{"id":2591,"date":"2012-02-01T10:21:46","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T15:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/?p=2591"},"modified":"2012-02-09T09:26:47","modified_gmt":"2012-02-09T14:26:47","slug":"bright-side-of-boston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/2012\/02\/01\/bright-side-of-boston\/","title":{"rendered":"Bright Sides of Boston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everybody\u2019s been saying that this is a mild winter, and maybe they\u2019re right.\u00a0 But it still seems freezing and grey to me, and I\u2019ve definitely had the January Blues. \u00a0Last week, I woke up early and looked outside my window, only to see a completely frozen world \u2013 there was white ice on the ground, an opaque grey sky, and leafless trees dotting the street.\u00a0 Everything looked the exact same color, and I felt a sinking sadness in my heart at the bleak sight of winter.\u00a0 So I did what any normal 21-year-old would do \u2013 I called my parents on the phone and cried.<\/p>\n

But this story has a happy ending.\u00a0 After my phone call, my parents were so worried about my wellbeing (SAD<\/a> is a true phenomenon!) that they sent me a sun lamp, and it came in the mail only two days later.\u00a0\u00a0 Now I use it in the mornings when I\u2019m checking email: a simulated sun on the desk beside me.\u00a0 And it has actually helped!\u00a0 \u00a0My roommate and I also decorated the living room with a tropical\/Bohemian flavor, so we can pretend it\u2019s summer all year round:<\/p>\n

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

Well, everyone on this blog has been raving about their courses for the spring, and since I\u2019m also<\/em> thrilled about mine, I\u2019ll mention them briefly. \u00a0First, some backstory: My roommate and I are both in the humanities (she\u2019s into photography and I do English), so a lot of our classes have been theory-based over the years.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not just characteristic of the humanities \u2013 my friends who are government or economics majors encounter an almost equal number of classes full of theorizin\u2019 and philosophizin\u2019.\u00a0 The idea is that when we get into the real world, we\u2019ll be able to practically <\/em>apply these complex frameworks of meta-knowledge.\u00a0 While that might be true, I\u2019ve been increasingly attracted to classes whose content is facts-based and has a more direct, unambiguous application \u2013 classes that are oriented toward a practicum of some kind.<\/p>\n

The first exciting one I\u2019m taking is called <\/em>The African City.\u00a0 <\/strong>Contrary to many opinions, Africa is full of more than savannah, grasslands, deserts and jungles.\u00a0 This class focuses on the urban centers of my most beloved continent.\u00a0 We\u2019re learning how to use Geographic Information Systems, which is a kind of data mapping system that employs Google Earth & other topographical maps.\u00a0 Using GIS technology, you can get an immediate, visual representation of data spreads like population density across Africa, or sites of armed conflict. For this class, we each pick one city that we really care about, and we research that city for the entire semester.\u00a0 Each week, we\u2019ll be focusing on maps of different kinds \u2013 transport routes, cultural flows, ethnic & linguistic groupings, and lots more.\u00a0 I\u2019m so thrilled about this class because my city of focus is Dar es Salaam \u2013 a city that I hope to live and work in someday.<\/p>\n

Another great class I\u2019m taking is called Africa & Africans.\u00a0 <\/strong>When I first came to college, I definitely didn\u2019t expect to be studying Africa in school.\u00a0 Africa was just my home, and I wasn\u2019t even sure it should be a school subject!\u00a0 But that was totally na\u00efve, and I\u2019m realizing how unfamiliar I am with a part of the world that I love dearly.\u00a0 This semester, I\u2019m taking a class on the history of sub-Saharan Africa over the last century.\u00a0 It\u2019s taught by Caroline Elkins<\/a>\u00a0who just happens to be an expert<\/em> on post-colonial Kenya, so I\u2019m in good hands.<\/p>\n

The final class I\u2019m super excited for is called Creative Nonfiction<\/strong> \u2013 it\u2019s a writing workshop where we get to improve our journalistic writing.\u00a0 I\u2019ve already taken one writing workshop at Harvard, which was probably my favorite class of all time, so I\u2019m looking forward to the follow-up.\u00a0 And as I mentioned above, I love that the skills from the class are immediately applicable in a straightforward way.<\/p>\n

One more little story before I sign off — last night, I went to see a band called Augustana<\/a> play in the city, and they were wonderful. \u00a0I adore loud shows because the music shakes everyone in the audience in the exact same tempo; I always imagine that our hearts have been transplanted by the bassline, so we all have the same heartbeat for the length of the song. Anyway, the band has a song called Boston<\/a>, which made everyone happy, and it portrayed this city in a pretty light. \u00a0And then on the T ride home, the subway was crammed with exhilarated Bruins fans, who had\u00a0just won the game 4-3<\/a>. \u00a0I was the only one on the subway\u00a0not<\/em> wearing a Bruins jersey, but in that moment, I think I felt just as happy and proud of Boston as everyone else.<\/p>\n

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

Everybody\u2019s been saying that this is a mild winter, and maybe they\u2019re right.\u00a0 But it still seems freezing and grey to me, and I\u2019ve definitely had the January Blues. \u00a0Last week, I woke up early and looked outside my window, only to see a completely frozen world \u2013 there was white ice on the ground, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4468,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[412,58994,355,39,3950],"class_list":["post-2591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-boston","tag-bruins","tag-cambridge","tag-music","tag-winter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591","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\/4468"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2591"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2717,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions\/2717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}