is the last of the calm before the storm, that storm being finals, where I have a 10-page paper to write, a famous scientist to interview, and two gigantic quantitative exams to tackle. Last night, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed, standing at the foot of my work mountain. But today, I can’t help but feel like maybe I’m more prepared to handle it than I think. I’m going to try to hold on to that optimism. Maybe we can try holding on to it together.
Until next time, and ever lovely yours,
-Eleanor