One of the reasons why I like being at Harvard is being able to interact with well-known professors, sometimes without even knowing.
It was interesting yesterday how I was down in the computer lab of my sister’s house, Lowell, and there was a professor using a Mac. I was wondering who the professor was and my sister replied, “He is one of the best mathematicians at Harvard.” That has got to mean something.
Today, I was writing an email to tell the board members of Harvard Society for Mind, Brain, and Behavior about who I invited for future bi-weekly teas (I am in charge of organizing bi-weekly teas for the HSMBB community). I only realized later that one of the professors I had invited is very well known and has been in numerous media, including TV and publications.
I am pretty excited to meet these people! Plus, it’ll make my event so sweet. Many people will come!
I woke up at 8:22AM cursing. “Oh shit!” I had planned on waking up at 6AM to start studying and finishing problem sets because I had not done any work yesterday or the day before. I know. This is horrible. Horrible planning. But the thing was, I planned on doing work, but I had no motivation and no drive whatsoever. I know I should have just started on work and get into the working mode, but I was so weak-willed and decided instead to watch a string of movies. Not all the movies were great either.
Anyway, I volunteer through a program called HARMONY to give a private 1-hour weekly piano lesson to a local student. After I finished getting up, I had a sudden thought that my student may have forgotten about the lesson. After all, it was early on a Sunday morning and no one really wants to get up on Sunday; we all want to sleep in, especially in high school. So, I called her up and realized she did forget. Instead of being disappointed, I was ecstatic. I had extra time to start studying! So, sleepy-eyed as I was, I cracked open my physics textbook and started reading through it.
Soon enough, by 10:30AM, I had to get ready to started walking to Vanserg, which is a twenty minute walk from Dunster. It was pouring outside too, but I had to trudge to Vanserg because I volunteer for Chinatown-ESL, a program where I teach recent Chinese immigrants the English language for two hours each week. I teach level 1 Chinese, which basically means that the people I teach have no introduction to English so we start from the very bottom up–from pronunciations and such.
All the while I was walking to Vanserg, which is this weird building in this small alleyway a long way from Dunster, I was thinking about how much I regretted signing up for Chinatown-ESL, especially on a Sunday. I was too busy–I should have more time to study.
But when I arrived at Vanserg and went into the overly stuffy room–the window was closed and the heater seemed to be on too high–I realized why I signed up again. As I was teaching, I just thought it was so fun. I love interacting with the old immigrants as they tried very hard to grasp a new language after living half their lives in another country with another culture. They were so eager to learn the new language; some even traveled one and a half hours to come to class every week.
My heart just melted at the devotion the students showed. Sure, there would be students who may not study at home, but when I told them to study and that we were going to have dictations each week last week, I was so happy when I asked this week if they studied and they all replied yes.
I just love enthusiasm. I do not care if I am volunteering and not getting any monetary compensation; if I see enthusiasm for something that I can help with, I want to help.
I attended all the fanfare and festivity of Head on the Charles, the world’s largest regatta, today. This event is not organized by Harvard, which was what I had previously thought. Apparently, many athletes and spectators from around the world came to participate in numerous crew events. I just really went to see what happened, see how the rowing looked, obtain free things, and get some time out of the dorm.
If anything, I got a free Best Buy bag out of the entire experience, but it was also interesting to see the boats rowing by. From the bridge, the boats looked incredibly slow as they rowed head-on in regards to your view, whereas from the river banks, the boats seemed much faster from a lateral viewpoint. I took a few pictures on this cold, cloudy day.
Countries that had a team (most likely from a school) participating this year
Scene of the river from the bridge; tents were set up on the right
Keeping the green theme; courtesy shuttles ran by TD Bank
One of the tents was advertising cars such as these. I guess we know who the target demographic is.
Dunster house! The red bell tower! The unsightly building on the right is another house.
The score board. I don’t see Harvard, but as a rower told me, “Head on the Charles is meant to be fun, not about competition.”
My house will be having a student-faculty dinner, where students invite faculty members, including professors, teaching fellows, or preceptors, to join them for a formal dinner at our house dining hall. This year, my house will be holding the dinner next Thursday on October 22. I am actually quite excited for this because it means a great dinner.
Last year, for the freshman faculty dinners, the Annenberg dining hall was in its full glory with formal bleach-white table cloths, delectable desserts, interesting entrees (including swordfish), and more. Unfortunately, I, for some reason or another, did not ask any professors or even teaching fellows last year. Thus, this time, I want to enjoy every aspect of the student-faculty dinner: I want to be able to learn and have an interesting conversation will dining on deliciousness.
Yesterday, I had decided with a friend to invite one of the organic chemistry professors. I sent an email last night but received a reply this morning that he could not come due to lab meetings. I was afraid that that he would not be able to come; all the professors seem so incredibly busy here. After that email, I immediately start to plan to ask my Chinese teacher, but a few hours later decided to email one of my Introduction to Neurobiology professors. I feel that although I can talk with my Chinese teacher and get to know more about her, I am really more interested in learning more about the neurobiology field. After all, this will be what I am heading towards.
I am still awaiting the reply. But that reminds me, I have to send off another list to emails to professors to invite them for upcoming club events. I am finding that formal email sending has become a larger and larger time commitment.
I’ve restarted. Simple. Nothing fancy. The bare basics.
It’s been such a while since I had last posted on this blog. I had neglected to write and update about my life for months at a time. This blog isn’t even here to serve as a traffic driver, which was my (ideal) hopes two years ago. This area is for me to write down memories. Right now, it’s one of the most important and memorable times in my life–my time in college. My time at Harvard, probably one of the most impacting experiences I will ever receive. I want to describe as many moments as I can so that later down the road, I will be able to look back and laugh at my immaturity, relive the happy moments, or still sympathize with my current stress. Whatever the case, I want to be able to have a concrete memory that will not change as the time changes.
So I have gone back to the blog, back to the meaning and purpose of a blog. No fancy layout and no complicated goals.
The simpleness of this blog from the layout to the writing will allow me to build on what I have slowly. Let this be a new beginning.
