Hello readers :).
It is once again Wednesday (or is it Tuesday? Or Friday? Tiffany has been asserting that it’s been Friday since Monday)… and besides the pervasive confusion about dates, my life is pretty much perfect. When I was leaving for college, everyone always told me it’d be the best years of my life. And college life is marvelous, but it does come with a heap of stress just to even things out.
Not so right now. I planned my schedule so that I’d have a whole day to spare before leaving for home, and to my surprise I have kept to it. Starting with my two hardest tests to my easiest, I now have one test remaining and feel confident in my ability to do well. This blog will be pretty short because I do need to do some studying to back up that confidence, but I would like to share how enjoyable finals period has been.
Most people do not stay as long I will during finals period. We have three testing slots a day, from Monday through Friday, with the last 2 ½ hour testing period being from 1:30-4pm on Friday afternoon. Wellesley runs on the honor policy, so we are each allowed to choose when we take our tests, go to one of the testing blocks, retrieve and take our tests, and be done. I cannot tell you how great this system is. It allows me, a morning academic, to take one test a day, from 9-11:30am, four days in a row. It allows Erin, who’s a night owl, to take tests at night. It allows people who are leaving earlier in the week to group their tests together and take them on Monday. It allows people who underestimate the amount of studying they have to do (always count me in that group) to push back tests until they are ready.
I am a slow studier, so I am leaving on Saturday, the last day that we can be in Wellesley before they kick us out (they do this by fining us $50 every hour that we stay past 5 pm. It is very effective.) However, I am back at Wellesley on Thursday (at 1:30am, as it were), to attend swimming practice before the swim and dive team heads to Puerto Rico. “And Puerto Rico?!” you ask? Well, it turns out that all of those swimming lessons that we teach (and I often love to teach) end up funding a 1-week training trip to a tropical location in the beginning of Wintersession. I actually cannot understand how I am allowed to be so fortunate.
And I am so happy right now. A lot of it has to do with Tiffany, and Ika and Karina and my other teammates. My last finals period, I was holed up in my room for eight hours at a time, stressed insanely about the neuro 100 test and reviewing material while exercising on the bike machine. This week, I found a space on campus for myself: Professor Conway’s research lab. I progressively dragged my entire academic workspace from my desk in Munger Hall to this desk, and studied by myself while occasionally drawing on his whiteboard wall and inhaling marker fumes. BUT. I had meals with friends every meal. I exercised with friends for 2-3 hours a day for this entire week and last week. I took study breaks and went to social events and had fun at them before returning back. And so the combined pleasures of food, friends, sleep, swimming, and learning have coalesced into a study period with a spirit of calm and well-being.
As Karina reminds me, Wintersession will be more of the same. Team, food, fun, learning, swimming, work, home. I can finally see now why people wish they could recreate their college years. I cannot imagine a situation that would make me more content than the one I am living now.
Happily holiday wishes, and as always, I am grateful to comments and questions.
Best to you all,
Monica
