Good morning, readers :).
It is actually morning (before 8am) as I am hoping to head into MIT for physics office hours today by ten. I am finishing my last three p-sets for each class—9.40 (Introduction to Neural Computation), 18.05 (Introduction to Probability and Statistics), and 8.02 (Electricity and Magnetism)—and I can only contrast this with my first week of school at MIT, when I was feeling overwhelmed and like the new kid. Now I have lunch with Micah and Caitlin almost every day, have a regular lunch meal (oat bran muffin and salad), know my way around campus, am going to my first non-academic MIT event tomorrow (Jenny’s Asian Dance Team performance), and am doing well in my classes. I have so many new acquaintances who have welcomed me with open arms, and have loved my time spent “abroad” at MIT :). It’s not over yet though—MIT students start and stay a week later than Wellesley students, so I’ve still got some time until I’m done!
A lot has happened this week! Last week was my big academic week—I had a math test and a physics test, and was busily studying for those. This past week felt more like a celebration :). While I was still doing academic work, I had so much more time for miscellaneous activities—so you know what that means, readers. Chronological list time!
I’ll start out with last Friday night, when Tiffany, Leah, Misha, Ika and I attended Suman’s end-of-the-year choir concert. Suman joined the choir this semester, and this was the first time we saw her in action. My takeaway: the choir is marvelous. Not only was there traditional choir music, but there were also very discordant avant-garde pieces (ooh, I sound so fancy), and in one instance they brought in professionals who sang an Indian piece with one of the best tabla players in the world. It was amazing, especially listening to all the things that could be done with 80-strong female voices—there were moments that were startling (a rippling fading-in-and-out that sounded like we were underwater) and ethereal (two soloists rising high above a chorus). We and many other students, friends and family members sat in the Houghton Chapel below all the stained glass and listened to this concert without paying a cent, and I can’t believe I’d never gone before. So many performances on campus; so many hours of students’ time—and I’m always astounded at how careful and beautiful they are.
The weekend brought prospies flooding into campus—first for Junior Open Campus, where I had the honor of presenting on the student panel, and then for Spring Open Campus from Sunday through Tuesday. After speaking to the high school juniors on Saturday, a woman from the audience beckoned me down from the stage. “As soon as I heard you want to be a neuroscientist, and were a swimmer to boot, I knew I had to give you my old roommate’s information,” she told me. “She’s class of ’87, and works at the NIH (National Institutes of Health). Do you have a pen for me to write down her name?”
On Saturday I made my own connections with younger Wellesley women. After spending a lunch answering questions with accepted students (many of whom had already decided they would come to Wellesley by the time I talked to them!) I then spent a couple of hours talking with Portia, who was deciding between two schools and was particularly interested in the neuroscience program here. We walked around campus and talked for far longer than we’d planned, and Portia helped me clarify my own position on several elements of Wellesley life. My conclusion in the end was just how special life here is, despite some unavoidable weaknesses. It’s just such a privilege to live the lives we do here—carefree, innumerable opportunities, constant friends, love, wealth. Our sole pursuit is what we’d like to do to improve the world for the rest of our lives. Whether students pick Wellesley or somewhere else, I’m just so happy to participate, to live while these students make their decisions about where they feel they fit, to feed into this cycle of the ridiculous potential for fulfillment that we are so, so lucky to have the choice of.
Tuesday was my birthday—my 21st. I have my real celebration planned for this Sunday, when many of my friends (so many! It is nearing finals week, and yet so many have told me they are delighted to come) will be consuming dimsum in Chinatown, Boston with me. Rather than imbibing 21 shots, I have set myself the task of consuming 21 egg tarts. (Egg custard tart, for those of you who don’t know, is a characteristic dimsum dish that, in my unbiased opinion, is the best. They also taste much better than the English name implies.)
But my friends and family did not let the day of pass without celebration :). Between the well-wishes from Facebook, the well-wishes in person, the emails from my family, and the cards in my mailbox from my extended family, I was spoiled rotten :). And then my friends got together at dinner (they were trying to be secret, but I walked in on them) and made me a poster for my door. It has a Pikachu, lots of spinach and cheese drawings, many animals, French words, and an embarrassingly large number of my hobbies. And then Tiffany and Suman came over at around 10pm to feed me fruit tart and blueberries and chat. I can’t express how much I love being here, and how grateful I feel for all the people who are now in my life. It’s always an echo from my father—“college will be the best years of your life”—and I feel it, and I sort of miss it already, because right now it’s so strong.
Wednesday was Ruhlman Conference, a day in which we have no school and students across all disciplines give 15-minute presentations from 9:30am-5:40pm about the work they’ve done during the school year. These presentations span the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, and there are countless panels to attend at a given time. This year, I attended mostly senior theses presentations, which were uniformly excellent given that these are Wellesley seniors who have spent a year on these capstone projects. Wellesley students have the opportunity to do a senior thesis given they are of a specified academic standing and make it through first semester having met all the deadlines :).
I have pictures from most of the presentations I attended, with commentary underneath. This is the first year I spent an entire day attending the talks rather than half a day, and I’m so glad that I had the time to do so. The breadth and depth of material that students here study is always so inspirational, and reminds me just how many paths I could have taken, how much strength this community offers.
Tiffany’s presentation started out my day, with a description of the work she’d done for her ethnomusicology class concerning the carillon. Tiffany is in the Carillonneur’s Guild here at Wellesley, where we have one of the only two carillons in the US dedicated to be played by students, rather than professionals. She described the history of the bells, and also how they contribute to the musical soundscape at Wellesley :).
Next I headed to Emily and her lab’s talk about neurogenesis. From what I could tell, the Beltz lab has made momentous progress since last year’s Ruhlman (and I was indeed informed they had some great new papers out). They spoke about the research they had completed in the past year concerning the location of stem cells and stem cell precursors in the crayfish brain, and how they hope to continue labeling with fluorescent proteins in the future.
I also checked out Catherine and Carina’s presentation, since Catherine is my bus partner on our daily trips to MIT classes :). They had contructed a hand-made confocal microscope to analyze nitrogen atoms in diamond. As I was watching everyone in this physics panel present (and I know Catherine will be heading to Yale physics grad school in the fall)– I just had a continuous litany in my head thinking: so, SO smart :).
After lunch I went to go check out the poster session, where Sebiha was presenting :). She and Alice (who is in Oxford right now) had come up with a novel research project working with a specific molecule and conducted it during a single semester :).
Erin was also presenting a poster! She had worked with Prof. Huang on determining how a protein would react in the body, based on the results from other similar proteins.
For the afternoon sessions I started out with Charlotte’s. Charlotte doesn’t know who I am, but I definitely know who she is, and have been attending her Ruhlman presentations since I arrived on campus. She’s a marvelous speaker and incredibly passionate about the topic she’s been researching in various forms since sophomore year, which happens to be conflict resolution. This year, she’d traveled to Rwanda to learn about the community courts which had arisen in response to the judicial system being overwhelmed after the Rwandan genocide. I wish there were infinite Charlottes, truly. She cares so deeply about her topic and yet speaks with such a fundamental optimism. The speakers after her, discussing terroist groups in Turkey and the Sandanista revolution in Nicaragua (which I know quite a bit about thanks to my Wintersession trip) were great as well.
I then had to get my psychology fix, so I listened to a panel about openness of communication in adolescents, mood control, and defensive pessimism. Interesting research, and what’s especially cool is that some of these papers will actually be published based on the responses from Wellesley subjects :).
More psychology! Mika works at MIT and Harvard, and presented her work on morality in children. I’m so happy to have spent some time with her before she heads down to a lab technician position in CA to continue her work in developmental cognition :).
And neverending psychology :). Zoe, Sarah, and Katherine starting doing research on helicopter parenting for one of their classes, and now will be publishing a paper and will present their research at a conference in CA. So excited for them :).
- And finally we have Steph’s presentation, which I didn’t manage to get a picture for :). She studied the evolution of Hemingway’s writing about bull-fighting throughout his life. This was my first English presentation– and I hope to attend another one next year. And this finishes my Ruhlman Conference!
All right, I’m finally finished with my Wellesley love-fest :). People say they can’t believe the semester is almost over—but I can remember those p-sets, that research, those activities :). It’s been a wonderful semester and continues to be so. I’m also excited for it to be over, since I’m looking forward to my summer work as well. Questions and comments extremely welcome as always, and signing off,
Monica