Something New

Hey everyone! This sure was a jam packed weekend for me. For one thing, it was family weekend here on the Hill, so as my parents only live a half an hour away, they came up for the ALANA brunch, hosted in the Hogan Ballroom. A word of advice for all, but if you are ever invited to a meal in Hogan, you should go for it, because the food is generally very, very good. I was especially fond of the potatoes. Several of the students performed, and my favorite was Rhythm Nation, which is the step dancing club here at the college. If you ever get the chance, you should definitely watch them perform.

Later that night, the Science Ambassadors held Hogwarts on the Hill, which is an interactive show for kids in the area to come watch. Honestly, I think I was just as excited as the kids were. Some of the things there were neat. I mean really, how many times in your life do you get to see someone hammer a nail with a banana (that happened to be soaked in liquid nitrogen)?

Speaking of children, today was trick-or-treat day for the children of the faculty here at HC. It was held on the first floor of Wheeler, and I was SO excited. We decorated the hallway with a bunch of stuff, and my only regret is that I hadn’t thought to bring a costume or anything from home to wear today. I saw some siblings dressed as Darth Vader and one of the Jedi, and was exclaiming over them, when I looked up to see their parent…who happened to be my chemistry professor! Not only that, but Professor Farrell was holding a baby Yoda! I think I nearly died from an overdose of cuteness flooding the hallway today.

As it happened, I survived, and now must write up this pesky Montserrat essay…

Gah! Another long delay in blog entries! Oh the horror! You’ll have to forgive me…again. The week so far has been super busy, and I’ve noticed that all of my classes have started to pick up pace at this point. Alas, no pointless procrastination (as if there were much to begin with) anymore.

For one thing, in calculus, I’ve finally hit the point where I can’t really rely on high school AP calculus to guide my way. Either we didn’t learn this stuff last year, or I completely forgot. It could be either one at this rate, but this morning as I was sitting in class, I realized I had no idea what Professor Hwang was talking about. That really is a shame, because he is an awesome professor to have in the mornings even though it’s at 8 a.m.. This is mostly because his corny math jokes are adorable. And he explains things well. And most importantly of all, because it’s obvious that he loves math. It’s impossible not to pay attention when he’s excitedly scribbling on the chalkboard (because here at HC, we’re old school and have blackboards). However, this morning was getting badly jumbled up in my head, so perhaps I’ll head down to his office hours later.

Other than that, I’m not sure what else there is to say. Since it’s a Thursday, it’s a slow day for me, so I have a little breathing time…in which I shall probably do more work. Tonight, Kimball is hosting some sort of Apple Fair for dinner, so I’m really excited about getting a caramel apple. I had hot apple cider last night from Cool Beans (the campus coffee shop) and now I think I’m going through a minor apple craze.

Oh, and happy Mole Day everyone! It’s one of the best holidays in the year, so enjoy it!

Hey everyone,

I hope you all had a good Columbus Day weekend! For my Columbus Day weekend, I went home, so I thought for today’s entry I’d talk about what happens when you return from college for an extended period of time.

First off, I’d like to point out that college during break is eerily empty. Most people left for home on Friday afternoon, but I didn’t go home until Saturday morning, so Friday night I was stuck in my dorm room marveling at the emptiness of the hallway. It reminded me of the way the hall is at two in the morning on school nights when normal, sane people are sleeping. Deserted. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that someone in the floor above me was blasting their music, I’d be a little freaked out that a Friday night could be so dead.

On Saturday, I went to the mall with my mom. I saw one of my college friends there. Frankly, it was a little weird to think about, because it seems like the world has gotten a whole lot smaller. Running into Maynard people at the mall is one thing, but running into college friends? Seeing Abi is always a pleasure, but in the world outside college, it felt weird to think that a few months ago, if we had been in a similar situation, I wouldn’t have recognized him at all.

On Monday, I hung out with some of my high school friends. One of them is a senior at MHS and she told me the most surprising thing about it. My old school (and when I say old, I mean old) no longer keeps the doors wide open, but instead has acquired a doorbell.

A doorbell.

It completely blew my mind, and as I tried to process it, she told me about some of my former teachers, and about some of the new ones. Yet again, my mind can’t seem to wrap around the fact that life at MHS goes on, even though me and the rest of the class of ’08 aren’t around to see it.

I came back to the Hill on Tuesday night and realized one of the worst things about going home for the weekend. It’s sad coming back. Admittedly, it’s no where near the same as it was on move-in day, but going home is such a big reminder of how things used to be, and you end up missing it all over again.

What’s even weirder than that is that despite my best intentions, I got almost no work done during the break, so I had to clamber down and finish it up. There isn’t enough time to be homesick.

Go figure.

Sorry for the lack of updates over the past few days; I know you’ve all been suffering from withdrawal symptoms, right? *hears crickets chirping* Anyways, the reason I haven’t been updating is because it’s been so busy the past week! Since we have a four day Columbus Day weekend, the professors are trying to finish everything up before we all go. Yesterday, I had my biology midterm, the day before that, I had my biology lab practical, and a bunch of other homework. I’ve never felt so overworked right now as I have in the past week. Even now, I should probably be working on my chemistry lab notebook, but that will have to wait…

Another thing that kept me busy was reading and preparing questions for The Known World, a novel by Edward P. Jones. He came to visit my Montserrat cluster last night in the common room, and my Montserrat professor is a wee bit, teeny tiny, itsy bitsy bit competitive with the other classes in the cluster.

She needn’t have worried; our class is obviously the best.

To prepare for Mr. Jones’ coming, we each had to make up our own assignments for the novel. As it turns out, we were on the right track, but we didn’t do the assignments as per my professor’s specific instructions. So we did it again. And when Mr. Jones came in to speak to us last night, we were super prepared. He seemed like a nice man, and I liked the way he spoke. He had a slow, descriptive way of talking in real life, which matches the tone of his novel a lot. He was a Holy Cross graduate from the class of ’72, so it was cool to think that a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist was one of us a really long time ago!

At first, I thought the discussion was going to be boring, and that I’d rather do chemistry homework instead…but it turned out to be alright. He made a few jokes, especially about not always being sure what he was writing the whole time. Not to mention that the cookies served afterwards were good…

Sunlight! Oh good grief (as I steal Charlie Brown’s old saying), it seems like it’s been rainy and wet all week, and while there are still some grey wisps of clouds outside, I can also see blue sky and plenty of good sunlight pouring in. I’ve discovered somewhere along the past eighteen years that a little bit of sunlight really brightens up my day (literally and figuratively) so despite the fact that I have all my classes today, and a good deal of homework I ought to be doing, I’m feeling more or less ready to tackle whatever the Holy Cross academic departments care to throw at me.

Now excuse me as I slip into geek mode for a paragraph.

Today at noon I went down to a seminar that the biology program holds weekly, in which a speaker from outside comes and talks about things that seem pretty cool. The speaker was Kristin Lewis from Rowland Institute at Harvard University, and her lecture was about plant parasites. I must admit, a lot of things flew over my head, in part because I am a mere first-year and big fancy words confuse me. However, the parts that I did grasp were pretty cool. Like, she talked about doing experiments where green tea has a chemical in it called a catechin, and that chemical helps to keep plant parasites from growing on other plants. I totally have to tell my green tea obsessed friends that they’re drinking a type of parasite repellent now.

Beyond that, life has been good. I’m going home on Saturday for the first time since I got here, and I’m pretty excited about that. As nice as Holy Cross is, there really is no place like home.

I’d probably keep rambling (and more than likely slip into my geeky self once again) but I’ve got to run to Montserrat now. Until next time!