Picture this. I’m sitting in the Cage, a fenced-off room at the edge of the Science Center. It marks the beginning of the Arumainayagam research lab domain; one wall has an open door leading into the room where the ultra-high vacuum chamber is housed. Two juniors are in there running experiments for Katherine. We can vaguely hear their voices, layered under the whirring background noise of the Science Center and the high-pitched continuous noise that occasionally graces the building. There’s copious light pouring in from one wall of windows.
Katherine, Sebiha and I, all thesising seniors, are sitting together working on the document itself. Or, more accurately, we’ve just taken a break from working on our theses, since Katherine has just burst out laughing and Sebiha and I have looked over curiously. She pulls off her headphones.
“Sorry, sorry. Just, you know how Nathalie got the Fulbright?”
“WHAT?” I screech happily. “Really, when? That’s awesome!”
Katherine’s laughing again. “Exactly—wait, you have to hear when she told Chris A. Audrey and I were scoping it out outside his office—Audrey was literally laying on the floor, super-spy style—”
She holds out her phone, and Sebiha and I huddle around it. “So she’s pretending she didn’t get it,” Katherine narrates, as we lean nearer to hear. I can hear a serious Nathalie tell Professor A, “So I heard back about the Fulbright.”
Though I haven’t talked to Natalie in ages, her voice is deep and familiar; we sat next to each other in AP Chem in high school. She’s a biochem major like Katherine’s twin sister Audrey, and works in Chris A’s lab as well. We all know each other through Chem 120, that fateful first class together our first-year fall.
“Oh,” someone might say on the screen, and then there’s a lot of shifting noises. The next thing we hear is:
“WHHHHHHHHAAA!” Prof. A howls, thrilled. “WHHHHAAA! You’re going to BRAZIL!”
“Audrey and I both burst into his office at this point,” Katherine explains to Sebiha and I. “It was too exciting.”
“YOU’RE GOING TO BRAZIL TO STUDY ASTROCHEMISTRY! Astrochemistry in BRAZIL!” Prof. A’s voice radiates delight.
“I’ve been sitting on this information for about a week now,” Nathalie explains in the video. “And hey, I’ll be there for the Olympics!”
“The Olympics are that year?” Prof. A asks, in a normal speaking voice.
“Yep!” In the movie, Audrey and Katherine concur.
“Oh, you timed it so perfectly! WHAAAAAA you’re going to be in BRAZIL!”
Sebiha and I have dissolved laughing at that point. Prof. A. sobers, and I think: here it comes.
“I am so proud of you,” he informs Natalie earnestly, and I grin. When I’d told him I’d gotten into Cambridge, he’d sent the email to his entire lab, with the excuse that I’d worked there my first semester and therefore knew a few people f. Quote from that email: “Dear Monica, Congratulations! I am sooo proud of you!” with the following picture:
The video finishes, and we all just sit there smiling at each other.
—
“Did you know Emily got into medical school?” Isabelle updates me on the bus, when I happened to run into her on the way back from MIT to Wellesley. Actually, when I’d first seen her I’d promptly panicked, because I don’t see her all that often. “Wait, did I miss class? Do I have recitation right now? Office hours? Am I supposed to be going back later?” She was very patient while I racked my brains, and then eventually greeted her.
“Wait, what?” I demanded, safely ensconced on the bus seat across from her. “I just had dinner with her yesterday!”
“Well, I think she heard yesterday,” and, relieved, I begin the full-scale take-over-the-face grin. Isabelle continues, “I was sitting down with friends at the Science Center, and she wandered over, and you know how modest she is, she said she was looking for people. And then we talked for a bit, and I offered that she could come work with us if she was looking for people to study with, and then she said, ‘Oh, actually, I just got into medical school and was looking for people to tell,’ like, you know, totally Emily all embarrassed.” Isabelle finishes, eyes bright.
“That is so excellent,” I say, because there are two people I’ve been keeping a close eye on for medical school, Emily and Tiffany, and this is so, so excellent. “I’ll have to congratulate her!”
“I know, right?” Isabelle says, smiling.
Later, when we’re eating lunch together, Isabelle spots Emily in the dining hall and points her out to me. I promptly run over.
“CONGRATS!” I accost her with, beaming. She laughs a little. “Thanks,” she says, and we proceeded to go over the fact that she’d learned about ten minutes after I had left her table yesterday.
A few hours ago, I opened Facebook to the following post:
“If my screams in the dining hall didn’t clue you in, I am ecstatic about Emily’s acceptance to Georgetown Medical School! Congrats almost (4 years NBD) Dr. Cockey!!!!!” from Elizabeth, who sat at the table a little longer than I had.
It’s still collecting likes.
—-
“Oh, so I don’t know if I told you—you probably—no, I don’t think I told you,” Sebiha says, once Katherine has headed off to a formal and it’s just the two of us in the Cage. We’ve had a productive afternoon, save for watching Katherine do the dance routing to one of SuperJunior’s (KPop) songs, and a video each from Sebiha and Katherine’s phones (Sebiha’s was about bioluminescent fish. I feel like I should have understood a lot more about the light filters they used than I did.)
I just look at Sebiha inquisitively.
“You know how I was at Yale for an interview last month?” Barely a pause. “I got it.”
“WHAAAAAAA!” I announce. “THAT’S SO GREAT!” (I feel like my responses are a bit repetitive. But really, my joy can only take so many forms, and be expressed through an extremely limited vocabulary and non-vocal sound set. Sebiha did point at me and reference the similarity to Prof. A’s response at this point.)
I ask about what the Yale thing is, since I know I should know and I really did know at some point but I’m really, really bad about this kind of thing. I believe it’s a selective problem for what I call “people facts” but I’m continually concocting theories about where its boundaries lay and if it’s maybe an auditory learning problem or what.
Sebiha tells me that the Yale thing about playing with kids and neuroimaging research, which prompts me to remember that this is about how Sebiha is passionate about autism research and how this is exactly what she wants to be doing with her life.
I look at her calm expression and answer when she prompts me with what she’s thinking this position will mean for what she will apply to once she’s done.
…I love these people so much.
—
I also informed Sebiha and Katherine that I’d won the Horton-Hallowell Graduate Fellowship from Wellesley, which segued smoothly into discussions of money and then straight to theses again, since that’s the topics that’s on all of our minds :).
(Wellesley, I love you so much—and especially to the Committee members who read through all of our applications: thank you.)
—
“Happy senior spring!” is what I’m writing to the prospies (prospective students) who have emailed me about meeting during Spring Open Campus. Happy senior spring indeed.
—
Oh man, guys. It has been so long since I’ve looked at these photos… here are flashbacks to first year of all the relevant people in this post. Katherine, Nathalie, Sebiha, and I, seemingly posing outside the lab in the weird fire exit stairwell I don’t technically think we were supposed to be in. I have no idea what we’re doing, but four years ago we knew!
With Audrey ;).
Chem 120 never ends! Frieda, on the far right, got into a TON of graduate schools, by the way. I don’t know if she’s decided where she’s going yet.
Chemistry cookie party first year, with the twins. Audrey’s on the left, Kat’s on the right.
The ultra-high vacuum chamber with Audrey and Kristal– Kristal was the thesising senior in Prof. A’s lab when we were first-years. I can’t even believe it :).
Elephant toothpaste, man. Chem 120 lab– that was the time.
Yeah Chem 120 lab! The two people on the far right, Maria and Nevatha, won a Fulbright and Watson respectively :).
Love this picture of Sebiha and Alice.
Dance party! Apparently this much hasn’t changed :).
And Nathalie and I over Spring Break, in NYC!
This kid.
I became good friends with Emily my sophomore year summer, when we were in one of the MIT frats together. Here we are on one of our trips wandering Boston :).
The day I took my roommates (Alice, Erin, Iulia, Emily) on a four-hour walk without sunscreen to the food trucks in Southie. We literally walked through a drug deal on accident. As a rule, I’m either very good with or very, very bad with directions. So much love for Emily :).
Ice is melting, river’s flowing– spring spring spring :).