{"id":3840,"date":"2012-06-28T13:42:13","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T17:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/?p=3840"},"modified":"2012-06-28T13:42:13","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T17:42:13","slug":"ohhhh-were-halfway-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/2012\/06\/28\/ohhhh-were-halfway-there\/","title":{"rendered":"“Ohhhh We’re Halfway There”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello friends!<\/p>\n

Yes, it is I, after a very long sabbatical from writing, back to report to you about my life.<\/p>\n

So wow, a lot has happened, but rather than bore you with a drawn-out narrative of the stressful end to my sophomore year (papers, papers, papers, Finals, Finals, Finals, PACK UP, MOVE OUT, OMG STORAGE IS CLOSING IN 30 MIN! AHHHHHH), I will share with you a few vignettes from my summer so far.\u00a0 I have had some incredible experiences \u2013 some big and some small and meaningful.\u00a0 But they foreshadow what I hope to be an amazing summer!<\/p>\n

Before I launch into it, I’d just like to say that finishing my sophomore year has been a strange experience — I’M HALFWAY THROUGH COLLEGE! \u00a0What is this supposed to mean? \u00a0Do I even know what I want to do in life? \u00a0Am I ready to graduate in another two years? \u00a0Did I do enough with the two I just had?<\/p>\n

As I contemplate all of these feelings, Bon Jovi’s song “Living On a Prayer” Living on a Prayer<\/a>\u00a0comes to mind, and that’s where I got the name of this post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Take Me Out to the Ballgame<\/strong><\/p>\n

In celebration of being done with all of our final exams, my roommates and I treated ourselves to buying tickets to a RedSox game.\u00a0 I had never been to a RedSox game before and one of my roommates had never been to any<\/em> baseball game before so this was a big event.<\/p>\n

It was a wonderfully warm summer night, and the Boston fans were out in full force.\u00a0 The Sox were playing the Indians, but not a single Cleveland fan could be spotted (I mean, they would have to be pretty brave).\u00a0 My roommates and I arrived at a packed T-station, sporting all of the RedSox paraphernalia we could find.\u00a0 Thrilled by the combined sentiments of being done with finals, of being at a Sox game, and of finding great seats even though we had paid for standing room-only tickets, we were giddy as we dug into our cracker jacks and hot dogs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

One of my roommates and me at the RedSox Game!<\/p><\/div>\n

But in the moments after the ballpark had stood up to sing \u201cTake Me Out to the Ballgame,\u201d I admit, the happy feelings began to falter a bit.\u00a0 Our sophomore year was over!\u00a0 We were now halfway through our college experience. \u00a0We weren\u2019t going to see each other for an entire three months.\u00a0 And in just another two years, we would be separated by wherever life took us.\u00a0 Everything just seemed so scary!<\/p>\n

And so, embarrassingly, we had one of those girly, sentimental moments \u2013 right there, in the middle of Fenway Park.\u00a0 A few tears may or may not have been shed.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t regret it one bit.\u00a0 In fact, I think it\u2019ll be one of the moments I remember most fondly when I do eventually graduate and look back at my college experience.\u00a0 Because I was there, surrounded by my closest friends. Together we had grown to be new people, together we would continue to change during the next two years, and eventually together we would face the world.\u00a0 And it wouldn\u2019t be so scary so long as we had each other.<\/p>\n

And that might be the corniest thing I have ever written<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But I mean it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So freaking Patriotic<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went home for a week around Memorial Day, which is a big deal<\/em> in the town of Sewickley, PA.\u00a0 We host a huge parade in which every pee-wee baseball team, every Girl Scout troop, every high school band member from every high school around, every greyhound dog owner (don\u2019t ask\u2026), every vintage car owner, and every firefighter troop and its trucks, not to mention every veteran from every war (including reenactments of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars) march, jog, trot, play, and drive through the town.\u00a0 In addition, the middle school\u2019s Clown Club always provides alternative modes of transportation to its members such as unicycles and pogo sticks.<\/p>\n

Not only is Memorial Day a big deal to our town, but it\u2019s also a big deal to my family.\u00a0 My dad is a Gulf War I veteran and we\u2019re all very proud of it.\u00a0 My dad will usually organize a group or fellow-vets to march in the parade and host a barbecue at our house afterward.\u00a0 This year, the town asked my dad to give the public address at the post-parade commemorative ceremony.<\/p>\n

As my dad stood in his dress blue speaking about the heroism of those who fight to defend our freedom, I felt so proud and so loved surrounded by my family and my community.\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s a feeling that I sometimes forget when I\u2019m at Harvard, hustling and bustling from one activity to another.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

My sister, my dad, and me after my dad’s speech on Memorial Day!<\/p><\/div>\n

But as I watched the parade march by, the same parade I had been watching every Memorial Day since I can remember, and as I was feeling this great sense of family and community, I couldn\u2019t help but also feel a sense of separation. \u00a0Less and less do I feel like Sewickley is my home, and more and more do I feel like its part of a very loving past.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a sad feeling, just a different feeling, one that I accepted.\u00a0 I had been living at Harvard the past two years, Harvard was my home now.\u00a0 And well, I guess that\u2019s what you get after you finish your sophomore year.<\/p>\n

My sides hurt from Cartwheels and Laughing<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the summer, when most Harvard students are off campus exploring the world, the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) suspends its normal programming and starts up twelve summer camps for low-income kids around Cambridge and Boston.\u00a0 These twelve camps constitute PBHA\u2019s Summer Urban Program (SUP).\u00a0 Like everything else at PBHA, SUP is student-run, so I am working this summer on what we call Fulltime SUPport (get it?).\u00a0 I like to tell people that the job is a combination of administrative work and manual labor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

We hauled 60 chairs from the Harvard Recycling Center to our Mission Hill Summer Program camp site for their classrooms. It was a 97 degree day. In the background is one of my friends cheering when we finished!<\/p><\/div>\n

SUP is a great community of awesome students working together to change the lives of elementary and middle school students.\u00a0 But beyond that, it\u2019s a great community of friends.\u00a0 We live in the Radcliffe Quad in Cabot House, and in the evenings, after camp is done for the day, we use the Quad to play soccer, run around and have fun.<\/p>\n

This summer, I have compiled a short bucket list of things I would like to accomplish.\u00a0 One of these things is to be able to do a cartwheel.\u00a0 Now, I know this is a basic part of many people\u2019s growing up, but somehow between my never-ending stages of gangly awkwardness, I never could quite get there.\u00a0 I remember when I was probably three or so, my mother signed me up for a Gymnastics course, and at the end of the class while all the kids performed cartwheels and summersaults to the \u201cOoooo\u201ds and \u201cAhhhh\u201ds of their parents, my only contribution to the performance was a Donkey-kick\u2026 in which my teacher had to grab my legs and kick them up for me.<\/p>\n

Yes, clearly I am gymnastically-talented.\u00a0 So finally, at the age of 20, I am determined to accomplish this great feat.<\/p>\n

With the help of a few good SUP friends, I practiced on the Quad Lawn for about an hour, slowly progressing, but never quite getting it.\u00a0 By the time it started getting dark, I was sore all over from trying to propel my legs through the air (don\u2019t laugh\u2026) and from laughing with my friends at each of my awkward crashes to the ground.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t accomplished a full cartwheel yet, but it was a great evening, one I shared with close friends as we looked forward to what the summer would offer us.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s all I have for now!\u00a0 As you can see, I have some pretty mixed feelings about beginning the second half of my college experience.\u00a0 A large part of me is screaming, \u201cI don\u2019t want to grow up!!!\u201d while all the while, I keep looking around and seeing the ways I already have.\u00a0 It\u2019s a funny thing.\u00a0 But you guys get to witness the whole process.\u00a0 Should be interesting to look back and read all of these entries in two years.<\/p>\n

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

Hello friends! Yes, it is I, after a very long sabbatical from writing, back to report to you about my life. So wow, a lot has happened, but rather than bore you with a drawn-out narrative of the stressful end to my sophomore year (papers, papers, papers, Finals, Finals, Finals, PACK UP, MOVE OUT, OMG […]<\/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":[3477,37317,29889,1022,64792,1950,64791],"class_list":["post-3840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kates-blog","tag-home","tag-pbha","tag-quad","tag-red-sox","tag-sophomore","tag-summer","tag-volunteer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3840","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=3840"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3846,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3840\/revisions\/3846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}