Sunday, August 28, 2011
The calm after the storm
Here's hoping that everyone and their families are safe and sound. I know I was really worried about the hurricane especially after Mayor Bloomberg announced a mandatory evacuation for the dorms. I rushed back to the dorms after volunteering (yes, even in the midst of a hurricane warning I went to help out at Beth Israel because I thought they would be swamped with work for the weekend) and packed a bag to take home. On my way to the elevators, it seemed like everyone was getting ready to go as well and there was a general feeling of panic and anxiety. But there wasn't a feeling of only looking out for yourself. Everyone was wishing each other safety and giving out hugs and I really felt a sense of community. That's what I love about being in the dorms. You really get a chance to create a family away from home, a support system when you're in a new environment, and these are the people you'll be counting on for more than four years.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Last days of summer
It's the last day of summer break, and a rainy one at that. I've notice that with each passing year of college, the distinction between semesters and breaks become more blurred. This summer, after taking a class for the first six weeks, I worked 5-7 days a week at my lab, studied for and took the GRE, and spent a great deal of time panicking about graduate school applications; the fact that starting tomorrow I have to add attending class into that mix hardly makes a big difference. Part of this may be a science thing - working in lab can be, for many people, somewhat all-consuming, and the rest of one's life tends to fade in importance compared to one's work. But that does lend a nice stability to life...
It probably also stems in part from being a commuter. While many other students were moving into their dorms the past few days, I was cleaning and reorganizing my apartment to get everything into shape for studying. Technically I share the apartment with my mom and brother, but my mom works outside of the city about half the week and my brother just went up to law school so for most intents and purposes it's mine. This definitely has it's perks - quiet, space, privacy - but also means I have to fit housekeeping and animal care into my routine, and when you need to be at school by 9 o'clock in the morning the extra 20 minutes to feed and walk dogs, feed cats, and take care of the parrot definitely takes a toll.
For now though everything is calm and in order, and I can sit back and enjoy the last day before senior year.
China and Other Things
OK, before I actually begin my post let me just say that Katherine is absolutely right about the power of blazers. Throw it on a sundress and you're good to go. Throw it on a t-shirt and you're polished. It must be the fitted tailoring that shouts professionalism and maturity. So if you're doing any back-to-school shopping, then invest in a blazer! It's a great investment to your closet since it's so versatile. Now on to the actual post...
Hope you guys didn't miss me too much! I know I was on a super long hiatus but that's only because I was visiting family abroad and internet connection isn't the easier thing to obtain. I went to Beijing for the first time and the experience was amazing. Being in China's capital and the root of my ancestors felt so surreal. I felt connected and detached at the same time. There were people who looked like me and could probably relate to growing up in a Chinese household but at the same time I was very aware of how different I was because I spent almost my whole life in the states and have become accustomed to certain ideas and ways of life that are foreign to them. In addition, my Chinese was conversational at best. Plus, I spoke Cantonese while Mandarin is the official language. Already there was a language barrier. In spite of that, I found myself forging a relationship to Beijing. Hearing spectacular things about the capital, I expected to be met with modernity and fast-paced city life but I was surprised to see how much history was intact. Instead of seeing skyscrapers and office buildings, I saw scenes of serenity: pagodas, gardens, and ponds. Although that may have been because I was a tourist and doing the usual sightseeing of the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall of China, Ming's Tomb, and etc. There was so much culture attached to the nature I saw. Everything was landscaped and well thought out. Even the steps were constructed with history in mind. There were exactly nine steps because the Chinese believed it was a heavenly number. I was learning so much about China, my ancestors and their legacy, and myself in the process.
After touring Beijing and visiting relatives, my Mom and I flew over to Hong Kong to visit her parents and my grandparents. I was there two years ago so I wasn't as excited for sightseeing as I was in Beijing. What I was excited for was finally seeing my family on the other side, especially my younger cousin, and finding out what has happened since the last time I was there. On the bus ride there I marveled yet again at the exhibitions of nature. There were mountains on top of mountains with little roads carved out. Trees lined along every street. Playgrounds on every block. Bike lanes and running routes along bodies of water. It was spectacular. Keep in mind, though, this is the view from the suburbs of Hong Kong and not the island where buildings rule the skys and streets are crowded with cars, buses, bikes, and people.
Being overseas was a good break from the city but I'm so glad to be back. I may love immersing myself in other cultures and gaining new perspectives but I will always be a city gal at heart.
Hope you guys didn't miss me too much! I know I was on a super long hiatus but that's only because I was visiting family abroad and internet connection isn't the easier thing to obtain. I went to Beijing for the first time and the experience was amazing. Being in China's capital and the root of my ancestors felt so surreal. I felt connected and detached at the same time. There were people who looked like me and could probably relate to growing up in a Chinese household but at the same time I was very aware of how different I was because I spent almost my whole life in the states and have become accustomed to certain ideas and ways of life that are foreign to them. In addition, my Chinese was conversational at best. Plus, I spoke Cantonese while Mandarin is the official language. Already there was a language barrier. In spite of that, I found myself forging a relationship to Beijing. Hearing spectacular things about the capital, I expected to be met with modernity and fast-paced city life but I was surprised to see how much history was intact. Instead of seeing skyscrapers and office buildings, I saw scenes of serenity: pagodas, gardens, and ponds. Although that may have been because I was a tourist and doing the usual sightseeing of the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall of China, Ming's Tomb, and etc. There was so much culture attached to the nature I saw. Everything was landscaped and well thought out. Even the steps were constructed with history in mind. There were exactly nine steps because the Chinese believed it was a heavenly number. I was learning so much about China, my ancestors and their legacy, and myself in the process.
After touring Beijing and visiting relatives, my Mom and I flew over to Hong Kong to visit her parents and my grandparents. I was there two years ago so I wasn't as excited for sightseeing as I was in Beijing. What I was excited for was finally seeing my family on the other side, especially my younger cousin, and finding out what has happened since the last time I was there. On the bus ride there I marveled yet again at the exhibitions of nature. There were mountains on top of mountains with little roads carved out. Trees lined along every street. Playgrounds on every block. Bike lanes and running routes along bodies of water. It was spectacular. Keep in mind, though, this is the view from the suburbs of Hong Kong and not the island where buildings rule the skys and streets are crowded with cars, buses, bikes, and people.
Being overseas was a good break from the city but I'm so glad to be back. I may love immersing myself in other cultures and gaining new perspectives but I will always be a city gal at heart.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
What to wear to an interview when it's 87 degrees out and you're not sure if you have an interview
Today I found myself in the predicament of not knowing whether or not I had an interview with someone at Knopf for a fall internship (it turned out I didn't. Oh well.) How does this happen?
Lesson #1 of "the real world": It really pays to know people. Make connections with your professors, Hunter and Macaulay faculty, other students, etc. Right now, I know at least three people who have friends in publishing houses, not including the people I met through my last internship with W.W. Norton & Company. And one of these people was kind enough to put me in contact with one of said friends, and we determined that we're meeting for coffee and/or lunch sometime this week. I tell her I'm free today after class, then all day Thursday and Friday. Well, 8AM comes, and I still haven't heard back, but I don't assume this means I won't see her today; my class didn't end until 2PM, giving her plenty of time to shoot me a quick email asking if I'm free.
Generally speaking, this isn't a big deal. I printed a copy of my resume just to have with me, I know a little about Knopf and a lot about literature, and I'm pretty eloquent on my feet. The big problem, naturally, was what the hell do I wear? Maybe this is less of an issue for guys, but still, one does not want to be stuck wearing a t-shirt and jeans or shorts while speaking with someone he or she'd like to work for! And, were it any other time of year, I'd have no problem wearing a button down and dress pants with heels to Hunter. But it's really, really hot out. Which begs the question - how do you look professional without baking in the heat?
I paired this outfit with a pair of beautiful but sensible shoes, meaning I was comfortable all day, even after walking the 15 minutes to the train:
Anyway, it stinks that I didn't have the interview today, but at least - or so I hope - this means I'll actually know in advance when I'm meeting this person. And I got to feel pretty, anyway!
- Katharine
Sunday, August 14, 2011
School's Out for Summer
With the passing of Labor Day weekend, its safe to say summer has come to an end ( although we still officially have about 11 days left, but who's counting?). I think the saddest part, other than the end of the season, is that I never, not even once, went to the beach :(. I guess this should make me look forward to going to the beach next time summer rolls around.
My junior year has finally dawned upon me, which is very unusual because I still have many vivid, some terrifying, and some exhilarating memories from junior year of high school. What's even more unusual is how my younger brother is actually in junior year of high school. It's as if I'm taking a trip back to yester-year every time he consults with me about college applications and talks to me about the multiple APs he's taking (Quick side note for prospective Macaulay students:http://shine.yahoo.com/event/backtoschool/10-reasons-to-skip-the-expensive-colleges-2518407/ . Its a must read!) And its a trip I know I'll be needing to make myself soon, as I will have to start looking into dental school (eek!!!), the DAT (EEEK!), and applications (swoon, faint, collapse,etc.).
As at the start of anything, I always feel its the best time to reflect and look back on the past before going on with the present ( in today's case, my biochem lab report). My summer was quite hectic, but with the more responsibilities I had, the more I valued and genuinely tried to cherish the time I had with my family and friends. And we definitely had our little adventures that made summer seem less hectic than it really was. That's one very important lesson I learned over summer: don't forget to relax, and don't forget what really makes you who you are!
I really love shadowing over the summer at LIJ. I was lucky to see oral surgery ( or, as some of the surgeons called it, "extreme dentistry", which in some cases, really is!), root canals, braces, adult and pediatric dentistry. It might sound boring to some, and it is a bit mundane at a superficial glance. But having spent well over two and a half months really allowed me to gain a deeper look into the intricacy, care, concentration, and more importantly, how varied a discipline dentistry is. I'm really feeling dentistry as a future career goal now and I'm glad this opportunity helped me reach such an important decision.
Working at the Baruch lab was an awesome opportunity as well. Field work was not exactly what I had imagined it to be, but rather, was a far greater and life-altering experience. It might sound corny to some, but working in the field actually reshaped my view of the city, in the literal physical sense (as I saw seemingly untouched ponds, beaches and parks where oysters,real, living, breathing, pooping oysters, lived), and in a greater sense, as I was able to see a city not many others know even existed.
For the laboratory, many of our data and experiments involved oysters and other bivalves that are placed in the waters surrounding the city, such as in the Hudson River, Bronx River, Floyd Bennett Field, Motts Basin, etc. Getting to the sites was quite difficult most of the time, as they were isolated within public parks and areas hard to reach by public transportation. At a quick glance, these sites are a stunning and stirring beauty, where nature exists and functions, a sight to behold immediately juxtaposed with that of looming bridges and loud airports. But once you took a closer look and walked in weighters in the waters where our oysters and clams would be in cages for data collection and experiments, you could see how the natural ebb and flow of our city's ecosystem has been pervaded in all senses by human influence. In one park's basin where we had our oysters living in cages for experiments, a power plant and the sewer system dumped water ( the power plant dumped the water used to cool down it machines, while the combined sewer overflows were letting out water after a huge storm). In that same water, people were fishing, crabbing, and swimming, ignorant of how dirty, polluted and unsafe the water was. In another body of water, we found feminine hygiene products floating next to old tar flows and thrown out toilet bowls while walking partly submerged in our weighters to get to our oysters. Even though the sites we worked at were sometimes dirty, it was a breathtaking and mind altering experience to see such a concentration of life surviving other than humans within the realm of the city. I'm glad and looking forward to working with the same laboratory team this semester as well!
My junior year has finally dawned upon me, which is very unusual because I still have many vivid, some terrifying, and some exhilarating memories from junior year of high school. What's even more unusual is how my younger brother is actually in junior year of high school. It's as if I'm taking a trip back to yester-year every time he consults with me about college applications and talks to me about the multiple APs he's taking (Quick side note for prospective Macaulay students:http://shine.yahoo.com/event/backtoschool/10-reasons-to-skip-the-expensive-colleges-2518407/ . Its a must read!) And its a trip I know I'll be needing to make myself soon, as I will have to start looking into dental school (eek!!!), the DAT (EEEK!), and applications (swoon, faint, collapse,etc.).
As at the start of anything, I always feel its the best time to reflect and look back on the past before going on with the present ( in today's case, my biochem lab report). My summer was quite hectic, but with the more responsibilities I had, the more I valued and genuinely tried to cherish the time I had with my family and friends. And we definitely had our little adventures that made summer seem less hectic than it really was. That's one very important lesson I learned over summer: don't forget to relax, and don't forget what really makes you who you are!
I really love shadowing over the summer at LIJ. I was lucky to see oral surgery ( or, as some of the surgeons called it, "extreme dentistry", which in some cases, really is!), root canals, braces, adult and pediatric dentistry. It might sound boring to some, and it is a bit mundane at a superficial glance. But having spent well over two and a half months really allowed me to gain a deeper look into the intricacy, care, concentration, and more importantly, how varied a discipline dentistry is. I'm really feeling dentistry as a future career goal now and I'm glad this opportunity helped me reach such an important decision.
Working at the Baruch lab was an awesome opportunity as well. Field work was not exactly what I had imagined it to be, but rather, was a far greater and life-altering experience. It might sound corny to some, but working in the field actually reshaped my view of the city, in the literal physical sense (as I saw seemingly untouched ponds, beaches and parks where oysters,real, living, breathing, pooping oysters, lived), and in a greater sense, as I was able to see a city not many others know even existed.
For the laboratory, many of our data and experiments involved oysters and other bivalves that are placed in the waters surrounding the city, such as in the Hudson River, Bronx River, Floyd Bennett Field, Motts Basin, etc. Getting to the sites was quite difficult most of the time, as they were isolated within public parks and areas hard to reach by public transportation. At a quick glance, these sites are a stunning and stirring beauty, where nature exists and functions, a sight to behold immediately juxtaposed with that of looming bridges and loud airports. But once you took a closer look and walked in weighters in the waters where our oysters and clams would be in cages for data collection and experiments, you could see how the natural ebb and flow of our city's ecosystem has been pervaded in all senses by human influence. In one park's basin where we had our oysters living in cages for experiments, a power plant and the sewer system dumped water ( the power plant dumped the water used to cool down it machines, while the combined sewer overflows were letting out water after a huge storm). In that same water, people were fishing, crabbing, and swimming, ignorant of how dirty, polluted and unsafe the water was. In another body of water, we found feminine hygiene products floating next to old tar flows and thrown out toilet bowls while walking partly submerged in our weighters to get to our oysters. Even though the sites we worked at were sometimes dirty, it was a breathtaking and mind altering experience to see such a concentration of life surviving other than humans within the realm of the city. I'm glad and looking forward to working with the same laboratory team this semester as well!
Friday, August 12, 2011
Black and White
I have really come to appreciate reading books this summer more than any other summer but also, as an art history and sociology double major, have grown to love looking at picture books of various historical events or of the Beatles (yes, I am a HUGE fan). If you are wondering what to do during these last days of summer besides relaxing and don't really want to start a novel with such little time left, I recommend picking up a book with a lot of photographs and flipping through the pages. Remember to read the short captions! =) Borders is going out of business (in case you didn't know) so I recommend going there and picking up some books while they are 30% to 50% off. I actually just today picked up a photographic history of the Beatles and found looking at the black and white photos therapeutic and calming. Sometimes black and white is easier on the eyes than color and gives a sense of timelessness that color photographs seem to lack in my opinion. So grab some MUD coffee in the east village (look it up if you don't know about this amazing place) and enjoy some picture gazing!
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