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White Christmas

December 23, 2010 by Alissa D'Gama | Permalink

Although December brings reading period, papers, and finals (which I finally finished!) it also brings many holiday socials for student groups on campus. Since a lot of student groups transition boards between December and January, the meetings serve as a way for the graduating seniors to reflect and welcome the incoming board members.

My first was the Harvard Premedical Society’s annual holiday party, where the outgoing board participates in Secret Santa and, this year, played apples to apples and ate a delicious peanut butter cake cooked by one of our board members! Since I have been on the board since my freshman year, it was really sad to see my time come to an end—I have made some of my best friends at Harvard through HPS, and I’m going to miss it next semester. Here is almost the entire 2010 board!



The next day, I headed over to the Undergraduate Admissions Council social. We are a student group on campus that serves as the student arm of the Admissions Office, so for those of you who are accepted, you will receive a call from us in the spring and we will be behind the scenes making sure Visiting Weekend is a blast! We munched on appetizers and desserts in the Lowell House Small DHall and caught up with everyone to make sure we were all on track for next semester. My co-chair Ayse ’12 and I can’t wait to meet many of you in the spring!

A few hours after that, I walked up the stairs at 14 Plympton Street to the (somewhat) annual crimson superlatives. Of all the activities that are coming to an end in December, The Crimson has probably involved the most blood, sweat, tears—and joy!—and I will miss pitching stories and editing the paper into the wee hours of the morning. All the other news execs and I have spent so many hours together since our freshman year 🙁

Next semester is going to be so different now that my time with so many activities has ended. I’m heading home tomorrow morning, and I hope all of you have a lovely holiday season! I’ll be back in January when I’ll be working on my thesis during J-Term.

We Are Going To Be Friends

December 9, 2010 by Alissa D'Gama | 2 comments

Last night, my roommates and I were all in our suite at the same time—we weren’t at medical or graduate school interviews, The Crimson, our labs, a UC meeting, an evening section, or an IOP event…we were all home, and we were excited to spend a few minutes catching up before finals begin.

When anyone thinks about going to college, they think about what it will be like to have roommates. I remember how nervous I was the day of my freshman move-in—picking out my outfit (a striped pink-and-orange polo with jeans, as my current and freshman roommate Cara ’11 still remembers—in retrospect, her striped shorts and grey t-shirt was a much better idea as it was a ridiculously hot day), wondering who I would be sharing a room in my suite with, and what my roommates would be like.

All freshmen at the College live in one of the dorms in or around Harvard Yard—I lived in Weld, one of the dorms next to the University Hall and the John Harvard statue. After filling out my housing application, I found out over the summer before freshman year that I would spend the year in a six-person suite with two doubles and two singles. Our first day, my roommates and I picked our rooms out of our recycling bin (the only container not packed into a box of duffel bag) and I shared a long but somewhat narrow double with Cara ’11 the entire year (and it worked out! We have been roommates ever since 🙂 ).

During the second semester of freshman year, we got to form a blocking group, which is a group of up to eight students who will be placed together in one of the twelve upperclass Houses. Cara and I got placed in Mather House, along with a surprisingly large number of other Weld residents! Mather is an awesome house, and all of the undergrads living there get singles in suites all three years. Sophomore and junior year we lived in the lowrise, which has five floors and consists of duplexes, with a common room on one floor and bedrooms either on the floor above or below. This year, we are living in the tower on the seventh floor. I got pretty lucky and have an amazing room overlooking the Charles River. Here’s the view from my window!

We also have three other roommates—Ashley ’11, Camille ’11, and Emma ’11. One of the best parts about all the students at Harvard is the diversity of interests and activities everyone is involved in. Cara is a Psychology major who is an Exec on The Crimson’s Design Board, Emma ’11 is a History of Science concentrator who is one of The Crimson’s Design Chairs, Ashley ’11 is a Government concentrator who worked for First Lady Michelle Obama two summers ago, and Camille ’11 is a Physics and Astrophysics concentrator who has gone all over the world to take measurements and collect data on awesome telescopes—pretty cool!

Thanksgiving on the Cape with Friends

December 2, 2010 by Punit Shah | 2 comments

Living in New Mexico, it can be somewhat of a challenge to go back for every break – with no direct flights and the resulting expensive tickets, I’m usually stuck back East while nearly all my friends go visit friends and family in their hometowns. For every fear I had coming this far from college of never being able to visit home or of being isolated during the vacations, I’ve found friends who have been more than willing to open their homes and offer a place for me and the plenty of other students who come to our campus from across the nation and world.

This year, my friend Kristen ’12, a fellow Mather House resident, invited me to go stay with her and her family at their home. Days after Harvard-Yale Weekend, which my fellow bloggers have covered from all angles, I turned in a problem set, packed my bag, and took the next bus to Cape Cod with Kristen where her family lives. This was actually my first overnight trip in Massachusetts outside of the Boston area; I’m admittedly very often stuck in the Harvard Bubble where so many interesting events are going on, all my friends are, and a steady pile of schoolwork ensures I remain tied to my desk for much of the week. So needless to say, I was excited to get out and take a small vacation before finals period.

Encountering one of the less boisterous seagulls.

Encountering one of the less boisterous seagulls.

Over the few days, we visited the beach where I encountered the seagulls I only previously saw through postcards of Cape Cod, attended a high school football rivalry game, watched my first episode of Glee (I will admit, I judged this show before watching any of it), and joined Kristen’s extended family for Thanksgiving dinner. Coming from a family where we put hot spices into pretty much anything that hits the table, it was great to also experience the diversity of holiday traditions by visiting friends. The weather may have been cold – certainly a foreshadowing to what is to come in the winter – but the food and company were certainly warm. Joining Kristen and I was another friend from Mather House who was with her mother visiting from Manchester, UK.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving dinner!

Through Harvard’s House system through which upperclassman live, I’ve made many great friends. My only hope now is that they’ll visit my family as well out in New Mexico!

I’ll Be There For You

November 30, 2010 by Alissa D'Gama | 6 comments

A few Sundays ago, my friend John ’11 and I sat ourselves down at au bon pain with some chai tea (my favorite kind! I actually don’t drink coffee, so tea is my 24-hour staple) and had a marathon study session for our midterm in American Health Care Policy. It was interrupted briefly by our two hour student study network for Life Sciences 1a—we’re both facilitators, which means we staff classrooms in the Science Center on Sunday night and help freshman with their problem sets.  Going through the sets of slides and taking turns explaining the concepts to each other, I started thinking about how awesome it was to be able to ask him what adverse selection meant and why moral hazard led to a welfare loss (things I can now explain and did explain on my midterm!) The morning of the midterm, he texted me asking a question and I later emailed him with my last-minute confusions. Since we became friends last year, I’ve known I can count on him.

That’s what I love about the students at Harvard. When I held the intro meeting for the Harvard Premedical Society during freshman week and our ice cream social during April Visiting Weekend, I got asked the same questions over and over again: Is Harvard competitive? Are all the students cutthroat? Coming to Harvard, I didn’t know what to expect, and listening to these students voice their concerns, I realized that for many, the atmosphere they encountered during April Visiting Weekend was an important factor in their decision to come to Harvard for college. So, what’s the truth? What are we like?

From my experience, Harvard students are the opposite of cutthroat. My friend John ’11 would always take time out of his studying to answer my questions about health care, even about things he already understood. When I went to a volunteering shift at Brigham and Women’s Hospital my freshman year and suddenly realized my problem set was due in 10 minutes, I called my roommate, who not only woke up, but found my problem set in the pile of papers on my desk, changed, and walked to the Science Center to drop it off for me in my Teaching Fellow’s box. Sophomore year, I remember having my blockmate Jeremy ’11 explain confusing concepts to me as we sat eating breakfast before our Molecular Biology midterm. Junior year, I asked countless MCAT questions to my friends Kevin ’11 and Eric ‘11—and since we took the MCAT on three consecutive Saturdays, we all went to Pinocchio’s, a local pizza place, for a late night dinner when the person taking the test got back from the testing center Saturday night as a mini-celebration. And now, senior year, my friends and I who are applying to medical school or MD/PhD programs are always there for each other—whether through text messages after a difficult interview, email encouragement, or interview prep the night before. We have each other’s back—that’s what matters, and that’s what it means to be a Harvard student.

Harvard-Yale Weekend

November 30, 2010 by John Kimani | 1 comment

I’m officially a fan of ‘The Game,’ a.k.a the annual Harvard-Yale football game, one of our oldest traditions.  The venue alternates between Cambridge and New Haven. This year it was held at Harvard.  It’s more than just a game: it represents an entire week of general awesomeness.  It’s Monday, and there are loads of student groups selling all sorts of Harvard merchandise (okay, mainly t-shirts) all over campus… The same continues through Wednesday, and you know it can only mean one thing- The Game is here. If you’re inclined to creativity, you can come up with your own t-shirt design, and you will probably have people who are willing to buy it. On Thursday, there’s a pep rally featuring a hot student band and lots of free stuff in the middle of Harvard Yard. Friday rolls in, and there’s a New Haven exodus to Cambridge.  Almost every student group on campus holds different mixers with their Yale counterparts. If you’re like me, your evening begins with some improvisational comedy starring your roommate, and then you hit up one or two events hosted by various student groups you’re part of.  Saturday is the day to put on all the Harvard merchandise you have and head to the tailgate (a huge party with a lot of food and beverage right before The Game).

Harvard-Yale Football Game

At 12:00, the  game begins … the cheering is amazing, and the excitement is almost palpable with all the screaming and antics. The whole time, I am wondering why it all seems so familiar until it hits me at the end of the game, when we jump onto the field because Harvard has won. I went to a high school where rugby was huge, and we all made a really big deal of our equivalent of ‘The Game,’ though it happened several times a year since we were involved in various leagues. I had forgotten just how much I had missed the feeling of being in a huge crowd of people all rooting for the same team… the exhilaration when the team wins and everyone runs onto the field. Needless to say, I had an amazing time at what is probably the biggest game I’ve attended at Harvard so far. The spectators can always tell when the players are giving it their all, and they did. Both sides leave knowing we have a date next year down in New Haven  for what is one of the more exciting events in the year—especially when you’re used to winning :).

Many Meetings

November 20, 2010 by Alissa D'Gama | Permalink

Since Punit just wrote about his experience with The Crimson’s “turkey shoot” I figured now would be a good time to add on my own thoughts.

Without a doubt, The Crimson has been one of the most memorable experiences of my time at Harvard College. We publish a newspaper five days a week (Monday through Friday) and have been around since 1873 (a pretty long time!). Every issue is the result of the hard work, dedication, and countless hours of many Harvard undergraduates—from the dayslotter (the person who pitches stories) to the reporters, editors, advertising managers, designers, photographers, and the proofer (the person in charge of the paper for the night)—and that’s not all! We have a total of 11 boards—News, Editorial, Business, Arts, Sports, FM (our magazine), Photography, Design, Video, Blog, and Information Technology—all staffed by Harvard students.

The fall of my freshman year I “comped” the New Board (the comp is The Crimson’s training process) during which I learned how to report and write news stories (for my first story, I got to Skype with a businessman from the Philippines who won an award from Harvard Business School). I spent the next two years as a beat reporter (which meant I was in charge of a specific area of reporting) on the Faculty Team. I loved being able to cover the sciences, especially by running our biweekly Science Page “The Cutting Edge,” which let me communicate exciting discoveries and thought-provoking issues in science and health to our readership—my favorite article was a feature I wrote on the doctor-patient relationship.

The fall of my junior year, I participated in the shoot process Punit is going through now and after a lot of schmoozes (a kind of interview with an outgoing executive) I became one of the News Executives. This meant I was part of a group of undergraduates who kept the News Board running smoothly—from pitching and editing stories to mentoring writers on our teams and being in charge of the paper for a night. Although this often involved pouring over newspaper pages for typos and inaccuracies until the early hours of the morning, its an awesome feeling to see the printed paper in your House’s dining hall the next morning and know you were the last person who looked over those pages and (tried to) make sure everything was perfect.

Right now, my time on The Crimson is approaching its end—once the new guard (including Punit!) is elected, I’ll be done. (My guard is the 137th guard, which means when we were executives in 2010, it had been 137 years since The Crimson was founded). This past week, I did the opposite of Punit, sitting in my dining hall from 9-5 interviewing all the juniors “shooting” for positions on the News Board. It’s bittersweet, especially for an activity that has taken countless hours since the beginning of my freshman year, forging friendships and camaraderie—many of us who are now News Execs have been together on The Crimson since freshman year.

If you have any questions about The Crimson, feel free to ask me in the comments below! If I had to repeat my time here, I would join the Crimson over again without hesitation.

(Also, because I thought it would be fun, you might have noticed that all of my blog posts are titled with the name or lyric from a song. This title comes from the first of The Lord of the Rings movies, The Fellowship of the Ring. In high school, my friend and I once stayed up watching all three extended editions in a row (a good 12 hours!) I love the series, and try to read the books once a year.)

The Week After

November 17, 2010 by John Kimani | Permalink

Okay, this post was supposed to be titled ‘The Morning After’, but I procrastinated, and voila. I had my last performance of David Henry Hwang’s play ‘M. Butterfly’ on Saturday… after over six hours of rehearsal and/or performances every day of the last week.  There is something special about putting so much effort into something and watching it all come together in front of an audience… bonus points if the cast receives a standing ovation. It was my debut in theater, and I had a blast. The plot was amazing, the casting unreal, and the turnout great—we sold out for every performance!  Oh, and I learned a Chinese sentence … that’s a perfectly legit reason for doing anything.

Being a harsh soldier can be tough

M. Butterfly is set in China and in France. The protagonist, a French diplomat in China named Rene Gallimard, falls in love with the ‘lady’ performing the title role in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. He fails to realize that in Chinese opera at the time, female roles were played by men. The lady is a spy for the Chinese government. Gallimard carries on an affair with her spanning over twenty years and eventually divorces his wife (20 years and the dude had no clue).  He is eventually accused of treason.  The play also has some great one-liners like “time flies when you’re being stupid”—I chuckled every time I said that line.  For your own sake, please get acquainted with this play… it’s simply amazing.

Over the past week I found myself thinking, “I am not doing this next semester.  It’s too much…” But I think it might be too late- I may have already been bitten by the theater bug.  What to do this week? I suddenly have a quarter of my day back. I like to think I’ll use the time very productively to catch up on my work and lots of other activities *fingers crossed*.

I came to college determined to try out things I hadn’t participated in when I was in high school. Theater is one of those things, and I’m stoked I got involved.  Theater kids are a cool crowd. There are quirky moments, but that’s the beauty of it.  There’s never a dull moment.  Moral of the post, try out new things- sometimes they will blow you away.

Running for President

November 17, 2010 by Punit Shah | Permalink

With national elections just finishing, it’s time for the annual elections for President and Vice President of the Undergraduate Council (UC), Harvard College’s student government. Of course, being at this campus, the campaign is run by former student staffers from the Obama and McCain campaigns, so each side has it’s set of students serving as campaign and finance managers, in communications teams, on ground operations, and more.

Like any good political campaign, we started by building up our political base. I’m working on the Ebrahim|Cao campaign, where we’re working on, among other issues, to keep the momentum up on initiatives to improve student social life on campus. Led by Senan ’12 and Bonnie ’12, we built up a platform, worked out a messaging strategy, designed and developed a website, and gathered up students to fill all the positions on the campaign. As required by the UC’s Election Commission, a student-run body setup just to administer the rules for the elections, we gathered hundreds of signatures to get onto the ballot.

Senan '12 and Bonnie '12

Finally, once campaigning started last Monday, we tried to deliver our message to every student on campus. Personal and listserv emails. Yelling with a giant poster near the Science Center. Knocking on nearly every dorm room door in the College. Further, to validate out candidates platforms, we’ve tried to reach out to the wide diversity of student groups on campus. We sit down with the group – often in a debate with the other tickets – and then hope to get an endorsement from their group if they see our ticket as being the most effective way forward for their group and the student body. But regardless of how we push our message, it’s a lot of talking, meeting people, and getting psyched! Everyday through this period, we’re required to submit finance reports on our spending: all elections are funded by the UC  up to $400 minus any fines levied against the campaign for a wide variety of violations like forgetting to include voting information on campaign materials or talking to student groups a few days too early. All three of the tickets running have fines running against us – the Election Commission is strict!

We’ve finally transitioning into the GOTV (“Get out the Vote”) period where we’re emailing all of our friends individually – collectively reaching thousands of people – and getting them to cast their ballots online during the election period ending Thursday. That evening, we’ll all gather in a room and hopefully see the ideal result of our efforts: a personal visit from the Election Commission Chair and Harvard Glee Club.

We’ve got some worthy opponents this year: the Coe|Li and Jones|Davis tickets. The latter pair, running with the 90s-era website http://jonesdaviswinnersof2010ucelection.info/ and slogan “Until we Run Out of Money, or Get Removed from Office,” has offered a campaign centered on direct democracy; they already held a vote on what to do with the remaining $20.10 of their campaign funds. The student body’s decision? Buy a small animal. They actually did it, buying a Cuban Tree Frog. Some have called them the “joke ticket” running for humor rather than votes. I’ll just call them inspiring.

The Crimson’s Turkey Shoot

November 11, 2010 by Punit Shah | Permalink

Eighteen one-on-one interviews in five days, a 2000-word essay (written in the 18 hours before it was due), and a final 45-minute interview to — quoting a few friends — “test how well you handle pressure.” This describes my the components of my experience in The Crimson‘s Turkey Shoot, a process by which our daily newspaper chooses its president and top leaders for the upcoming calender year.

I’m shooting for “Director of Web Strategy,” a new position on the publication that aims to bring a greater emphasis on our web product and blogs to ultimately improve our online experience and expand online revenue. It’s exciting because even while in college, I can make an impact on a site that reaches tens of thousands of people a day and helps keep our community informed. But the road to it is no simple ordeal. To shoot, I wrote a statement of purpose in a surprisingly constraining 2000-words after talking to the outgoing president, managers, and editors across our building. The following week, “shooters” as students like me are known interview one-on-one with each editor who would like to deliberate on the  new office-holder through a process affectionately and humorously known as “schmoozing.” Finally, there is that final interview where each of your deliberators sit together, keeping you on your toes for 45 minutes; for positions like President or Managing Editor, there can be 25 or more for more deliberators. Upon writing, I’m currently finishing up my 18 schmoozes.

Students here throw themselves into everything they do, extracurricular activities being no exception. With a talented set of peers, getting the opportunity to lead organizations can thus be a rigorous process. The Crimson‘s is by far the most intense I’ve seen; almost every small and large organization makes do with simple elections or applications. In the middle of it, “the Shoot” as it’s commonly known can seem a bit absurd just to figure out who’s going to lead our publication. It probably is Actually, it definitely is a bit absurd of a process, but by taking a moment as an organization to critically think about our long-term vision, there emerges a consistently amazing set of  leaders who edit and mange almost every part of the publication from content to advertising to even printing (we are one of a few papers in the nation that owns our own presses).

And so while the process is intense, it shown me the possibilities that exist upon bringing together motivated students and giving them a few resources. After hearing and reading about everyone’s ideas and talents over the past week, those possibilities seem almost endless.

It’s What I Go To School For

November 9, 2010 by Alissa D'Gama | Permalink

This fall brought the first of the lasts: my last first day of fall semester, my last move-in to my beautiful single in Mather House, my last Activities Fair. It was bittersweet, and I can’t believe I am already a senior!

Every semester at Harvard since my freshman fall, I have taken four classes, which is pretty normal. This year, one of my classes is Molecular and Cellular Biology 99, a full-year indivisible class for my Honors Thesis (most classes, however, are a semester long). Taking MCB 99 means that I am expected to go into my lab for at least 15-20 hours a week (in reality, a lot more) and take three other classes each semester. Having a lighter course load allows me to devote plenty of time and energy to my thesis project! At the end of our first semester in December, we are graded on the introduction and outline of our thesis, and at the end of spring semester, on the actual thesis! It’s pretty exciting to know that in March my thesis will be submitted J

As you can see from my course schedule below, my life looks pretty empty. However, lots of that time is spent in lab or extracurriculars, so it fills up pretty fast! Actually, I have very few hours of actual class time this year compared to previous years. As a science concentrator, many of the introductory and mid-level classes have lecture, section, and lab, which meant that freshman through junior year I could have as much as 25 hours of class a week.

My class schedule for senior fall

Psychology 16: Developmental Psychology is taught with the Graduate School of Education. We get to learn about how children develop from birth—how they attach to their mother, how they learn language, how they express emotions, and how they learn to lie! We have readings before lecture each week and have to write three papers throughout the semester, which isn’t too bad. Since I’m a Psychology secondary field, the class counts as one of my three electives for my secondary.

Psychology 1861: Developmental Psychopathology—you may have noticed a trend—I’m really interested in child development! This class looks at psychological problems and mental disorders in childhood and adolescence; for example, we have studied depression, anxiety ADHD, and autism. It is by far one of the best classes I have taken at Harvard, even though it’s four hours straight every Thursday (an hour of section followed by three hours of lecture!) What’s really nice about upper level classes is their size—this class has about 20 people, so we get to know each other and the Professor and Teaching Fellow really well. Although three hours seems like a long time, it goes by pretty fast—we normally cover lecture slides, several student presentations, and often have a guest speaker or get to Skype with one of the researchers we read about!

United States in the World 11: American Health Care Policy is, not surprisingly, about health care in America. It is a General Education class, and like many Gen Ed classes, meets twice a week for one and a half hours with a one-hour section once a week. Since I don’t have a background in health policy, it is really interesting to gain some understanding of our health care system and what the recent reform actually means!

Life Sciences 1a: An Integrated Introduction to the Life Sciences: Chemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology—I’m not actually taking this class (I took it freshman fall) but like I mentioned in my previous post, I’m one of the upperclass facilitators, so I have to either attend lecture or watch the lecture videos and read the notes to prepare for the student study networks where students can ask us about the class and get help on their weekly problem sets.

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