Spring semester, here we come!

Hey dudes :).

So I admit the first part of this post is incredibly self-indulgent. The swim and dive team had their senior meet this weekend, which means the team makes gifts for them and celebrates all their years on the team. We (the Wellesley Swim and Dive Class of 2015) started out with eight first year, and now there are three, tri-captains: Tiffany, Gabby, and Grace. And it was incredibly bittersweet for me, because this would have been my final year on the team… in the final slideshow the juniors put together, showing pictures from all four years, I’m in a lot of those pictures, and I feel like I know the ones from the past two years, too, since Tiffany shows me them as soon as they happen, or I see them on Facebook. And I hear all the stories, and I know all of the team gossip, because I’m an outsider who’s willing to listen, and it’s so rare that someone will mention an incident I didn’t at least hear about. So I was watching that slideshow, because I came over to dinner at Tiff’s anyway, as usual the only visitor who’s not on the team who can come to team events, where I’m always made to feel welcome, and I have a bunch of people to chat with… it’s crazy, the feelings :). Because I feel like it was kind of my senior night too. Even though I didn’t go through with those last two years of swimming, day after day of practice, the drama, the joy, the scheduling, the hard work—I got all the good stuff without the hard stuff, all the social team things without the struggle—the team has still welcomed me, my friends have still welcomed me, and it’s the first community I joined on campus and I can’t believe I never had to go. It’s unprecedented, the way I’ve stayed so close to the team since I left, the way they still let me. And it just goes to show the generosity of the people there, how much my friends take care of me, and there were just so many feelings during that slideshow.

ANYWAY, what I meant to say was that I was going to show you a bunch of pictures of the team :). Almost all of these are from Papa Chung, Fiona’s father, from the swim meet against Bates and Connecticut College. His pictures always show so much of the team’s personality—he catches all the great moments to share with us.

 

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And now for the second half of the post, written a day later, and filled with a few of the flitting thoughts that pass through this odd piece of grey mush of mine…

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First, the mandatory feminist post. I really enjoy watching what goes through my Facebook feed—for example, yesterday I had about half of my posts declaring “GO PATRIOTS!” with mad celebration, and the other half going “UG SPORTS SUCK why can’t the world celebrate nerds more (with, for example, more equitable salaries)”. (My personal favorite was the xkcd webcomic this week, teaching tolerance for nerds.) And there are usually some silly things in there, but there are also always, always feminist posts. This post in particular, about how the stories would have gone if Hermione was the main character in Harry Potter, struck a nerve.

I don’t think you can come to Wellesley and not be a feminist. There are many different kinds of feminists, sure, and that definition has changed immensely in the past fifty years. I know the debate surrounding transgender students on campus has been complicated by the idea that changing terms on campus from “sisterhood” to “siblinghood” feels like a step backward for many older alums, who come from a time when the rights that women were fighting for were different. Now, I know students who want to attain the highest positions in government, and I have friends who want to stay close to family and raise children. I have friends who ardently call themselves feminists, and others who don’t like the term. But we’re all here because we believe in women and ourselves, and it’s comforting to see all these different takes on the same goal filling up my social network site. Insulating, a little—because when you surround yourself with like-minded people, your opinions just get that much stronger—but also informative, because there’s so many approaches to the problem, and even I (the incredibly out-of-it stereotypical science major) find that it’s impossible to not have some of it seep in, become more aware of the issues and more tolerant.

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Second, thank you so much to Zahra for reaching out and talking to me! Zahra’s a first-year at Wellesley, and I presume she read my post about missing talking to prospies and decided to contact me and tell me some about her life. It always feels so special when anyone reads my blog—especially people on campus, because all of you have no reason to. (Except my parents. They have to so I don’t have to call home very often.)

Thank you all for spending your time to read my thoughts—it’s always a very heartfelt moment (accompanied with a huge grin and usually, I can’t help it, delighted clapping) to realize that you’re all listening :).

Last point on this vein—I was asked to write a post about the Neuroscience Department at Wellesley recently. It’s been posted on the Science Center Facebook page (and man, do I wish we still had an ice rink in front of the Science Center. I wonder when that profile picture was taken?) It’s a bit long-winded, but I think useful, since I don’t often expound on those sorts of questions here :).

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All right, last point before I go to sleep. Tomorrow’s my first day of school! I only have MIT classes, and they start tomorrow, not that Wellesley students have had much school so far since we had two snow days. Life’s grand, folks.

Yesterday, I had the extremely-delayed realization that hey, studying with people is actually useful and fun! As per usual, I’m very late on the how-to-do-college bus. (Other things I’m commonly critiqued for: the refusal to use cell phones. And realizations like: the brand name “Target” actually represents the red target symbol on the front. Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens disturbingly often.)

I’m generally kind of loner when I’m trying to get work done, and last semester I did the majority of my work between 10pm and 2am. There’s a reason for that—that’s when no one expects me to respond to emails, so I can shut all external stimuli down and get to work. BUT I spent the last few days in almost constant company, sitting quietly and working with Sebiha and others around me, and dang is it useful. I’m still trucking along on my Introduction to my thesis, but it’s so much better than when I was sitting in my room by myself.

Other realizations about college:

–       I’ve made it this far (and will presumably make it to the end of the year) without ever consuming coffee, tea, or other caffeinated beverages. Who knew?

–       I’ve also made it this far without consuming alcohol. That’s a really strange one for me, because I thought I’d cave much earlier than this. I am terribly curious to see what I’m like when I’m drunk—I think it’d be a marvelous experiment and I really want to do it and for someone to film me so I can see what happens. But then whenever the opportunity comes around it just seems like not the most fun option available, so I still haven’t done it yet. I’m kind of worried it’s a personality thing.

–       Also, no school-wide parties and no dances. Who. Knew. (Though I did sign up for the P.E. class “Dance Basics”, since I’m terrified of dancing. Come of think of it, that kind of explains the above point.)

–       Also, no significant other! Awww. Especially with the availability of Tinder, I think this could also be a really valuable experience too. But again, I always run into the “would this be the most fun option at this moment?” and then I always end up hanging out with friends, working out, or both at once :).

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All right, that’s all I’ve got for now, because bedtime is honking at me. First day of my last semester of college tomorrow, guys. Life is crazy.

Monica