Good morning readers!
How are you all? It’s sunny and warmish at Wellesley, so I can’t complain :). (Warmish being even better than warm, because we have a distinct lack of air conditioning in the dorms… though I of course can always beat a hasty retreat to the Science Center, which employs air conditioning almost year round :P).
Speaking of the Science Center, the graduating Class of 2013 has transformed it into a jungle! Every year, the senior class plays their prank around this time, meaning that they decorate all of the buildings in their class color (the Class of 2013, and the upcoming class of 2017, is green). I am very biased, but I think they always do the best job with the science center. Here’s a picture of the main focus area—I have no idea how they were able to get a hoop from the Wellesley tradition of hoop rolling and hang it from the ceiling….
Class of 2013 Senior Prank!
On the dark side of the Science Center, it is finals week. Primal Scream was supposed to be last night at midnight (when everyone on campus is encouraged to let out their studying-induced frustrations by screaming as loudly as possible—hm, Wellesley Scream Tunnel, Primal Scream… we may have a trend here). However, at the Science Center, it was much more of a whimper. I personally did not expect to be awake at midnight last night, much less at the Science Center, but there you have it. We are devotees of great building. Kaitlin calls the Conway lab a cult. It’s the culture, people! Also, all finals are held at the Science Center, beginning this morning at 9am; our administrators just can’t help giving my not-so-humble abode some bad memories so that everyone who doesn’t have class here isn’t encouraged to come back… aww…
More science news (it never ends, apologies :)). On Wednesday, for my Making a Difference Through Engineering Class (otherwise known as WE-lab, for Wellesley Engineering lab) we presented posters and our creations in an open-house for professors and students to come by. It’s quite amazing what we’ve accomplished in half a semester! My group of three—Saebe, Gretty, and I—worked on a consulting project for a group in Nicaragua. This community was trying to determine whether it would be economically feasible to buy and install another biodigester, in order to provide a sustainable solution to rural cooking. Biodigesters take in water and manure, and through anaerobic digestion produce biogas (which can be used as a cooking fuel), so they are very green. Unfortunately, we found that biodigesters could not compete with propane and wood in this community at this time, but in the process we learned a lot about biodigesters, about the community, and saved the nonprofit organization that was going to buy the biodigester $1700!
Wellesley WE-Lab Presentations: an EXTD 160 Fundamental of Engineering group who made a music box! (I’m in EXTD 120 Making a Difference Through Engineering, so they’re a different class, but still in WE-lab :))
WE-Lab Presentations! Audrey and Kendall presenting their consulting efforts for a community in Indonesia
WE-lab Presentations: Saebe and I (Gretty had to babysit) presenting our biodigester poster! (ps, everyone else in the class was downstairs, and we were guarding the posters so we weren’t allowed to go take pictures of everyone :)).
Presenting at Wellesley was great—I’ve gotten used to the poster format, and enjoy talking to people about my research even more than I like writing about it :). Many professors came by, and even some students! Then on Friday we had the opportunity to travel to MIT to present our research at their D-lab presentations. D-Lab stands for Development through Dialogue, Design, and Dissemination, and is the foundation upon which WE-lab came into existence. Specifically, our professor here at Wellesley, Professor Banzaert, created WE-lab this year because she hails from MIT. Professor Banzaert in fact taught MIT’s D-Lab Energy class before she came to Wellesley!
Since the D-lab presentations were an optional event to attend, (keep in mind this is during reading period, when we all study for finals) only Audrey and I attended. Well, Audrey planned to attend, and she begged me for a buddy at the last minute, so I ended up deciding to come the night before :). I’m so glad I did—it was great to see what the students in MIT’s D-lab had accomplished. Both Audrey’s and I’s project were mostly focused on consulting, since we didn’t have the time or materials to build a working prototype (I for example was not about to construct a biodigester in half a semester’s time). Most of the D-lab products were actually prototypes (they have a welding machine. I want a welding machine!) and several of them involved biodigesters! I felt like quite the expert when some of their groups came up to talk to me about my findings, and I came to ask about theirs. I’ve been toying with the idea of taking a D-lab class at MIT this spring, and with the explosion of the amount of offerings recently (they now have D-lab Education and D-lab Supply Chain along with the original courses like D-Lab Energy and D-Lab Health), the option becomes more and more tempting :).
WE-Lab Presentations– at D-Lab Presentations! Audrey and I.
Funny story from those presentations—Professor Banzaert was introducing Audrey and I for our one-minute powerpoint presentations (I’ve never done one of those before, but I like the format) and she was explaining how she had created WE-lab as a D-lab class for the Wellesley College liberal arts environment. I think she was hoping that Audrey and I would show off how liberal arts Wellesley was, and have some classic Wellesley majors (econ, poli-sci, and psych) to introduce to the D-lab community assembled. No such luck—I’m a neuroscience major and Audrey’s a biochemistry major. She ended up not mentioning our majors in the introduction, which made Audrey and I giggle once we realized why :).
[post-note from 8/21/13: Prof. Banzaert happened to run upon this post (YAY! I love it when professors spontaneously read my writing) and sent me an email to clarify the major situation. Her words: “Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I was absolutely going to announce your and Audrey’s majors — I just thought it’d be interesting, no need for you to be econ or anything — but then as I was speaking I made a poor word choice, panicked about how it sounded, and forget EVERYTHING else I was going to say and just wrapped up quickly. I’m really sorry it came across otherwise; totally not my intent, and I was thrilled to have and work with many science majors, along with more liberal-artsy majors. For me, MIT was so engineering oriented that even straight science feels a bit novel (and betrays where I spent all my time at MIT).” … And I cannot believe this email was just sent to me :). Only at Wellesley, readers, only at Wellesley!]
Concerning my other favorite topic, food, I was invited to three homemade meals this week! Professor Haines, my organic chemistry professor (he is a fantastic professor, and you have no idea how much I’m dreading his final) had an open house for all of his students in Orgo 1 and Orgo 2. He and his wife made homemade ice cream, apple crisp (we all were amazed at the apple slicer, and insisted on multiple demos), salad, garlic bread, and spaghetti. It was wonderful, and I must insist on how much I love spending time in actual houses where there are pictures on the walls, multiple rooms, thick toilet paper and other miscellaneous comforts ;P.
Karina (our swim captain and rock of our team) and her sister Fiona also invited us to their graduation party! Fiona is part of the incoming Wellesley class of 2017 (though she is taking a gap year to go travel the globe), and Karina is graduating as well, but from college :). There was so much food at their house—grilled shrimp and chips and sushi and spinach baklava things and cake and iced tea and grilled scallops and cheese and crackers and blueberries and strawberries and way, way too much eating :). So good though. And I made a new friend, though Debbie is a Wushu senior and making senior friends is not exactly a lasting endeavor at this point in time :). She tried her hardest to get me to take an econ class though, and the fact that I’m considering Game Theory gives many kudos to her persuasiveness :).
Karina’s house. FOOD. We figured that since we, as Karina’s friends, were all at college, we deserved much more food than Fiona’s friends, who were in high school and got to eat homemade food all the time. Thus… we destroyed the table, and the weirdest part was that her parents encouraged us all throughout the process 🙂
Karina and Fiona, graduating sisters 🙂
I was also invited over to Tiffany’s house for the last get-together of the year :). Tiffany is heading to Spain this summer (I have made her a going-away present, which I’m going to deliver in 20 minutes, for which I am very excited), Gabby is leaving for Chicago to work in a museum to develop new exhibits there, Suman’s back to California to work as a lifeguard, and I’m moving the very brief trip to Boston, Frat House Theta Chi. (Yup, haven’t visited yet despite signing the lease. I’m told they’re nice though from everyone here at Wellesley, and despite some general fraternity house horror stories, I’m told it’ll be a good summer :)). Tiffany’s mom made us a fantastic meal as always (more overeating!) and she weighs heavily on the cooked vegetables, which is always nice :). I love visiting their home, and will miss it over the summer!
Hm, I think that’s it, readers :). My life is tad bit boring right now, what with me hiding in a room all day and studying chemistry and neuroscience until my brain oozes out my ears. You encounter all sorts of fascinating things when stuck in a room all day, like how high your voice can go, all the stuff that’s been happening on Glee that I was much too busy to attend to during the year, how the window-door produces a cool illusion of a right-angled hallway… I’ve attached pictures, but I don’t really think you need the visuals to realize how hard it is to stay focused for more than a few hours on end :). Nevertheless, I’m giving it all my best go, and we’ll see what happens. Presumably, we’re expected to have picked some things up during the semester, so maybe I won’t have to reteach myself everything now…?
Uh huh, uh huh, do you see how there’s a ninety-degree red hallway going away from you? Watch that hallway
It’s a little sideways now…
And now it just looks really weird
And now it’s almost gone, and you can see that the hallway actually goes right instead of straight
And now you can even see the staircase, and that’s totally a hallway going right
And that’s my door. Way cool, right? Vision is awesome! 😛
Final good news before I leave you to your day :). I have happily received funding to blog for Wellesley this summer! Though I’m not technically at Wellesley— I’m at Harvard Med School because that’s where Professor Conway’s main lab is—I’m funded through Wellesley College and I assume that’s how it was passed. Regardless of how this great news came about, I’m here to tell you that IT NEVER ENDS! Monica’s life 24/1, for the rest of your lives! Muhahaha. Thanks always for reading, and comments make my day :).
Cheers to you all,
Monica