Having Fun :)

Hey everyone,

Wishing you well from Wellesley! This week has been a pretty chill week for me, and I got to attend some excellent events, like yesterday night’s Lip Sync competition! However, I won’t talk about that quite yet, as this week I’m starting off from last Thursday (ah, chronological order… just like old times :)).

Thursday morning, I received some regretful news: I was told that in previous visits, I had accidentally left some recruits with the impression that Wellesley is all work and no play. I am determined to correct this on future recruit visits, and would like to mention it a bit now :).

During recruit visits, I often share all of the things that I and other members of the team are involved in. I do this because I am excited about all that I do, but it does come off as having a busy lifestyle.  It is busy, and periodically I go through everything that I have going on, and check to make sure I can’t quit something or save time in some other way. The last time I did this (pretty recently), I came to conclusion yet again that there is nothing I am willing to give up. I want to keep swimming, 5 classes (one of which is research), and blogging, and will do all of the work necessary to make sure that I can continue doing these things, because they are worth the time and effort to me. And though I occasionally complain about being busy, my moaning will not actually impact anything I do, as whenever I evaluate my life as a whole I know I want to hold tight to these three areas in my life. Every time an opportunity for an extra commitment comes up, I evaluate everything again. And usually, I don’t take up the extra commitment, because I know I have a set amount of time and mental energy, and I have chosen and rechosen the activities that are mine.

This sense of ownership and commitment is much more valuable to me in the long run than all of the little issues that come up along the way. The problem is, I think I’m getting the recruits caught up in the daily issues, and not the reason why I committed to these things in the first place. I really do enjoy the fact that I’m busy, because that means I’m able to maximize all that I want to devote myself to. And I don’t emphasize this enough—that I love what I am doing.

Along with the idea that I enjoy what’s in my life is explaining why swimming, five classes, and blogging are wonderful to me. And they are definitely wonderful—swimming provides a sense of team, exercise, community, and so much more; each of my classes brings something very unique to my life; and blogging provides me an outlet for reflection that I would struggle without. I think I need to commit to explaining each of these in detail, so that the message of my life as “work” can be transformed into “play”—it’s not entirely play, but it’s definitely a healthy medium in between. This goes for recruits as well as blogging; I will try my best to remember, and please message me with “What is something you love here and why?” if I forget :).

Then again, you all have the great advantage of having many people to listen to! This is why when we have recruits, they don’t spend time with one person, but are shared among the team. Each of us, even on the relatively small swim team here, have our own way of dividing our time and placing value on our activities. I know that I especially am not good at allocating “fun time”—time for going out, for hanging out with friends, for going to parties, or dinner, plays, activities on campus, TV, movies, etc. It is something that I am working on, but I don’t think I’ll ever really approach a normal level of “play” time because that’s not how I was in middle school, or high school, or how I am now. And yet I know I have never been in the middle of the spectrum in that area, and so many others are. So I encourage you, as you no doubt are, to try to speak to as many people as possible regarding college choices and everything else, because everyone has their own experiences and way of living, and what you like to do is going to be individual and unique and yours.

And so that’s my spiel about recruiting, and how I can commit to do better :). I know it’s terribly awkward to correct people on how they can improve (I know I haven’t missed it since leaving home—parents are allowed and quite encouraged to correct you on mistakes, and it hurts) but I think I need more correcting in my life, and it’s good to know that I have been in this instance, and that I can change. Now, however, I am going to move on to more fun things that have been happening recently; as much as I can cram into the remaining time I have before swim practice starts :). So here we go; wonderful things that happened this week!

First, Dr. David Eagleman came to talk to us!! This deserves two exclamation points, because his research is fantastic. His talk was about the intersection of neuroscience and the law, and brought up tantalizing dilemmas to pore over. I shan’t try to explain his talk (I already did to several of my friends, and it took more than five minutes, so I have no idea how long it’d take to write it out), but if you’re interested, apparently he has many of his talks online. And after the talk I read this article in the New Yorker, and then promptly had to tell my friends about that too. I find it absolutely amazing that he came up with an objective way to address the hypothesis of time slowing down in a near-death situation; read the article—both the writing and his ideas are marvelous.

Also, this weekend was Head of the Charles! This brings me back to last year, because one of these pictures is from the same place where I stood watching the Head of the Charles last year with my high school friend, Marcella. I remember having no idea how to operate the Boston T at that point, and just arriving in college, and having everything so new. And here I am now, taking pictures out of the bus window as I head off to do research at Harvard Medical School. Who could have known.

At Wellesley too I am having a streak of nostalgia, because it is Fall Frenzy week again! I have collected my free t-shirt like last year, but this year I went to Lip Sync as well. And Lip Sync was SO great. I cannot even express how amazing it was to watch the team make up four separate skits, practice, and then perform it on stage for a standing-room only crowd. They were excellent, and so were all of the other 13 groups performing, and I hope the pictures can help you get a sense of it!

I had a wonderful time yesterday sitting in Professor Fernandez’s office with four of his other students working on math homework. It was soothing, I was in the professor-knowledge bubble where everything makes sense (see the PhD comic strip of this :)), and it was math and hard and making sense. A good few hours for me that made me happy :).

And I decided to go to a lecture today—about foraging around campus in the fall! Russ Cohen led us around campus and gave us home-made baklava made from black walnuts. I remembered black walnuts from a childhood venture with my grandmother—they turned my hands black and soap didn’t help. I told him this as I was getting fed, and he informed me that I must be Midwestern. I have decided that I should now become a professional environmentalist like he is so that I can awesomely deduce things from strangers :).

And that is all that I have time for now! Please ask questions and comments—I’d love to interact with you, and hope you have a great Wednesday too :).

Monica