Hello readers!
Guess what? My shoulders are sore. Wellesley Swim and Dive has been doing SO MUCH SWIMMING— (and diving)— that nearly half the team is down in the trainer’s room every day getting ice for shoulder/knee injuries. People are exhausted too, both physically and mentally (now, did I reach the right depth on that flip turn? Were my hands in a streamline position when I pushed off? Was I on my back initially? Oh, here’s another wall—focus again!)
That said, it’s great to be back at Wellesley :). We returned from Hawaii on Monday, and had the evening off to recover from the long flight. Since Tuesday, we’ve been doing our usual two practices a day, in addition to a meet on Wednesday against Babson and Coast Guard and another one tomorrow against Smith. However, I feel the team is closer since Hawaii, and eating meals together in the now-open dining halls is a relaxing and cozy experience.
“Now what do you do when you’re not swimming?” you might ask. Besides the obvious answers of eating and sleeping, three of my teammates are working here at Wellesley, and the rest are tackling schoolwork and summer planning. I am one of the team members who is working, and I’m to be found at the Clapp Library from 12:30pm-2:30pm, usually sorting books. As for the period in the evening when I’m free, I do schoolwork, search for summer jobs, prepare for the start of spring semester (less than two weeks left! So excited!), talk late at the dinner table, or catch up with TIME magazine. Allison is glued to her room working on her senior thesis, Sabrina is working at the Admissions office, Ika is working at the Health Office, and I know more many of my other teammates there’s chatting, work, and lots of facebook to be done ;).
Another job that all of the swim team is working is teaching swim lessons. Now that we’ve just returned from our wonderful Hawaii visit, we have to pay the whole thing off. Teaching swimming lessons is our team’s version of fundraising, and we teach sets of 10 lessons (usually once per week), for $270 each. That means that to cover Hawaii and miscellaneous swimming expenses (fins, swim bags, attire, etc), I have to teach six sets of 10 lessons, as does most of the team. The upperclasswomen often have to do less, since any extra money they earned from swim lessons last year transfers into credit for this year (we never actually see this money—it all goes to fundraising for our swimming expenses.)
Right now I am in a swimming lesson crisis, in that one of my three-year old girls keeps on crying during the lesson and refuses to be taught the whole half an hour. I’ve discussed the situation with her and my coach, and we’re attempting to come up with solutions. This is a new experience for me, as I never really babysat when I was younger, and my inexperience in showing here. I don’t think all of it is my fault—3 is a difficult age, after all, and the water is cold—but I’m definitely learning to work with young children. In a few weeks I’m going to start lessons with an older and more experienced child, and that will be new as well!
Another thing I’m doing right now is preparing for school to start! I am so excited to begin again, even though last semester during exam times the stress was so intense that I ended up walking back to my dorm crying a few nights. But I made it through, and my grades tell me that I’m going to be perfectly fine here if I keep on trying hard. Right now, I have to keep reminding myself that I can’t handle a fifth class, no matter how much I want to add it in. Friends are balking at my schedule already, which includes 2 ½ labs (neuroscience only has a 2-hour lab, so I’m counting that as my ½ ;)). I just negotiated the prices for all my textbooks, which was fun. Most people don’t like the whole system of finding your own textbooks, but I weirdly enjoy buying them off Amazon or peers or the Wellesley Bookstore and then selling them back. This is especially odd since the first time I wanted to sell books back to peers I had to call my parents and ask if earning a profit was moral. As this shows, capitalism is still kind of a foreign concept to me, but I figure that it’s a good thing that I’m getting involved in financial matters!
However, now I’m going to move on from me and the Wellesley Swim and Dive team to discussing Wintersession in general. I was asked a question about it in a comment, and I’d love to answer to the best of my ability! (ps, ASK ME QUESTIONS. I promise I will be very happy and send you a happy message back.)
What is Wintersession? It’s a three-week period when Wellesley students have the option to return to Wellesley after their fall semester and take a course before spring semester. It operates like a normal semester in that you take classes and have homework, tests and credit. Students taking courses at Wellesley during Wintersession are responsible for their own meals and transportation, and have to pay for room and board and Wintersession tuition.
Students taking courses are not the only ones here for Wintersession, however. Some winter varsity sports teams are here (swimming and diving, squash, and basketball, I believe), many international students are here, students traveling on Wintersession overseas programs were briefly here, students in essential jobs are here, and students in special Wintersession programs like the Albright are here. I met up with an acquaintance yesterday who told me she was here for Mock Trial (didn’t know that!), and another who lives in Wellesley and so came to work at the library (the post office is also open, so student workers are there, and others are doing research.) So there are a lot of different students in different groups staying for Wintersession.
However, unless you are in one of these special groups (I think there’s only about 200 of us on campus right now, so that’s hardly any of the Wellesley students), I would not recommend attending Wintersession. It’s very convenient for me, since I don’t have to pay for room and board, tuition, or meals (as part of a varsity athletic winter team), but the students who are taking courses here have to. Additionally, very few courses are offered during Wintersession (I think there’s maybe about five, and most of those are languages). It also gets lonely here. During meals, I notice that the students here who aren’t on a sports team sit by themselves and do work. There are no buses to Boston or to other shopping areas, there are fewer students, and the college doesn’t plan lectures or other major activities (they do have a few fun nights, but those are arts and crafts mostly.) Most of the facilities are closed as well. The vast majority of students stay home with their families and visit with their friends at home, while I only had a week at home, for example. In sum, from my point of view, unless you are in a special group I’d recommend not attending Wintersession. That said, if you are in a special group (like a sports team or in the Albright program, which I want to do), Wintersession can also be a blast.*
*However, keep in mind this is from my limited experience, and I may be missing key information.
And now, surprisingly enough, I’m going to end this post early! It’s astounding, I know, but not much is going on here besides the usual :). Plus, I need to go participate in poster decorating for Senior day tomorrow, and get out of my huge room! Kendra, my roommate, has fallen ill with pneumonia (poor Kendra!) and so has returned home for the week.
Please ask questions, and hope you have a good weekend!
Monica
ps– Pics from Hawaii! Mostly of me, sorry– there’s LOADS online, but I’m biased 🙂
