Thursday afternoon, the sun is just starting to slant down. I’m walking down the train station platform, listening to my latest read: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2016 commencement speaker, but I digress) when I see a familiar face. It’s Sarah, from my molecular genetics class, and she’s clutching a Styrofoam container…the kind of container doctors carry through the streets…
Tag: music
Live from the Royal Danish Academy of Music!
There’s a Mozart concerto is floating above my head. Quite literally, I’m sitting in the library of the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where I’m taking two classes this semester. Some violinist is playing Mozart 5 and it’s sparkling and everything, weaving its ways through the walls above. The librarian is speaking in rapid Danish. I cannot make out a…
Monday, Through Music
I woke up this morning to a Wellesley wonderland- snow! Somehow, it’s already December, and winter has decided to make its official entrance. You would think, as somebody who’s lived on the East Coast my whole life, I would be prepared for the winter onslaught each year…but somehow I feel caught off guard each year by the first snowfall. Still,…
Flappers, Tanners, and Acceptances, oh my!
Happy Halloween! With it being a Monday, and most of the festivities happening over the weekend, it already feels like Halloween has passed, so much so that I wondered why someone wearing a creepy skull mask and flowing black robes waved to me on my way to class this morning. And then I remembered, oh, it’s still Halloween, which was…
Chasing Seagulls and Perfection
It feels like I just took a final exam. Since some of you haven’t experienced walking out of a final exam at Wellesley, there’s this moment when you walk outside after, that you can’t believe the world can be so still when your brain is still going a million miles an hour. It’s a surreal moment. And there’s a sense…
Concerts and Cell Bio
Another Friday almost done! If it seems like my blog posts are getting later than later, it’s because for the past month or so, as part of my final project for my ethnomusicology I’ve been going into Boston to volunteer and observe an El Sistema music education program at a local charter school. Because this is a public platform, and…
Science and the Symphony
There is a robin singing very intently outside my dorm room. Unusually loud and unusually long, the song slips up and down a major third. The carillon bells are also playing in the background, and I can’t help but think the bird is singing along its own accompaniment. It’s a nice, peaceful ending to an otherwise jam-packed week. Since my…
Boston and Beta Galactosidase
It’s been a particularly eventful Friday at the end of a long week. I just got back from Boston, volunteering with an El Sistema program as part the final project for my Ethnomusicology class. As I mentioned the other week, El Sistema is a Venezuelan-born music education movement that aims to use power of playing in an orchestra to shape…
On being kind (to yourself)
Hello again everyone! I’ve been trying to keep the blog upbeat with all the fun things happening in my life, but to be honest, this is probably the most challenging semester I’ve had yet at Wellesley. It’s wearing me down a little, and there’s definitely been some self-doubt involved. But before we have a little heart to heart, I thought…
Musical breakthroughs
One of my favorite moments is the getting a new piece on the violin. It’s a feeling of giddiness I can’t describe. I have such a long “bucket list” of pieces I want to play that each time I get the chance to play another one of my favorites, I can’t help but get excited. Sure, some of it comes…