Academics and Auditions

            Hi everyone! I’m sitting here writing this while listening to preliminary auditions for Under Construction. We’ve been doing this for 2-3 hours a day for the past three days, but this is the last night. I probably shouldn’t be writing this during the auditions, but life has been so crazy lately that I don’t have time to devote to each thing individually.

            A cappella, especially, has taken a lot of time, as has transportation back and forth from the Quad to the Yard and from Harvard to MIT. However, things seem to be settling into a tentative routine, and after everyone finishes deciding on their classes and we set section and lab times, life should stabilize.

            Now that classes have started I can talk about academics. Hebrew is definitely fun; we watch a movie on Tuesdays and do a reading on Thursdays. And then we discuss the Israeli family, as presented in the movies and readings. Two of the people in the class were in my class last year, and the other two seem nice as well. And having five people in a class is very nice.

            Arabic isn’t as interesting, but is still nice. After doing twenty chapters in the textbook in two months, I am about to do the next four chapters in three months, so the pace is going to slow down, but hopefully we’ll go more in depth. It’s a larger class, but the people I’ve met are all nice.

            Philosophy is shaping up to be very interesting: the passages are selections I look forward to reading, the professor is good, and despite being about a 70-person class, we have some interesting discussion. Hopefully there will be time enough to discuss people’s ideas in the three hours of class we have a week, or during section.

            ROTC (the class part) is interesting; we had a discussion on Leadership and Management, which was interesting. For this week’s class, we have reading on leadership, and we have to take the Myers-Briggs personality test*. I’m an INTJ, in case you’re wondering. The descriptions are fairly accurate. There’s also a student from Germany in class who just decided to take the course (it’s a normal registered course at MIT).

            Physics is, well, physics, but it’s going fine so far. We already had one lab, and that went pretty well. And it’s a continuation of my course last year, so I’m already fairly familiar with the style. Outside of classes, most of my time has been taken up by a cappella and ROTC. It’s nice to be a sophomore – seeing all the freshman nervous for auditions or overly proper in ROTC makes me appreciate how far we’ve come. However, the time commitment, at least at the beginning, is larger than I anticipated. I’ve been told it will get better; I hope so.

            The weather has been gorgeous; my room doesn’t have AC, but opening the window works just as well. It’s slightly cool, but still mildly summery, and every time I walk outside I have to just stop and breathe in and enjoy how beautiful it is. Last summer all us freshmen didn’t know any better – now we’ve seen what Cambridge looks like for the other half of the year, and we’re taking advantage of these fleeting days of good weather while they last, when the ground  is still green and brown instead of white and gray.

            The majority of my week was just running around between all the things I mentioned, along with turning paperwork in for this and picking up that at the store, so there isn’t that much more to tell. We did several freshman recruiting events in Under Construction and learned a couple of new songs, but other than that, nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Oh, one more thing – I have discovered my favorite place at Harvard. Every day between classes, since I can’t go back to my room, I go up to the very top of the stacks** of Widener Library and ensconce myself where hardly anyone ever goes, deep in absolutely silent, still, solitary bliss,*** surrounded by hundreds of bookshelves and thousands upon thousands of books. So if you think of me in the morning or afternoon, that’s probably where I’ll be.

            Anyway, until next time! Best wishes!

*One of the more accurate versions of personality tests, though of course to be taken with a grain of salt – if you’re interested, you should be able to find a place to take it for free online

**The stacks are the centerpiece of Widener – floors and floors entirely filled with bookshelves. More information can be found on Wikipedia, if you’re interested.

***Don’t worry – I have friends! As I mentioned in my last post, I was pleasantly surprised at how many people I got to reconnect with from last year. But I am, at heart, an introvert. :)