Starting the Semester

It’s hard to believe I’ve been here a week already, but I have. Part of the confusion comes because of the Labor Day holiday – that’s right; we had Monday off on the second week of school. The only other holidays this semester are Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. I think we could really use a more centrally-located day off, but it was nice to be able to start work slowly.  I have my classes figured out, although I still haven’t actually begun attending all of them, and ROTC starts bright and early at 6:00 am tomorrow morning at MIT. We’re off and running.*

I’m actually taking six classes this semester. I usually take five because of ROTC, but this semester I have two classes that only meet once a week, and one of them is only one credit hour,** so it’s manageable – possibly more so than my workload last fall. In addition, outside of ROTC, I’m only taking classes related to my major or that I’m interested in, which makes life more interesting and also easier.

So what, exactly, am I taking? Well, of course there’s ROTC; this semester we’re taking Naval Engineering. We’ll see how that goes; we don’t start class until Friday. I’m still taking Arabic; I’m in third-year by now, but it’s still four days a week. On the bright side, the atmosphere is friendly and so far, not too much work. I’m also taking part in a small (aka four-person) German philosophy reading group which meets once a week – this is the one credit hour course – and seems very enjoyable. We haven’t decided exactly what to read yet, but we read some Nietzsche today, which was neat.

My other once-a-week course is a philosophy tutorial on Identity, which is required for my major. I haven’t been to it yet. I also haven’t been to my Intellectual History of the Western World class, but it’s a history class, and all the readings are philosophy, so we’re bound to get along. And finally, I’m taking a class that studies and analyzes five pieces of classical music in the context of their initial performances. I’m looking forward to what should be an interesting and not-too-onerous semester.

As far as Harvard goes, it’s still hot outside – well, more inside than outside, really; the buildings were built to retain heat, and they’re very good at it. It’s too hot to sleep on cloth, so my usual method right now is to stretch out on the linoleum floor and then, when I wake up sometime early in the morning and it’s finally cooled off, to finally crawl onto the bed and sleep on top of the sheets for the rest of the time. It works, but a ceiling fan would be nice.

Aside from that, though, life is going pretty well here. I went to church on Sunday and started my Christian Impact LIFE Group today (they had Italian Ice; it was great!). I’m reconnecting with friends. My main worries right now concern ROTC; first of all, there’s of course the waking up, but in addition to that, after two years of avoiding it, I’m going to have to drive in Boston/drive in snow/remember how to parallel park. It’s the only practical way to reach MIT that early in the morning, and Harvard pays for Zipcars that we can use for ROTC events. Anyway, I’ll keep you updated.

So that’s life around here. I realized a little while ago that I’ve now taking classes at seven different colleges: TLU, Middlebury, Harvard, MIT, Marquette (Jordan), Hebrew University, and Cambridge. It makes getting transcripts kind of a pain, but it’s been fun. As seven is the number of completion (and I’ve used up most of my study abroad credit), I think I’ll be staying put for awhile.

*Not to be confused with ‘up and running,’ which may or may not be the case. This is why prepositions are one of the worst parts of language-learning.

**Harvard, as of this semester, has finally switched to giving a half-credit for each semester course to giving four credit hours for each course.

Pictures: I’d forgotten how much harder it gets to remember to take pictures when you’re not touring every weekend, but here are some of the highlights.

This is the Activities Fair in the Quad - it was quite the hubbub.

 There's an apple tree across the street from my dorm. It's not quite as epic as Stonehenge, but it made me happy.

 On my way to church - the streets were nearly empty; it was nice.

 The view from the Science Center Library:

 Harvard Square:

 One of the rooms in Memorial Church, which we used for my Christian Impact small group earlier today:

 Cutting through the park on my way back to the dorm. We don't have as many ornate buildings as Europe, but we, too, have statues in parks and fancy architecture.