Hello my loyal and dearly appreciated bloggies. This is sadly my last blog of the summer. As of August 21, 2024, I have only 2 days left of my Admissions Internship. I keep telling Lara, Sheker, and Elise how much I’m going to miss working with them. Lara is going to Greece and then the Netherlands for the entire year, Sheker is focusing on academics, and Elise is going to Edinburgh in the spring. The 3 of them truly made my first ever summer at Wellesley feel complete. I am so grateful the intern team came into fruition the way it did, and I’m going to keep all of our memories locked in my brain forever, and I really hope the 4 of us reunite post grad some day to catch up and debrief or something. But as scheduled, here is my (last) song of the week. If I had to describe my ENTIRE summer in just one song, it would be Lush Life by Zara Larsson.
Lyrically, spiritually, and emotionally, this song encompasses the way I felt throughout this summer. I also picked this song because I get to see Zara Larsson LIVE 3 days after my 20th BIRTHDAY. She’s my 2nd most streamed artist of all time, and I think I will genuinely pass out when I see her in real life. #soexcited. Ok moving on.
Friday.
“Open the door.” My twin brother texts me before attaching a selfie of him in front of my dorm building.
Confused and surprised as I assumed he was unpacking into his new dorm room in Worcester, I rushed down stairs anyways. Reunions now. Questions later.
I quickly open the door to see my MOTHER????????
She flew 2,700 miles from Arizona to Massachusetts to come surprise me, and I have never been more shocked in my entire life. It’s well known I’m mentally allergic to Arizona (unapologetically), and had no plans of going back home any time soon. I realistically thought I would not see my mom for at least another 2–3 years, maybe even until my graduation because of this. But here she was standing in all of her 5’2”, afro-having, color coordinated glory screaming and smiling with me on the front porch of Shafer Hall.
I invite them inside and we catch up, settle in, and go out to eat.
The element of..?
“Did you get taller Avery? No, I think you just shrunk.”
Decided to be an adult and NOT just get pizza or pasta. #growth.
Saturday. My mom drives me to work in the afternoon. My legs were especially grateful for this as I typically bike almost 2 miles, up 250+ feet of hills, and cross a highway every Saturday and Sunday to arrive at my workplace. And I’m always walking in having just finished trying to catch my breath from the typically very humid TREK outside. And the “catching one’s breath” aesthetic doesn’t really mesh with the vibe I’m going for. You know?
Anyways, my client’s brother is getting married this weekend, and he’s got a really snazzy blue suit that requires an equally snazzy pocket square. But of course, the snazziness of the men’s pocket square rarely comes from the pocket square itself. The snazziness is derived from one’s own very intentional espousement of the specific folding of said pocket square. The way your pocket square has chosen to sit in your breast pocket is sending quite the message to your audience. Are you classy? Elegant? Zealous? Playful? Rushed? These are all adjectives that shall be left unspoken as your pocket square is having that conversation for you. Okay that was really dramatic, I just wanted an excuse to hype up the way I folded his pocket square because I think it looks cool. LOL. Ok here.
The Wave.
Unrelated 2nd angle of my very demure sophomore dorm room.
Sunday. MY BIG CAME BACK!!!!!!!!!!!! I have 9 bigs, but the one I’m referring to now is named Philly. Philly is my Caribbean Club big. She’s my ride or die bestie. The introvert to my extrovert. The Jamaican to my Bahamian. I tell her everything. I love her. I walked into Shafer, and she’s nonchalantly ON CAMPUS and failed to tell me (she’s so nonchalant smh). And I’m like uhm HELLO? I haven’t seen her in like 4 months, and then I give her a hug, and then we hang out and catch up for a couple hours as she unpacks her new room. Philly is like if freshly bloomed flowers and grass in the spring were a person. She reminds me of a capybara but with more elegance and swag.
Monday. LAST WEEK OF THE INTERNSHIP. :((((( LR got all of the interns matching bracelets (omg crying), and then I made my mom meet all of my office celebs and also forced everyone to take pictures with her. (I love taking pictures.)
Guess who’s idea it was to take this pic. (mine btw)
An Italian and a Bahamian walk into an Admissions Office…
I really think Jenna is just the 29 year old, more mature, less melanated version of me. That’s twin!!
Creating the friends and family weekend I never had. 🙂
Okay omg, and then this is my favorite part because Lara, Sheker, and I hung out in Sheker’s room OUTSIDE of work #FRIENDSHIP. Sheker gave us some of her old clothes, and the next day we all used them to have a Dress Like Sheker Day. She gave us all of her favorite Russian and Turkmen candy, and I practiced saying them in Russian, and it was so fun and very friend-bonding core. I was very happy.
THE POWER OF FEMALE FRIENDSHIP AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE!!!!!!
Then after this, I took the Green Line from Riverside to Brighton. One of the friends I made this summer invited me to her friend’s apartment for game night. So I got to make 2 new friends, eat garlic bread, and play card games for 3 hours, and it was wonderful. I felt very adult in college core yktv. My favorite part was when they all wanted to play bollywood music, and I got to queue Chammak Challo, Dhoom Machale Dhoom, and Chikni Chameli. One of them also put me on to Blockbuster by Faris Sharif, and that is a BANGERRRR LET ME TELL YOU. Whew. I think my favorite way to connect with people is through sharing music, and I listen to so many genres from so many cultures, so getting to share my favorite songs from people who already liked them as much as me was VERY EXCITING.
Dragosaur and his pottery posse.
Continuing on, work progresses as usual for the rest of the week. During wind-down Wednesday, the intern team received a cake, and we awkwardly avoided initiating karaoke for 30 minutes! I also made Sheker, Lara, and Elise thank you cards to commemorate the ending of our internship together. Writing cards of any kind is literally my favorite activity ever of all time. I love being sentimental and writing long looong paragraphs of appreciation. I have an entire box of very specific, thick, dark green, envelopes with gold-embossed borders that I use for every single letter I give to someone. #branding. And then my FAVORITE part is wax sealing each envelope. With much intention, I pick a combination of 3 wax colors that I feel fits the recipient, melt them down and stamp each letter with my letter “A” gold stamp.
My chalance in action.
To finally conclude this extremely long blog, I’m going to put some of my favorite work pictures from this summer below. 🙂
They call me Snow White in the streets.
Strawberry-appreciation conversion therapy
Dress Like Jenna Day except we didn’t tell her.
Accidental fulfillment of stereotypes.
Clink Clink. L’chaim!
That’s it! Thanks for reading bloggies. I don’t wanna say goodbye because then I’ll be sad. So I’ll just say… See you soon? Maybe?
Missing you,
Avery the Admissions Intern