{"id":2366,"date":"2012-01-16T22:56:40","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T03:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/?p=2366"},"modified":"2012-01-16T22:56:40","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T03:56:40","slug":"wintersession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/2012\/01\/16\/wintersession\/","title":{"rendered":"Wintersession: Book Talks, Engineering, and Ice Skating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello, everyone! I am back on campus for Wintersession<\/a>, writing to you all from the comfort of my dorm room! Wintersession (formerly called “Optional Winter Activities Week” or “OWAW” — I actually like this better than what they renamed it to, just because I liked to pronounce it as “Oh, wow!”) is the week before spring classes start, filled with College and student-led programming everyday, all funded by the University. It’s supposed to be a time for fun and exploration, to do things that you can’t really do during the normal semester just because there’s such a focus on academics and other extracurriculars. For example, many students are going on a ski and tubing trip, as well as a Boston Celtics basketball game. There are also some cool classes that are being offered, including a music workshop, a DJ<\/a>-ing class, among many others. Last year, I was on campus recording a charity song I wrote with two friends in a local recording studio. The song, called “Going Up”, was written in response to the tragic earthquake that hit Haiti in January of 2010. We wanted to raise relief funds and awareness through our project. With Harvard’s help, we ended up recording, releasing, and performing the song at the end of the week, and it was one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had here. Check it out below:<\/p>\n

[kml_flashembed movie=”http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/hufjbAHv9kw” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” \/]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Starting tomorrow, I’m participating in a special engineering course called “Sustainable Materials as Biomedical Materials” where we’ll be exploring different paths in biochemical and biomedical engineering, including industry and research. Here’s a glimpse at our schedule:<\/p>\n

Tuesday, January 17, 2012:\u00a0\u00a0International Symposium on Bio-Inspired Engineering
\nWednesday, January 18, 2012:\u00a0Introduction to Biomedical Engineering, Biomaterials, and Drug Delivery;\u00a0Biocompatibility Testing of Biomaterials
\nThursday, January 19, 2012:\u00a0Introduction to Biochemical Engineering and Metabolic Engineering
\nFriday, January 20, 2012:\u00a0Biochemical Engineering meets Biomedical Engineering – Polysaccharide-Based Tissue Glues;\u00a0Biochemical Engineering meets Biomedical Engineering – Clinical Trials<\/p>\n

Today, I went to a book talk, jointly sponsored by the Undergraduate Council and Harvard Alumni Association. These two groups have come together to bring alumni and faculty authors\u00a0to campus all week to speak about their books, experiences, etc. The awesome part about these book talk events is that not only do you hear from some interesting people, there’s a raffle that gives away 50 copies of the author’s book.<\/p>\n

This afternoon’s guest was Joanne Chang ’91, a pastry chef who owns both Boston’s Flour bakery and Myers + Chang Asian cuisine restaurant. She was an Applied Mathematics\/Economics concentrator (our word for major) here, but left a career in management consulting after two years to follow her passion of baking. She told us the entire story of how she got to where she is today.\u00a0Her talk was very inspiring because she was super real and candid with us, and she’s found both success and happiness after following a very untraditional path. Joanne has even been on\u00a0The Food Network’s Throwdown! with Bobby Flay<\/a>. We had the opportunity to talk to her briefly afterwards, and she was extremely down to earth. She\u00a0signed my book, and we even got a picture with her!<\/p>\n

\"Us<\/a>

Us with pastry chef and Harvard alum, Joanne Chang! Her book got cut off at the bottom there...<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Joanne's<\/a>

Joanne's recipe book, "Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston's Flour Bakery + Cafe"<\/p><\/div>\n

This evening, there was an ice skating event at the Bright Hockey Center<\/a>, home to the Men’s and Women’s Varsity Hockey teams. Now, I’m not the best skater, and was a bit hesitant to go, but my friends convinced me and I’m really glad I did. It was definitely a lot of fun, and there were so many more people than I was expecting. I didn’t fall, either! Wintersession has been great thus far, and I’m definitely looking forward to the rest of the week!<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, everyone! I am back on campus for Wintersession, writing to you all from the comfort of my dorm room! Wintersession (formerly called “Optional Winter Activities Week” or “OWAW” — I actually like this better than what they renamed it to, just because I liked to pronounce it as “Oh, wow!”) is the week before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4467,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37380],"tags":[58946,58962,29847,58961,29846,58960],"class_list":["post-2366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scotts-blog","tag-biomedical-engineering","tag-harvard-for-haiti","tag-j-term","tag-joanne-chang","tag-winter-break","tag-wintersession"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366","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\/4467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2366"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2395,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366\/revisions\/2395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}