End of a Semester

It’s that time of year, readers.

Writing thank you cards to professors time :).

This is not an expectation for college, but it’s something I enjoy for much the same reason I enjoy writing the blog. It’s a time for reflection: both the realization of what I’ve learned this semester, and how many important, wonderful people populate my life.

I’ve had a crazy, insane, fantastic ride of a semester. This will go down in my mind as my best semester, no matter how the grades turn out or the fact that I never want to do it again. This semester everything I did was fascinating, I know I tried my best in everything, and I had some new, caring, impossibly wonderful people come into my life.

First, friends. I made three new close friends this semester—Nour, Heather, and Alyssa. I wasn’t looking for them; I thought I had enough on my plate trying to keep up with the friends I already had. But each of us came together, and there is something so special about finding new people you click with, people who you enjoy talking to, and who have new opinions to learn from.

Second, classes. My classes were stupendous. There is no other way to describe them. There was the mind-bending concepts I was exposed to every day in 9.66 Computational Cognitive Science (not that I could comprehend most of it, as this was a combined graduate/undergraduate class, but that kind of just makes me happier. To know that my mind was expanding every class just with what little I could absorb.) There was the journal club / grant writing / dream job preparation / women in science conglomeration that made up Neuro 300. There was the continual pleasure and relatively simplicity of learning object-oriented programming, Java, and data structures all at once in CS 230. There was the learning—of everything—in 9.71 Functional Basis of Human MRI. There was the frustration and successes of my thesis, and the growth from applying for the Churchill Scholarship. And all of these things went the best possible route they could have, as I was challenged and supported with almost no irrelevant frustration, because of the amazing people in my life. The amazing professors who made it happen.

Thank you Orit for teaching me CS 230. You care so deeply about every one of us, and that comes through in each of your lectures. Your teaching is clear and you bring in any outside resources you can find, to help us apply our lessons to the outside world.

Thank you Stella for teaching me CS 230 lab. I really shouldn’t have gotten into this class—the scheduling was a disaster, and it demanded like three exceptions. But you put your hands on my shoulders and got me there. You had your husband drive me to a homemade dinner at your house when I otherwise couldn’t make it. You’ve been there for every class I’ve had in the CS department, and you brighten every lab, haul in patience and fun, and know your students like the back of your hand. Every Friday afternoon you taught us Greek along with data structures; you combine learning and excitement in everything you do.

Thank you Mike for teaching me Neuro 300. Your follow-up questions are perfect, you have so much confidence in all of us, and your infinite patience in dealing with our grant writing is something to behold. You brought us through presentations (three of them), research proposals, and CVs; dream jobs and literature reviews and homework. And for me you took so much time to help me apply to Churchill, answering my every frantic email, smoothing things over for months, reading and rereading my cover letter. Writing a letter of recommendation for me. Serving on my thesis committee. And not batting an eye at any of it, just helping me while you wrote your own grant, unwearyingly going beyond.

Thank you Prof. Fee for having confidence in me. For telling me I could get into grad school, for telling me I was a promising student. For urging me to apply, for following up with me again and again.

Thank you Hilary for being my TA in 9.71. The class was a challenge, in presentations and research proposals and clear writing, and you made the class uplifting rather than the helpless march that it never was. Every time I came to you it was clearer, every comment you gave made me better—you’d answer an email I sent at 10pm, and we’d email back and forth until it was resolved. You’re a graduate student yourself, but you’d email until it was resolved.

Thank you Professor Kanwisher for teaching me 9.71. I cannot express how valuable this class was to me. You taught us how to give presentations. You taught us how to evaluate science. You had us develop our own projects, and you insisted on clear writing throughout. Your class was infinitely valuable, and I can’t imagine what I would have missed out on if I hadn’t talked to Nour on the bus that day, when she told me there were seats still open, join, join.

Thank you to Bevil, my thesis advisor and long-term research mentor. Thank you always to Bevil, who has taught me the most at college. Who continues to teach me and mentor me in so many ways.

Thank you Professor Arumainayagam. Who encouraged me to apply for the Churchill in the first place. Who insisted I must, and I griped about it, and then my parents insisted I must, and I did it.

Thank you Liz. Thank you so, so much, Liz. This is Elizabeth Mandeville in the Center for Work and Service, Fellowships Director at Wellesley College, the miracle worker who coached me through the Churchill Scholarship, infinitely capable, reassuring, and calm. I went into the Churchill process deeply unsure that I was capable of it, scrambling and barely committed. She pulled me through to the knowledge that I could do it, and that this is something I deeply want. She became one of my rocks of people, a person who grounds me, pushes me, and changes me. She was always there for me, to answer any questions or fears. Thank you Liz.

Thank you Mrs. Chen! You are also not a professor, but I could not imagine my time at Wellesley here without you. I spend Thanksgivings at your house, as well as some summer days, and every day on either side of breaks: you open your home and heart to me, and I am ineffably grateful. I come over for hot chocolate, for meals, to have someplace to stay, and you welcome me back every time. You and the rest of your family are my adopted ones. Thank you, Mrs. Chen.

Thank you Max, Josh, and Hongyi, the TAs for 9.66. You didn’t have to stay extra time with me, you know. You didn’t have to look over my code after office hours, you didn’t have to explain how I could extend my project further. Each of you didn’t have to spend emails and effort and private meetings working with me—your job description doesn’t extend that far. But even though you are graduate students, you did.

Thank you Prof. Tenenbaum for teaching me 9.66. Your mind is amazing, and your teaching engaging, and so much more clear than it could have been. You go to great effort to make sure the problems are intuitive—to make sure we all gain something no matter what our computational background. You are energetic and incomprehensibly intelligent, and it was a privilege to take a class with you.

Thank you Professor Keane. For letting me interview you for Neuro 300, for letting me observe just how much you love to teach. I want to be you and Professor Kanwisher in the future. Let me give to my students as much as you do.

Thank you Professor Wilmer. For being the professor students always dream of. For inviting me to your office, for always making time for me, for giving advice and listening. For telling me about your own work and your own experiences, for sharing some of yourself with me too. Those moments in your sunlit office—I hold on them. I do.

Thank you Rachel, for being family when you didn’t know I existed until I arrived in Boston. For taking me out to dinner infallibly every semester, for storing my stuff over the breaks, to inviting me graciously into you and your family’s lives.

Thank you Ellen. For—no, just thank you Ellen. For meeting with me every week, for keeping my 9.66 project on track, for governing my Churchill application, for writing me unending letters of recommendation, for pushing incredible opportunities my way, for looking over my classes, for serving on my thesis committee, for, for, for, for looking out for me, always.

Teachers, professors, family, friends, graduate students, mentors, all of the above. Wellesley and MIT are incredible because of the caring, incredible people they contain. I’m getting far more than an education.

What an end to the semester.

Monica