Visitas de Veritate

            Well, it’s Visitas* weekend, and all the pre-frosh are here looking around. It was raining yesterday, but today the sun’s come out to give us some beautiful spring weather, the air is warm, and the trees and bushes are blooming. People probably think I’m a pre-frosh; I’m so excited that it’s finally spring that I’ve gone around taking pictures of every flowering plant I come across. I’ve developed quite a collection.

            It’s also kind of exciting seeing all the pre-frosh activities. Last year’s Visitas was cancelled due to the Boston Marathon bombing, so we’re living vicariously through the pre-frosh. On Friday, for instance, I went to a NROTC breakfast designed so that the pre-frosh could meet current NROTC students. I guess we started too early, though – we ended up with a ratio of about 5 students to every pre-frosh, so we mostly just talked to each other. Still, it was fun.

            After that, I went to another breakfast, this time with HRCF. They were giving a talk on theology, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings, which I was planning on going to but missed last year. Besides, now I’ve actually read LOTR, so I wanted to hear what they had to say. It was very interesting, and the food was good. From there I went directly to lunch and met a friend with the pre-frosh she’s hosting and ate with them!

            Why go to lunch immediately? Well, that’s the downside of Visitas weekend. The freshman dining hall, but more than that, the whole campus, is swarming with people. Even going to lunch when it opened, I found myself in a crowd. The friend I met for lunch ended up studying with me in my room for most of the day afterwards, having fruitlessly looked for quiet space in four different libraries (I know, we have so many libraries – it’s awesome!). Luckily, I have a single to hide out in, so I content myself with curling up under the covers, studying, and eating Ramen noodles so as to avoid the dining hall as much as possible.

            I don’t spend nearly as much time studying in my room as I’d like, though, and it’s partly my own fault. Yesterday, for example, my a cappella group practiced, starting at around 1:30, and then went to staff a booth at the Activities Fair in the Quad**. A few of us ended up staying in the Quad for dinner, and afterwards we stayed even longer to watch Pitch Perfect, which I’d never seen before. I ended up staying in the Quad until past 10 pm, which led to some late-night study and not much sleep, but maybe it was worth it. I haven’t yet figured out that cost-benefit analysis – my prefrontal cortex isn’t developed yet, you know.

            A major difference between high school and college: in high school and below, around this time of year things are winding down. If my memory is correct, people have parties, review old material in class, and chill a lot of the time. In college, this is where everything gets frantic: finals are coming, papers have to be turned in, projects are getting finished up. Everything is coming due. I had my first final this morning, and it went pretty well. I’m also putting finishing touches on my draft of a 12-page research paper on Pride and Prejudice. Which means I’m also tempted to quote Jane Austen all over the place now. Well, there are worse things to quote.

            Oh, my goodness! It’s the last week of school already – just a few more days and school will be out! I’ll be a quarter of the way through my undergraduate career; I’ll be an upperclasswoman; I’ll move again! So much has happened, and yet the year’s just flown by. I’ve gone from spending most of my time studying to having so many other things to mention on here that I can’t fit them in!

            I will be on campus for another couple of weeks after this; after classes we have reading period until May 8^th, and then finals start. Since I don’t have any finals, I’ll be done about then, and then my parents are coming up to help me move while I can still stay in my dorm for free. So I’ll probably write another two blog posts and then sign off for the summer; we’ll see when we get there. Thank you so much for all your support and prayers throughout the year, and I hope your week is lovely! I look forward to seeing many of you soon!

* Visitas (a play on our motto: Veritas (Latin for truth)) is where all the pre-frosh (accepted students) come to visit Harvard. We used to wonder why it was so late in the year, but once we lived through a winter here, we understood.

**Quad: the Harvard-Radcliffe Quadrangle; four of the upperclassman houses (including mine) are here; it’s about a 15 to 20-minute walk away from the Yard (the main part of Harvard College, where most of the classrooms and all the freshman dorms are situated).