Hello blog, and happy Monday!
Today marks my first post of February, which is very exciting to think about. We’re only one week away from one of the year’s best holidays: Valentine’s Day!
I was always a huge Valentine’s Day as a kid. When I was in elementary school, we used to call our classroom Valentine parties “Friendship Parties”, and my Grandma Terry would always make us little heart sugar cookies with pink frosting and it was a day where you got to eat just as much chocolate as Halloween with none of the stress of Trick-or-Treating and on top of all of that everything was pink and red and heart shaped and it was amazing!
This year, I’m doing what I can to use my role as an RA on campus to help celebrate. I’m one-third in charge of this month’s All-Hall for the New Dorms complex: All You Need is Love Crafternoon, an afternoon of crafting all in the name of love. I’ll be running a knitting station during the program, teaching others to knit quick and easy projects like headbands and coasters. I’ll also be on Community Engagement duty the night of Valentine’s Day, and I have plans for an epic jam session, otherwise known as Silly Love Songs Karaoke Night! I think Valentine’s Day has a reputation for being a holiday that serves no purpose other than to bum people out, but I don’t agree with that interpretation; I think one can just as easily celebrate Valentine’s Day as Palentine’s Day and spend the day appreciating all of your awesome friends and family!
In addition to Valentine’s Day programming, I’ve also been working on my floor program for this month. Wellesley has almost completely moved back to in-person programming as of late, and while I think that it’s awesome to have more chances to see my friends face-to-face, I’m trying to be conscious about using my role as an RA to provide spaces for people who aren’t comfortable moving into the all-in-person-all-the-time realm. This month I’m holding the Great Bates Hall Puzzle Race, a competition of daring wit and epic challenge. Each Saturday during the month of February, I send an all-hall email with a different puzzle- last week I sent a Jumble, this week I’ll be sending a crossword- and residents have 36 hours to submit a form with their answers. Every Monday I go through the answers and rank each entry by speed and correctness, and I assign point totals according to the ranking. At the end of the month, the person with the most points will earn a pair of hand-knit socks!
Res life isn’t the only thing I do at Wellesley, though, even if it may seem like it at times. I spent most of my day today working at the Computing Help Desk in Clapp Library, helping alums to reset their passwords and students to connect to the printers on campus. Lately I’ve been realizing how much I’ve learned from my semester working at the Help Desk; there are so many problems I wouldn’t even have known where to start with this time last year that I can now work through in three steps on the phone.
I also do spend some time working on my studies, as well. As I write this blog post I’m listening to an audiobook recording of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw for my English class this semester, which is all about ghost stories. I spent the time between phone calls at the Help Desk this morning writing a paper for my French class on my favorite smell- Christmas trees- and after I finish this I’ll be moving onto a reading for my Environmental Horticulture class and creating a timeline of my school experience for my education class this semester. My schedule is split clearly down the middle between my distribution requirement classes and my major classes. I’m trying to get my distributions done as soon as possible so I can spend most of my last two years in my favorite type of classes: the classes for my Education Studies major. I’m also done with all of the specific requirements for my English major- and also most of the major itself, which is really weird to think about this early in my college career- so I’ll get to spend the next two years taking whatever English classes interest me most.
The pea plant I’m growing in my Environmental Horticulture lab!
I also do have time to do fun things within all of my work and studying; just this weekend, my friend Emma and I went on a Target trip and I bought a carton of red and pink Valentine’s Day sugar cookies. I spend a lot of time knitting, too; I’m making lots of progress on my brother’s birthday sweater and should be starting on my sister’s within the next week or two! I also spend at least an hour playing the bells up in Galen Stone Tower every week, and I just had dinner with my friend Anastasija tonight to catch up and hear all about the Tinder date she went on this weekend. Not only that, but I also found the time last night to watch a movie; Emma and I have been talking a lot about Robin Hood lately, so I decided to rewatch the animated Disney Robin Hood where he and Maid Marian are foxes. It might seem like I’m doing a lot, but I’m actually on the lower end of the spectrum of involvement at Wellesley. I have enough obligations to keep me occupied and learning and enough free time to sleep in a little bit most days and go to sleep a little early during others.
I bought a mystery Disney Princess toy at Target this weekend and this is the little CInderella I found inside!
My weather indicates a bit of a warming up happening in Massachusetts later this week, although I woke up to snow this morning so I’m not sure how accurate that prediction is. If it hits 50 degrees, Anastasija and I will be walking to Truly’s for some too-cold park bench ice cream.
Sending you joy,
Andrew
P.S. Yes, this blog title was 100% stolen from the Avett Brothers song. The opportunity was too good to miss.