HAPPY SPRING OPEN CAMPUS, PROSPIES!!
Oh my goodness, I am SO excited to have everyone (by which I mean all of the prospective students, or “prospies”) here. Sebiha was walking to breakfast with me this morning when I was expressing this (very loudly), and I could feel her raising an eyebrow. But Sebiha has worked in the Admissions Office as a tour guide all four years, so she’s hardly one to speak. And today’s weather has literally been the most beautiful it’s been for six months—I was in a t-shirt—so if y’all are bringing the sunny skies, you guys need to stay here ALL THE TIME.
I got to talk to Kanika yesterday, and emailed with Rebecca about engineering at Wellesley two days ago—two prospective students who are already pretty excited about Wellesley. It’s lovely to talk to people who are enthusiastic about what they’ve seen here so far. I was looking at all of the yellow balloons around campus, and the yellow lanyards that we wore our first year around new students’ necks—yellow is the Class of 2015’s class color—and I was thinking: yup, I’m ready to be replaced. Replaced by these eager, open-minded people who are happy to embrace all of the exuberance we can reach into our very different Wellesley experiences and pull out for you :).
Speaking of which, make sure to talk to lots of people on campus—the one time I heard back from a prospective student unsatisfied with her experience was because she spent too much time with me, and we were quite different people. What I call fun she didn’t call fun, but Wellesley is all about finding out what you like and then making it happen. It’s been so funny to compare my Wellesley first year with that of my first-year sister, Leslie, because they’ve been polar opposites in some ways, and we only live five minutes away from each other. (Plus, we’re siblings. 50% genetic material and as close to 100% home environment as you can get. Some things are the same—Chem 120, working in Prof. A’s lab—and some, like our social experiences—are so different!)
I wish you all a cheerful welcome, and hope you enjoy your time here, even if it’s not your place to settle :).
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In other news in my life—it’s thesis week! It is truly amazing to me that I will soon be done with this document. Classes last only a semester—but this thing has been hanging around for more than a year, and has been its own unique addition to “Monica’s Undergraduate Research Memories.” A full draft is due to my thesis committee on Thursday, the thesis itself is due on the 23rd, my presentation for Ruhlman Conference is on the 29th (my birthday!), and my defense is on May 13th. Whoo man—I’ve been writing it all up, and in the process realized how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve done in the past year to create this document. In fact, I’m axing half of my content because I don’t have the time to write it up, and my thesis is still way too long (I get a tad didactic). And as I’m plodding along, checking everything I’m writing and did along the way, I’m having the best thesis research experience I’ve ever had.
The great, great majority of my research is done on my own. I work in a computational lab, so all of my work is done on the computer. Conveniently, you can work on a computer anywhere and without a lab buddy, which means that the majority of my research was conducted by me sitting on my bed, staring at the wall, coding in Matlab. I love coding in Matlab—it’s one of the few things I do where I can lose track of time—but I find it very hard to code well when I’m around others, because I’m trying to visualize what I want to do and how it’s implemented and where I want my matrices to go and I don’t want to be distracted in the middle of that. So the majority of my time for the first and third chunk of my thesis were me sitting on my bed by myself. The second chunk involved me sleeping over at Harvard Medical School and sitting by myself with the computer there, since I couldn’t go during normal times when other people in the lab were using the computers :).
This is an unusual lab experience, born out of the twin uncommon facts that I don’t work with anything that involves physical manipulation of cells or chemicals, and that I don’t work well on hard things when I’m around other people. I cannot think of anyone else who has had this experience in the neuroscience/biology/chemistry/biochem departments, because my other thesis friends work with and around other members of their lab as they run their experiments with things that are not computer screens. I wouldn’t have it any other way—I’ve been trying to avoid “wet lab” things for quite a while, and was delighted when I fully moved into the computational realm. But it does make the thesis experience a bit lonely.
However, it is now the writing time—and not the difficult writing time, which involves reading papers and incorporating our research into what is known and cross-referencing everything on the paper and in our brains—but the “what did you do this entire year?” writing time. And I can do that with music and with friends, and now everyone’s mobile since we’re all staring at computer screens. I’ve been having a fantastic time sitting with Katherine and Sebiha, both thesising seniors in the Arumainayagam lab, for hours upon hours this and last Saturday. I walk over to Sebiha’s room, we eat, we head to the Science Center and meet Katherine, we write, we all go eat some more, we work, we take a break and do miscellaneous activities, we come back and work, we eat again, and then we’re done pretty early for the evening. My friends know I’m practically uncontactable until this gets done, and it’s just a solid day of working and hanging out with the other thesis students together. It is miraculous and lovely and I love having good friends around me, people I’ve known for years, working on the same thing together.
Sebiha’s photographic contribution to our thesis efforts. Studying in Clapp library :).
And there have been other great events happening on campus, that I simply could help but to attend :). Senior Soirée was on Friday night, when all the seniors dressed up in cocktail dresses, received their Class of 2015 champagne flutes, and heard about our commencement speaker. Our commencement speaker is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, by the way, who I (and everyone else) am thrilled is coming to Wellesley. Everyone roared when her name was announced.
Senior Soiree– Tiff, me, Molly (Gabby’s roommate) and Gabby.
Senior Soiree– me, Emily, and Rebecca– all thesising seniors!
On Saturday night Christine invited me to her first play, The Home Front. I absolutely had to attend, since this was the first time I was getting to see Christine perform since she switched her major to Theatre Studies. She was excellent—I started crying a few times during the performance of womens’ experiences during World War I. And I ran into Alyssa there, so got to chat with her all the way back to the dorms.
Two hard-working Wellesley actresses from the Home Front :). Congrats Christine!
Hee, pictures Christine sent me from the play. Her description: “Nora Hussey is on her knees in the pink sweater. She’s the head of the theatre studies department, happens to be my lovely major advisor, and the director of The Home Front. She also helped write the play along with Sarah Barton, the head writer for the play. Sarah is pictured in the photo; she’s wearing a hat. She also happens to be a Wellesley alumna!.”
Christine again: “I’m posing with Rachel Nagin, another Wellesley alumna. WELLESLEY ALUMNI EVERYWHERE :):):)”
And: “A picture of the whole ensemble. Seated are: Jenny Tang (faculty member), Natalie Solomon (current junior), and Nora again. Jenny was absolutely critical for our production. She handled so much of the music and taught us all the songs in our show. She even played piano during our performances!”
On Sunday night (I am social beast) Wellesley’s hip-hop dance group, FreeStyle, had an event—they and the many other dance groups they invited showed us their skills in Jewett Auditorium. If I had to pick an artistic medium to watch, I would choose hip-hop-like dancing and Cirque du Soleil-like performances over more classical pursuits like formal dance or music concerts—personal preference, and it meant I had a great time. Freestyle invited some incredible dance troops—Side Street attended, the group that was founded Russell Ferguson, who won So You Think You Can Dance season 6. As Kanika said, the prospective student who came with me, it was like he was the music. My contribution is that he looked to be having a lot of fun with it, and made plenty of space for his other dancers and the elementary school kids who were also in Side Street. Two middle school stepping teams performed as well, and they were wonderful. It was a really supportive crowd, and I was so proud of Wellesley’s students for putting it together. The performances from the many other groups were great across the board, and I loved Wellesley’s Freestyle performances at the beginning and the end. Crisp choreography, well-practiced, feminist music: we represent well.
Yeah Freestyle!
This might be the group Unknown Hype? So many great performances…
Side Street– improv-ing it.
Side Street again :).
Today, Sunday, I had to interrupt my thesis writing to head into Boston and check out the graduate student housing Alyssa and I will hopefully be subletting over the summer at MIT. It is beautiful. I was planning to stay in a frat house this summer (mice and all. Did I tell you about the mice when I stayed at a frat two summers ago?), but I was audibly delighted with the two-person suite. The owners offered to show us the fitness center (TWENTY-FOUR HOUR FITNESS CENTER. It doesn’t get better than that) and I checked out all of their ellipticals while they rolled their eyes at me. I spend far too much time on the ellipticals at Wellesley: I know my important things.
Then we missed the bus back to Wellesley and Alyssa and I had an impromptu meal at Thelonious Monkfish, a sushi restaurant in Cambridge where there was live music and very tasty sushi and green tea ice cream. Rather unproductive day (Sebiha and I maybe worked a little over three hours on our thesis together—ouch) but hey, it’s the second to last month of my time in college. (By the way, this attitude is NOT TYPICAL of Wellesley students. Wellesley is academically intense, but I’ve been informed I bring “academically-oriented” to a whole new level. A lot of students go out on weekends. So don’t worry :)). In short, I had a fantastic weekend in which a good chunk of my Methods and Results section of my thesis got written, and I spent some quality time with some good friends. There are these moments, these days, where I can’t imagine anything better.
What we were eating!
Alyssa and I at Thelonious Monkfish!
All right, I need to head off to bed now (oh boy—school tomorrow!) but I just wanted to wish a huge welcome to the prospies, and happy days and weather to you.
Best wishes you to all,
Monica