Happy almost-end of semester! I say this every year, but genuinely this fall went by sooo fast. I flew back home last week for Thanksgiving break and had an awesome time being back with my family. My aunt also stayed with us, and I saw some of my best friends!
Reunited with my little gremlin at home!
Now, we just have a few weeks left in the semester, and next week will be my last blog post of 2024 😱 I want to use this post to give a status update of sorts on where I am in the semester.
Classes
I only have a few meetings left for my classes. Next week is the last meeting of my MIT class. We are having a speaker come in to talk about the fintech industry, which I am super excited to hear about.
In my economics elective, we are reading research papers about investing and having discussions on them. The first half of the semester was lecture-based, and now we are in the discussion portion. I like that we first learned the material in a more theoretical sense and now see applications of it in research papers. In a couple weeks, we will have our cumulative final exam (literally winced as I typed this out thinking about that 😅)
In my American history class, we are gearing up for our final papers. I think my final paper will build upon my midterm paper, which examined 1930s advertisements. A great comment I heard from my friend about history classes is that they are not just about learning facts and content but really about building the analytical skills to critically examine historic events and documents; that is definitely a takeaway I have about this class!
In my religion class on Buddhism, we have one paper left and are beginning to talk about Buddhism in the west, which I find interesting and look forward to yapping about. This class has deepened by connection to Buddhism and interest in all religions. I plan to take more religion classes if my schedule permits!
Work
As an Academic Success Coach for my residence hall, I have met so many awesome students. My biggest takeaway so far is that everyone is pursuing really cool academic paths that I would not even know about if I was not an ASC! As for my research assistant job at the Wellesley Centers for Women, I have been interviewing people for the project I am a part of and verifying transcripts of interviews. I am starting to learn qualitative coding and am looking forward to that. I really like this job and plan to continue it next semester.
Cheever House, where the Wellesley Centers for Women is located
Thank you so much for reading!