{"id":232,"date":"2010-11-09T20:22:48","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T01:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/?p=232"},"modified":"2010-11-09T20:22:48","modified_gmt":"2010-11-10T01:22:48","slug":"freshmen-faculty-food-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/2010\/11\/09\/freshmen-faculty-food-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Freshmen + Faculty + Food = Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

The tall, vaulted ceiling, the warm glow of the overhead chandeliers, the wood paneling, the largest secular collection of stained glass in the world, the \u201cOMG! This looks exactly like the Great Hall at Hogwarts!!!!!!\u201d \u2013 it was all old news.<\/p>\n

I turned to my guest. \u201cWelcome to Annenberg Dining Hall, where I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[This isn\u2019t exactly true.\u00a0 I never eat breakfast.\u00a0 I simply cannot motivate myself out of bed in the morning to go grab the most important meal of the day when stuffing my face with a cereal bar as I run to class is an option.\u00a0 I also sometimes take naps during lunch\u2026 you can see where my priorities lie.]<\/em><\/p>\n

My guest looked impressed.\u00a0 \u201cYou mean, you have white table cloths and flowers at every meal?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUm\u2026 no.\u00a0 That\u2019s a treat for the Freshman Faculty Dinner.<\/p>\n

The Freshman Faculty Dinner is one of those special opportunities provided by Harvard to encourage students to really get to know their professors.\u00a0 Oh sure, you can ask professors to dinner any time, you can go to their office hours, you can even approach them after class, but for we freshmen sometimes all of this can be intimidating.\u00a0 So, the Freshman Dean\u2019s Office, in an attempt to shove us out of the nest, organizes dinner for us.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Students and faculty gather in the Queen's Head Pub for a reception prior to the Freshman Faculty Dinner hosted in Annenberg Hall.<\/p><\/div>\n

My guest, as it turns out, was Professor Simon Innes of the Celtic Languages and Literatures Department.\u00a0 Why the Celtic Languages and Literatures Department, you ask?\u00a0 Well, that is actually an interesting story.<\/p>\n

So I arrived here on campus in August with zero idea of what I wanted to study.\u00a0 I knew that I was interested in something to do with Government\u2026 or Economics\u2026 or Social Studies\u2026 or Sociology\u2026 or Anthropology\u2026 (need I continue, or do you get the gist?).\u00a0 The sheer volume of fascinating-looking courses that Harvard had to offer overwhelmed me (there are over 3,500).\u00a0 I decided on taking a few basics \u2013 I knew I was interested in Government, so why not enroll in an Intro to Comparative Politics class?\u00a0 Economics 10 (the famous Greg Mankiw course) was next on my list.\u00a0 Then for fear of losing all of the hard work I put into the Spanish Language during high school, I decided it would be best to take the placement exam and enroll in Spanish 40.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 But I still had an extra class slot to fill\u2026 hmm\u2026<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when inspiration struck.\u00a0 I thought, \u201cWait a minute\u2026 I love history\u2026 and I\u2019m Irish\u2026 but I know nothing about Ireland\u2026 \u201d So I enrolled in Celtic 118: The Gaelic World from the 12th<\/sup> to the 17th<\/sup> Centuries.\u00a0 It was the best decision of my life.<\/p>\n

Here I am, one of the luckiest girls on the planet for having gotten into Harvard, and in my first semester I get to be in a class of two students (yes, TWO STUDENTS) sitting across from one of the most knowledgeable people in the world in the field of Celtic history!\u00a0 HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!\u00a0 I get to ask as many questions as I want, offer whatever opinions I may have, and engage in stimulating conversation on a topic that really interests me.<\/p>\n

Since there are only two students in the class, my classmate Katherine and I decided to invite Professor Innes to the Freshman Faculty Dinner, as sort of a \u2018thank you for being so awesome.\u2019\u00a0 And if we thought our classroom conversation was interesting, dinner did not disappoint.\u00a0 We got to learn why Professor Innes decided to concentrate on Celtic studies as a profession, what life as a professor at Harvard was like, how his childhood was in Scotland, and what he was like as a person, beyond just our professor.<\/p>\n

As I walked back to my dorm after dinner with a sea of other freshman, I couldn\u2019t help but feel excited.\u00a0 I had reached out and gotten to know one of my favorite teachers on a more personal level (plus, the food was amazing).\u00a0 And I think based on the loud voices, the chorus of laughter, and fast-talking going on around me, the other freshmen felt the same way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tall, vaulted ceiling, the warm glow of the overhead chandeliers, the wood paneling, the largest secular collection of stained glass in the world, the \u201cOMG! This looks exactly like the Great Hall at Hogwarts!!!!!!\u201d \u2013 it was all old news. I turned to my guest. \u201cWelcome to Annenberg Dining Hall, where I eat breakfast, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29773],"tags":[29792,3982,29791,3737],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kates-blog","tag-annenberg-hall","tag-dining","tag-faculty-dinner","tag-freshmen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","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\/2498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}