{"id":181,"date":"2010-11-06T13:48:09","date_gmt":"2010-11-06T17:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/?p=181"},"modified":"2011-10-21T17:35:06","modified_gmt":"2011-10-21T21:35:06","slug":"seminars-governments-and-soirees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/2010\/11\/06\/seminars-governments-and-soirees\/","title":{"rendered":"Seminars, Governments and Soirees"},"content":{"rendered":"

So one of the things that I like the most about Boston is the fact there is always so much to do, and there are so many other colleges around. About two weeks ago, we had our first Boston intercollegiate African soiree. The dress code was \u2018classy\u2019; the crowd was amazing, and the dancing insane. Some of my non-African freshmen friends who had never attended such a party before were blown away.
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Other than partying, I have been up to more stuff (of course).\u00a0 We had our first ballroom competition this semester on Sunday. It was amazing getting to dance waltz, foxtrot, rumba and swing after barely 2 months of learning the steps.\u00a0 I did my fair share of stepping and got my toes crushed a couple of times, but I had a good time nonetheless. I would post pictures from the event but I have none that I\u2019m in at the moment\u2026 I\u2019ll definitely post some from the next competition 3 weeks from now.<\/p>\n

Moving on, I have been at Harvard for two months now (yay me!), and about two weeks ago, I had one of my many \u201cthis is why I came to Harvard\u201d moments.\u00a0\u00a0 Harvard has what we call \u2018Freshman Seminars,\u2019 which usually involve a big name in the faculty teaching a group of 12-15 freshmen\u00a0(sometimes fewer) on an area they are really passionate about.\u00a0 My seminar is on Negotiation and Conflict Management, taught by Professor Daniel Shapiro. He teaches at both Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School and is the coolest professor I know.\u00a0 Last week, our class project was \u2018An International Negotiation.\u2019\u00a0 When we got into class, \u00a0Dan gave us background info on a 1990\u2019s conflict involving two countries, and our job was to advise a senior government official\u00a0 on how he should go about negotiating in order to avoid war in less than a week (all true, by the way). So we brainstormed in groups and came up with all these strategies, and then Dan walked out and came back to class, accompanied by a high-ranking government official in one of the countries at the time of the conflict! (I\u2019m being deliberately vague here: my professor doesn’t want the surprise spoiled for future classes). So each of us told him what we thought he should do, and he responded saying why what we said could or couldn\u2019t work and pointing us to all of the complexities involved in the situation. \u00a0It literally felt like we were part of a president\u2019s war cabinet. A week after the class, I\u2019m still excited. Look out for volume two\u2026 no vagueness- I promise!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So one of the things that I like the most about Boston is the fact there is always so much to do, and there are so many other colleges around. About two weeks ago, we had our first Boston intercollegiate African soiree. The dress code was \u2018classy\u2019; the crowd was amazing, and the dancing insane. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2500,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29781,412,29779],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-african-soiree","tag-boston","tag-freshman-seminar"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2500"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1231,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions\/1231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}