Weekend of Food, Family, and Fall Weather

Hey everyone!

I hope everyone is enjoying this chilly Thanksgiving weekend!

I only had one class on Wednesday, and came home to finish up my bio lab report and help my mom prep for Hanukkah/Thanksgiving dinner.

We had Hanukkah dinner Wednesday night. Here is a photo of Richard looking adorable with the menorah and some delicious pastries.

We had yellow rice (topped with hard boiled eggs) and chicken.

I always admire my mom around the holidays. She puts so much effort into creating awesome food for the family. We ended up making three different salads for Thanksgiving. (Actually, four. The fourth one is a tomato and cucumber salad which is not pictured):

We also had half a turkey (a whole turkey is just too much for 4 people :p), levangee (an awesome Azeri walnut paste), rice with chicken, french fries, pickled vegetables, and zebra cake (basically, marble cake). As you can see, we didn't have a traditional "American" Thanksgiving. (I actually had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner  Monday night at Hunter. USG provided a free dinner for us. I came home super stuffed.) We kind of do a blend of Azeri, Russian, and American. That's one of the reasons that I love Thanksgiving. There are no rules. Each family is welcome to cook whatever makes them happy. We also ended up having Thanksgiving dinner at 2 PM because my dad had to work last night. We had a great time. It just goes to show that the specific details don't matter as much as enjoying some great food with your family.

Today is Black Friday, and there was a crazy amount of people at the stores. Not that I would know. I hardly ever go shopping on Black Friday. I can't make smart consumer decisions when everyone is on top of each other and products (especially clothes) are strewn everywhere. haha. I know everyone loves a great deal, but as a society, we are too obsessed  with just having things. I think it's a lot more fun to use this weekend to spend time with family. Watch TV, catch a movie, or go out to eat. There are a million options besides spending your day in a store. We have the entire month of December to shop so just enjoy this last mini-vacation before the new year.

One last thing. The AMA's were last weekend, and one of my favorite parts was watching Imagine Dragons sing two songs. The drumming was awesome! Enjoy. :)

Poem of the Week

A Warmth Known Only to Me

I see a tundra filled with sparkling white.
I squint my eyes at it's dazzling allure.
And I wonder if it would be alright
If I were to hope to see it once more.

It is snow that causes swells in her chest
And her smile is what always stirs mine.
A flower at worst, an angel at best,
She stands, warm in winter, frozen in time.

Maybe one day I could summon the strength
To confess to her in the Winter heat
That one day we could, together, at length
Enjoy long moments where our eyes would meet.

And should I gaze upon her face again,
I would hope to feel snow upon my skin.

~ William Blake Beckett

Black Friday, Catching Fire, and the Miracles of Public Transportation

Hey everyone!

So after a super stressful half-week at school, I struggled home through the crowds for Thanksgiving. Wednesday was such a mess: my first two classes of the day were cancelled so I packed in the morning, but my 60's professors decided to have class (3:45-6) so I had to schlep all my stuff (backpack and duffle bag) all over the city in the rain and wind. At least we learned about The Beatles and feminism this class (two of my favorite things) and he ended a bit early.

OK let me tell you something I particularly like. When you move to the city you'll appreciate this, but this may seem a bit ridiculous right now. OK, so on my way to Penn Station, I ran to the 6 and JUST caught it. I got to 51st street and was in the exact perfect car to get to the stairs and transfer to the E. I got to the E just as it got there and got on, then got to Penn to realize I was also in the exact perfect car to get into the right entrance of the station for my train. Perfect timing and positioning for public transportation is my favorite thing ever. However, when I got to Penn Station it was a nightmare. Everyone was going home for the holiday and it was rush hour, so it was super crowded. Luckily, I had planned ahead and bought my ticket the day before to avoid the lines at the machines, so all went smoothly and I arrived home in one piece.

Thanksgiving, as always, was hectic. My family is kind of geographically distanced from the rest of my family who live in Florida, upstate New York, and California, so we usually celebrate with close family friends. I was busy all day cooking turkey with my mom and running around, making sure everything was perfect, from music to decorations. I barely sat down to eat, but everyone seemed happy. Because we and our friends are all Jewish, we celebrated Thanksgivukkah, a combination of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. The two holidays won't overlap for another 75,000 years. We lit the Hanukkah candles in the menorah and then got our gifts (I know it's lame to give a gift each night for 8 nights, but I kind of like it). I got a Tory Burch phone case (absolutely love it). I've had the same really durable black phone case since I got my phone 3 years ago so this is going to be my fancy case *said in a British accent*

OK, so here's the best part of this post. I just got home from Black Friday shopping, having been out since 9 this morning. I'm not one of those crazy people who went out last night at 10 PM (although I would have, had my mom been willing to). We woke up and got out to the outlets that are 20 minutes from my house to buy the rest of my Hanukkah gifts. Thankfully it wasn't too cold or windy or crowded and all the sales were great. I got 50% off everything at J. Crew, my favorite store (sorry, I'm a prep). I'm hopefully going back tomorrow to get a pair of Nine West riding boots ($50, I was salivating).

Last, I'm going to see Catching Fire tomorrow with my dad. In my town there's a movie theater that charges $6.50 before noon for movies, rather than the ridiculous $11.50, so it's a tradition of ours to go see movie matinees. I haven't seen a movie in theaters in months because movies are just so expensive in the city ($14.50). I just have to read the book first (I got it out of the library today and plan on reading the whole thing tonight). I've been told it's a fantastic movie and very true to the book, so it won't be such a shame if I'm not able to finish the book in time for the movie.

OK, that's all for my rants and rambling. Enjoy your tryptophan-induced comas for the weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, and to express my sincere condolences to all those who are applying to college and had to answer this question: "So how are college applications going?" 32453 per times, per relative.

Two years ago at this time, I was trying to explain what Macaulay Honors was to all my relatives. I've found the easiest way to tell someone is to say "Well, I'm applying to Hunter College, and attempting to get into the Macaulay Honors College, which is the pan-CUNY Honors College - I'd get a full scholarship and be part of both a really large school and a really small school, getting the best opportunities of both." Succinct, straightforward, and there's not much room for questions, so you can get back to what's really important - pie. God, I love pie.

I was never a big fan of Thanksgiving, but college really makes you appreciate your family cooking a huge meal, sitting down, and eating something you only had to help with, rather cooking the entire thing yourself.

But, as is always true, a break from school means I have side-projects to work on. Which isn't exactly fun, but they need to get done and its better to do them over tea at my kitchen table with my mom than at 2:30 in the morning when I get back to Brookdale.

My big jobs this quick break are to:

1. Apply to the class Dr. Petraeus is teaching. I need to write the cover letter and update my resume a bit. I might make a really intense resume post later in the semester, so keep and eye out for that.

2. Find out how many Winter Session classes Macaulay will pay for me to take. They say "one class, four credits". But my original class is three credits - I just need to verify that they'll pay for me to take an additional one credit class.

3. Spend some quality time with my friends from high school. I was a very lucky kid, I had a very tight-knit group of friends when I was in high school, and we've stayed so through our first two years of college. We're making plans to go see Disney's Frozen tomorrow, and maybe just chill out in the nearest Starbucks. I haven't seen some of them since August, so its really nice to find out that we still pick up a group dynamic really easily.

4. Have a serious talk with my little brother. He needs to understand that just because I'm not sleeping in my room every night, that doesn't mean it becomes his personal storage facility. Or, he at least needs to clear a path through his boxes to my bed so I can sleep.

5. Find a new silver tree. Growing up, the tradition was in my house that we would alternate who picked the tree, my brother or I.  We had two fake ones - a green one, and a silver one, as well as my brother's occasional request for a real one. Every year that it was my turn, I chose the silver tree. I love the way it shines and reflects the colours from the ornaments and the lights so much more than a plain green tree. Last year though, I finally admitted the silver tree had seen better days and needed to be replaced. So, I am on a mission to find a new silver tree before Christmas rolls around, and if I'm really on top of my game, I'll find it before Black Friday is over and it'll be nice and cheap. (Yes, my mother and I are Black Friday people, I actually wrote this partially in the car and partially after shopping, since we went out around 11:00 PM on Thursday.)

6. FIND ALL THE CHRISTMAS MUSIC. I love Christmas music. It's my favourite kind of music. I start listening to it in secret about 3 weeks before Thanksgiving ( I don't like Thanksgiving that much, to be quite honest.) And after we clean up from Thanksgiving dinner, I start listening to it constantly. So I need to add all the CD's I have at home to my iTunes collection, so I have it in the dorms. I'll also need to find the websites for all my favourite stations and bookmark those on my computer for some variety. 106.7 is definitely the best, so I need to see if I get it in the dorms. When they designed the building, they didn't have radio-waves or cell reception or wifi in mind, since it was 1950-something. You don't get too many radio channels because of that.


7. Laundry. I brought it all home rather than doing it before I left. So I better put in some clothes so I can take the clean stuff back with me.

So that's my Thanksgiving, and I think I'll leave you with a present to start the Christmas Season, some of the strangest Christmas Carols out there.
The traditional Italian song from my neighborhood.
A song by a kid who doesn't understand how dangerous wild animals are.
A song about how clueless children can be.
The most honest Christmas song in existence. (The quality of this video is awful but it's really funny so I'll show you this one anyways)
And this was last year's anthem, and I think I'll take it to be this year's as well.

The Elephant in the Room

Hi, everyone!

It's the week before Thanksgiving, and I'm slowly but surely falling in love with this holiday season. My pre-Thanksgiving workload is thankfully not so bad this year. We just have three weeks of schoolwork left when we come back from break and then…freedom!!

But back to me falling in love with the season. I decided to dress up a little fancier than usual this past Tuesday. I took a twenty minute walk before bio started and strolled down Madison Avenue in my new red coat. (I felt like one of the uber-rich Park Avenue types.) I walked past Ralph Lauren's store, and I was amazed by his beautiful window displays. His store has arguably the best window displays in all of Manhattan. Just stunning.

Earlier in the day, I had to register for Spring 2014 classes. Even though Macaulay students are among the first people to register, registration day is always a tad frustrating. It's always unclear how quickly a class will run out of seats, and that always makes me nervous. My advisor always told us to have multiple schedules prepared so that we have plenty of options just in case our first pick classes get full quickly. Since I don't have to take Macaulay seminar classes anymore, things have gotten a lot less stressful. (Everyone wants the easiest professor so those seminar sections tend to be full within minutes.) Thankfully, registration on Tuesday went smoothly, and I didn't have any issues navigating CUNYfirst.

Last weekend was awesome because I went to the Rubin Museum for my religion class. It's a small museum in downtown Manhattan, and they have some beautiful pieces from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. I've always had a love for the Hindu god, Ganesha, because I love how he is portrayed. There is something both masculine and feminine about him. He is also the god of intellect and a remover of obstacles among other things (this means that we, students, should always keep him in mind).

On the first floor of the Rubin Museum, there was a sculpture of him that I immediately ran over to. Visitors had placed coins in front of the sculpture, which I thought was cool. It reminded me that this was not just a piece of art, but a religious figure that people looked up to and believed in.

Here is the sculpture, and if you look hard enough,
you can see the coins at the bottom. 

Speaking of Hinduism, my Hindu bio lab TA is going back to India for a month, and we'll be having a substitute TA for the last few weeks of the semester. A girl in my class had the great idea to get him some kind of going away gift so we snuck out of lab as soon as we finished our experiments. We ran over to Food Emporium and got some cupcakes and a card. He was so happy when we gave him the gift. Everyone likes to be appreciated!

S.

Quote of the Week

“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The Sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus”

~Alexander Graham Bell

The Advisor and the Gel

Hey, everyone!

I always have a hard time getting up on Friday mornings because I know I'm going to have a long day. This morning was no different. The thought of getting out of bed to take a physics quiz at 9 AM and then to go to a 4 hour Bio 203 lab did not sound all that appealing this morning. Nevertheless, I acted like the grown-up college student that I am (laughs at self), and went to class. It turned out to be a relatively good day. I'm exhausted (which I seem to be every Friday night), but I'm feeling good otherwise. I'm just honestly waiting for Thanksgiving to come. It's one of the best holidays of the year and is second only to New Year's Eve in my family.

Last Saturday, I watched the Miss. Universe competition, which I always think is cool because I love to see all of the different national costumes that the women wear in the video clips at the beginning of the show. I also love to see the beautiful dresses and of course, to hear the answers to those questions that everyone seems to mess up on. I was disappointed with how the Top 5 answered the questions this year. Only Miss. Philippines actually had a good answer, and she didn't even win! Miss. Venezuela ended up winning which made absolutely no sense to me. Who knows what goes on behind the scenes in these types of competitions? I honestly don't even want to know.

Back in September, I mentioned that my Macaulay advisor of two years, Adrienne, left Macaulay Hunter to work with the students at the recently established Macaulay program at John Jay. This past Wednesday, I had my first meeting with my new advisor, who I am happy to report is easy to talk to and has already proven to be helpful. I had a question relating to classes I have to take next semester, and I decided to stop by her office today. I walk in, and guess who's in her office with her? Adrienne! She was there to help my new advisor transition into her new position. I was super happy to see her and it's nuts to think that I never would have seen her if I didn't have that question. Life is weird like that.

An hour after I saw Adrienne, I went to my bio lab class. We've done gel electrophoresis many times over the semester, and the results have not always been as expected. Today we cut the the plasmid that we inserted DNA into, and then ran the gel to see if the DNA was cut. I think I was the only one whose plasmid actually got cut with the enzyme so I'm feeling kind of proud of myself! haha.
Here is the gel with the arrow pointing at the successfully cut plasmid:

Have an awesome weekend!

S.

Quote of the Week

I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

I know when you don't wash your hands.

See thats the thing about communal bathrooms.
I know when you wipe and walk.

And don't think no one recognizes those pink bunny slippers with the bow on the right ear but not on the left because you caught it on the stairs that one time and it ripped off. I recognize them. And I know that you don't wash your hands.

I'm not certain if other students are as bothered by this phenomenon as I am. Even if you don't always wash your hands in your bathroom at home, that's one thing. My little brother doesn't always wash his hands. He'll often run the faucet for a few seconds though to pretend he did, and since I can't see through the door, I just have to trust him. Here, it's public. You just walked. I didn't hear the faucet from my seat and then I heard the door slam. No hand washing.

How can you just walk out knowing that someone on the floor knows how unhygienic you are? And how can you complain about getting sick after that???

When you come to college, and you share a bathroom with 20 other people of your gender, your hygiene habits become public knowledge.

Remember that.

Last to Know

I don't call my mom every day. Sometimes I'll cal her three days in a row, then go a week without talking to her. Sometimes the calls are an hour, sometimes its "Oh good, you're alive. What? You want money for a MetroCard? Fiiiine. Goodbye."

This means I'm often the last to know things. And that gets a little difficult.

I went home over the weekend for my mom's birthday party. I say party, but really it was my brother, my dad, my aunt, and my grammy eating cake. My brother showed me how he'd redone his room! He also recited his poem for a school competition for me (Anthem for Doomed Youth, one of my favourites.) My mom mentioned someone at work to my father - someone who I don't even know the name of. (I used to know the names of all my mom's colleagues.) I hadn't heard any of these stories over the phone. I didn't know about anything about their jokes or their lives.

And I realized that I hadn't told them everything. They didn't know I had walked the Highline with Sam. They didn't know about that really awesome dinner I got at a new burrito place near the dorms. They hadn't seen the silly pictures Stacey and I took while she was in her red panda pyjamas.

I think I've finally discovered what "homesickness" is. It's knowing that my family is doing all this amazing stuff, and I'm not there to see it.

Weekend at Home (Mostly in Pictures)

So, I'll be the first to admit that I really don't like coming home to the suburbs. However, even I have to admit that there are a lot of perks to being, well, not at the dorms. Here are a few:

A REAL shower! (And more private toilet, at that).

A non-single bed!

Wifi that ISN'T awful!

Free food!

More free food!

Reminder that APUSH (and high school in general) exists, and I will never have to deal with it ever again!!

This is basically just me fangirling over British television, move along.

OK so I have to admit that I am a pretty big Doctor Who fan (not to to the point of watching the really bad seasons with the terrible special effects, see here) and I am flipping out about he 50th Anniversary Special that's coming up very quickly. If you're a Whovian or have a Tumblr account, you know about the 50th Anniversary Special because it's all the Doctor Who Tumblr can post about. I'll admit that NewWho was a little lame when it first started in 2005 (like most shows in 2005, maybe it was just a lame year). However, the show has quickly caught on for me, mainly because of its superb storytelling abilities and witty characters. Not to mention that I'm squealing about the possibility of my two favorite doctors (Ten and Eleven, aka David Tennant and Matt Smith) together on a television, plus JOHN HURT?! I just can't help but get excited when I hear the Doctor Who music and just hum (or sing obnoxiously) along, honestly. So epic.

Anyway, I have two other things to talk about here. First, for the past week I've gone to a ton of events. I sat down one evening with the Macaulay Monday newsletter, the Hunter Gatherer, and the CUNY This Week newsletter and read through everything going on. I chose to go to three different events, but I'll only talk about one or two of them here.

First, one of my friends invited me and my boyfriend to the Augusten Bourroughs talk at Hunter on Tuesday (part of the Distinguished Writers Series). He was doing a reading of his work and just generally talking. I had read one of his earlier memoirs, Running With Scissors when I was in high school. Like most memoirists that I know and enjoy, Augusten Bourroughs's stories are the type that make your jaw drop and your stomach curl. They're just so unbelievable, yet they're true. As my mother would say, you know it's all true because you just couldn't make this stuff up. Other memoirists of this fashion that I enjoy include David Sedaris (I would recommend all of his work, but especially While You are Engulfed in Flames) and Jeanette Walls (The Glass Castle). I have been astonished and saddened by the stories I've read in these memoirs. Most of all, I've laughed so hard it turned to that silent kind of laughing that almost kind of hurts but you can't stop.

Second, I went to support my friend Sam's acapella group Hawkapella as they sang in front of Hunter West and then outside of Central Park. They sang Animal by Neon Trees, I'm Yours by Jason Mraz, and Some Nights by fun.

Hawkapella singing outside Central Park.

Both Macaulay and Hunter have acapella groups (The Macaulay Triplets and Hawkapella respectively). I have a lot of friends in the Triplets and will be going to see their performance on November 23rd, but it's just nice to see someone from Macaulay branch out and join a group that's not Macaulay-exclusive. I think it's just something unique about Macaulay that it's a community within a larger community.

The second thing I have to talk about is the internship craze currently going on in my class. Everyone in pre-med and pre-business and pre-law and Flagship and everything is freaking out over their internships, going to conferences to learn about them, and applying to different programs. As a Macaulay student, we are required to complete either a study abroad program or an internship which the program pays for. Definitely not complaining about the fact that I'll get to go abroad for free. But I always thought it was a pipe dream for me to even think about internships, considering I'm an English major and all the internships are in medicine, business, law, or something completely unrelated to English in any way possible. Well, this week I got the Hunter Gatherer and what did I find? A HarperCollins conference about internships in book publishing. I actually squealed when I saw this because a) I am an English major and want to learn all about the book publishing industry and b) my dad was in the industry for years and I want to follow in his footsteps by becoming an editor or publisher or something in the field. This is my perfect opportunity to learn about my options! So I'm pretty excited for that, since this didn't seem to be an option to me before.

OK, that's all my squealing for today. Later, guys.

P.S. The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special will be aired on November 23rd on BBC America, or online the next day. It's also being shown in theaters throughout the country. Here's a guide to how to watch it.

Chelsea and Doughnuts

One of my favorite ways to spend the afternoon in the city is by wandering through Chelsea galleries and walking the Highline. Chelsea is a neighbourhood in Manhattan roughly located between 8th and 10th Avenues and 19th Street to 23rd Street. In this area, you’ll find dozens of art galleries, which are free to visit and often have some really interesting pieces.

My strategy for checking out art galleries isn’t very particular, I usually start on 23rd Street and 10th Avenue and walk across to 11th Avenue, searching for galleries along the way and visiting any that look interesting. I typically do this for a few more streets (24th, 25th, and 26th), and by then, I’m sufficiently exhausted by art. However, one of the best things about these galleries is that the artwork never stays in the galleries for long, so if I want to go back in a few weeks, I might see entirely new works. 

A work by Robert Montgomery that I saw in Chelsea. 

In addition to visiting the galleries, I often walk along the Highline, an elevated train track turned into a park that runs along 10th Avenue. It’s always nice to just stroll around up there and enjoy the view. And I swear you can see the Brookdale Residence from it if you look across town, but this is probably just wishful thinking on my part.

Finally, what day trip is complete without food? While I don’t often eat in Chelsea, there are a couple of places nearby that I would recommend, both of which my friend Jack showed me. First, there’s Chop-Shop (10th Avenue between 24th and 25th), an Asian lunch place that makes some pretty good vegetable dumplings. After that, if your stomach and wallet can still handle it, there’s a place called the Doughnut Plant on 23rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues that makes the best doughnuts I’ve ever had. I don’t even like doughnuts, but theirs are fantastic. My favorite is the peanut butter & jam doughnut, I’d highly recommend it.

Words are Friends!

Did you know that the name Mercedes, a female Spanish name and also the name of a car company, comes from the Latin word merces, which means pay or wages? Though over time it began to mean mercy, that is not the originally meaning. This is also the word we get mercenary and merchant from. 

Traveling through a Wormhole

Hi, everyone.

I just finished watching this week's Grimm episode, in which people's abdomens exploded because they were poisoned by mushrooms. Sounds weird, but definitely interesting for the pre-med in me. Also, the episode touched on the fable, The Three Little Pigs, but in the show it was the pigs who were harming the wolves.

On Monday, I went to a personal statement workshop held by Hunter's Career Development Office. If you plan on attending some form of graduate school, then you will most likely have to write a personal statement as a part of your application. It can be one of the hardest parts of the application because most people do not how to write about themselves effectively. I found Monday's workshop to be super helpful because the presenter actually described the entire pre-writing and writing process needed to create a good personal statement. I liked the emphasis on the process because we are often so concerned with the end result that we rush through the entire thing. In these essays, it's important to focus on crafting a particular message about yourself, and that can take a whole lot of introspection.

Anyway, this past week was exciting because of the election on Tuesday. I was in school all of Tuesday so I ended up voting at 8 PM. I was surprised at the amount of people who showed up to vote.  There's data out there that suggests that a lot of people just don't vote (for whatever reason). It was cool to see my neighbors have some enthusiasm about the voting process. So now we have a new mayor, who I hope will be able to handle this energetic and insane city of ours.

I'm currently taking physics, so I'm learning about all of this cool stuff related to motion in our everyday lives. Gravity is one of the most important things that we discuss right from the beginning. I keep having this urge to prank my professor by playing this song right as she walks into class. Do you think she will appreciate the humor? haha.

Speaking of physics, does anybody out there watch The Big Bang Theory? It's a comedy about a group of nerdy scientist friends who try to navigate this world with minimal social skills and a whole lot of brains. Each episode has just the right amount of science based humor and regular old "guy" humor. Truly a joy to watch after my long Thursdays.

Also, on another note related to physics, I recently came across this interesting concept called a wormhole. I was watching this video about time travel, and wormholes were briefly mentioned.

I decided to look them up, and I found them to be super fascinating. Essentially, a worm hole is:

If wormholes actually do exist, then we could travel to all kinds of different places. Pretty cool!

Lastly, I just wanted to mention that I'm currently the Arts and Culture editor for The Macaulay Messenger, which is a student-run newspaper that covers topics in arts, sports, pop culture, and Macaulay life amongst other things. Students from all 8 campuses are encouraged to join. If you're a current student, please email mhc.messenger@gmail.com for more info. If you're a prospective student, check out the website, and see the kinds of things that Macaulay students write about. If you choose to join our Macaulay family (which you should because we're awesome!), then you should definitely get involved with things like the Messenger and of course, the MacBlog. It's a great opportunity to perfect your writing skills as well as to leave behind some kind of legacy.

S.

Quote of the Week 

(Seems appropriate due to all the physics references in this post.)

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” 

~ Isaac Newton

Withdrawal Symptoms

So, this is a post that I didn't think I, personally, would ever have the experience to write about. Today, I withdrew from Arabic. Now, that may come as a shock to those of you who know how excited I've been about taking the language since well before I even enrolled in the class (to be honest, well before I even started college), but here's the thing: sometimes, you need to take into consideration your priorities and your health.

Don't get me wrong, I actually love Arabic. I think it's a beautiful and interesting language, that when I'm in class I really enjoy learning. However, it's also a super difficult language, and it requires a lot of extra hours put into studying it. Which would be fine, if I wasn't also still not fluent in Chinese and taking 3 300 level courses this semester.

I think the bottom line is, you need to do what is right for your health and for your overall academic situation. For me, Arabic is something that I have wanted to pursue for a while and is something that I would definitely consider getting back into in the future, but at the moment, it's not something that I have the time for. Also, I've been so super stressed these past few weeks and it was coming from all sorts of sides, and so having one less source of stress will be good.

I'm definitely not the kind of student who goes into a course thinking, oh if I don't like it or it's too hard, I can just drop it. I hate giving up and I am not particularly fond of asking for help; I like to get things done on my own. But there is a line where you need to look up and see how far down you've fallen in terms of work and stress. Today was the first time I felt up to cooking for myself in at least a week. That doesn't happen. I love cooking and it's something that I do even when I've got a million things on my plate; so, for me, that was one sign.

Seeing that W in place of what I would hope would have been an A (but because of all the stress I was under and how much it was effecting all my work, might not have been), does send a shock to my system. I don't like it. I'm not going to lie. I do not like seeing that W there, even if it doesn't effect my GPA. However, I know that a W is much better than F, which I feel I may have been in danger of receiving if I had kept struggling with managing everything.

My priorities right now are in Chinese and Political Science. Those are the two things that I know I am in it for the long haul with. I would have liked to have had Arabic be another, but it's just not something that is feasible. I'm sure there are people who could handle it, and that's fine, but it wasn't a situation that I was handling well.

And, I'm not going to lie about this either, pressing that button and withdrawing from the course felt good too. It sucks to know that this is something I couldn't handle, but it feels good to know that I have less stress to deal with now. I put a lot of time and effort into the class, and it's irritating to know that it won't mean anything now, but that was a lot of time and effort that probably should have gone into other things. I'm still doing well in my classes, I just want to be able to do my best, and now I think I can.

This was really difficult for me to write. I do write some reflective, personal things here, but this is probably the most personal post that I have ever contributed. I don't particularly want to talk about it too much, but I do think that it's important for people to see that this is an option. That if you're stressing out and not coping well, taking the W isn't the end of your life. Don't just drop because of silly reasons, though, please. You owe it to yourself to try your hardest, always, but if your hardest is battling with stress and anxiety, then that's when you need to question if withdrawing isn't the right thing to do. Tomorrow is the last day that you can withdraw with just a grade of W and no penalty, for this semester, so I wanted to write this today, just in case this was something that anybody was dealing with at the moment.

I have turned off comments, however, do feel free to email me if you want to talk about anything. Withdrawing from courses, stress, really anything that is related to your time here at Macaulay Hunter. xo Maya

Dorm Light

Here'e the funny thing about dorm life.
They never turn off the lights.
There aren't light switches in the common rooms, in the halls, or the bathrooms. There's no way to stop ambient light from seeping in through your door or through your window.

I grew up in suburbia, right by a highway. So the noise of the city doesn't bother me too much. Cars, shouts, the elevators and showers, I can tune everything out.

But suburbia is dark. Like, single streetlamp and the occasional car light dark.

Because its always so light, you do crazy things like stay up until 2:30. You forget that time is a thing. The body has a system by which it tells time using the amount of light you are exposed to. Lots of light? Time to stay awake! Very dark out? Time to sleep! But what about a city where the shadows of buildings mean you don't get much light, but the clinical light of a florescent bulb is your constant companion? Repeatedly tampering with your circadian rhythms is actually used as a form of torture. (College is, in many ways, an amalgamation of different torture techniques.)

But while you're still awake, you're still trying to get something done. You do a little work, you do a little internet-trawling, you read some crazy article on buzzfeed that somehow relates back to a class and that is how you justify it.

But most importantly, you talk. To your friends, to strangers, to people you don't really like but they sat down at your table in the common room so you talk to them anyways.

These are the conversations that teach you more than classrooms. I brought up the allegations that Justin Bieber has hired a prostitute - and we got into a discussion that even if its legal in Brazil, should the media judge him based on where the act took place, by where he is from, or by where the majority of his fanbase is?

I learn a lot in class. I learn a lot in outside activities. I learn a lot from conversations I have during the day.

But the most I've ever learned, about absolutely nothing, I have learned while the sky was darkest, and the dorms shone like a beacon.

Pics Or It Didn't Happen: Happiness Edition

Alright, so there are a lot of things that are really cool going on in my life, so I took some time to take some photos off my phone. And now I'lm going to spam you all with them. These are just some things that have really made me happy over the past few weeks.

1. Someone DREW me in under 3 minutes and got an excellent likeness, then gave it to me.

2. I saw Andrea Gibson! I mentioned this before, but I was in the SECOND ROW. SHE WAS RIGHT THERE GUYS. SHE SMILED AT ME.

3. I met Nicole Reynolds, a musician and poet, at the same concert as Andrea Gibson. She's really sweet!

4. My friend met Mary Lambert!!!! (She's the one who sings the really lovely refrains for the Macklemore song Same Love.) She performed at that concert and I swear to you she is the funniest person I have ever seen on stage.

5. For some reason, the city plants cabbages around the trees in the fall. They look better than dead plants, I guess. They make me really happy. But they make me think that we could plant things that grow food in the little tree-gardens year round, and that would be a better use of the space.

6. The Highline at sunset!!!! A week ago I got to walk the Highline with my friend Sam. The Highline is a park with lots of art instillations along an old elevated train track in the West Village, and we walked the whole thing.

7. This is Sam. Isn't he a cutie? He's showing off the next thing that makes me happy: Sweater Weather!!! I really love being able to wear cute sweaters without coats and be comfortable.

8. Sam's comics. He's an amazing artist, and like most of us, his notes are covered in doodles. Except his look about 300000 times better than mine. I'm not complaining though - not when I get gems like these sent to me on an almost daily basis.

An Amazing Opportunity!

I got to go to a wonderful program a few weeks ago, and I guess I had better tell everyone about it!
It was called the Women's Leadership Conference, and it was run by CUNY, the New York Times, and the New York City Committee on Women's Issues.

The keynote speaker was Rossana Rosado, the first female editor of El Diario, the oldest Spanish newspaper in the country. She had a really beautiful theory that we all come from people who worked to make our lives better than their own. Whether your family moved here one generation ago or one hundred generations ago, they did to give you a better chance at something than they had. She reinforced the importance of being grateful to those people, and doing your best to honor their legacy.
She also declared that two whom much is given, much is required. When your community gives you the skills to be successful, you have to give back somehow.

Finally, she reminded us to "Keep our tiaras up". Basically, every girl is a Queen. You are completely in charge. So hold your head up to keep your tiara balanced. Show it off, and keep a regal composure. Walk so everyone can can see it, and act like Queen Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Rinaldi, the queen of Genovia. (I love the Princess Diaries, and I think that Anne  Hathaway is an absolute Goddess of a role model in those films.)

After that I saw a panel on women in legislature, and heard about the impact that women have on the atmosphere of the New York State Senate and Assembly. All the women were in agreement that parties didn't matter as much to the women of the senate as they did to the men - which I thought was rather interesting. The stereotype is catty, uncooperative women, and amicable men. That's not the case in the Senate - as one of the panelist pointed out, the women have to work even harder to get any of "their issues" dealt with, since they are in the minority.

There was a really awesome lecture by Joanna Barsh, the woman who wrote How Remarkable Women Lead. It was an interactive lecture on how to organize ourselves, our lives, and the people around us. We were also fortunate enough to receive a copy of her book, and I plan to sit down and read it as soon as I can find  the time.

We had lunch and attended a few more wonderful panels, and then the day concluded. I think what was most wonderful was the ability to connect with other successful young women from the entire CUNY community. I went to a high school with girls who were convinced that boys would only like them if they acted stupid - so they acted shallow and silly. I haven't had many female friends who are devoted to making themselves succeed, and I'm glad to see that in college I get to meet girls who take themselves seriously. I met several really nice girls from Kingsborough Community College who were looking to transfer to Hunter next year - we're keeping in touch. I also met more girls from Hunter and Macaulay, so I've increased my circle of friends here.

I am honored that I got invited to this event, and I'm so glad that CUNY runs things like this.

October Faves and November Prospects!

Although I still have to get around to writing the second part of my Chinatown guide, when I did this last month it felt kind of therapeutic, so I thought I would write another end of the month review/beginning of the month hopes type post.

So a few of the things that I have been obsessing over during the spookiest month of the year were music related. There are three songs in particular that I even got on my phone, which are the first three to be downloaded there permanently because I usually just use my old nano. The first, I'll just get it out of the way because even though I love it, I realize not everyone will, is One Direction's new song: Story of My Life. Yes, I like One Direction and I have for a while now. But this song is quite different from their other stuff and it's really worth a listen, even if you have an awful opinion of them. The music video comes out this weekend, and I'm super excited because it looks so haunting and they're going to show pictures of people from their lives. I know it leaked yesterday, but I haven't watched it yet (though Tumblr has completely spoiled it for me). Second is a song by a British Youtube artist who is going to be going on tour with British group Union J in December. His name is Elyar Fox and his song is called Colourblind; the song is just fluffy basically, it's catchy and fun to bop your head to. Third is a very recent favourite, Adam Barnes' She Will Stay Beneath the Moon, which is actually about a year old. Adam is also British and I haven't had a chance, yet, to listen to everything by him, but what I have heard so far I really like. (As you can tell, the theme is British artists.. Usually is, to be honest). There are obviously other songs and artists that I've been listening to, but these three were definitely worth noting.


Another thing that I have been loving this month has been some new make-up that I've bought! If you have no interest in make-up, feel free to skip this paragraph. But essentially my favourites have been Urban Decay's Glide-On Shadow Pencil. I have five of the shades, and I usually do a blend of Rehab and Mercury. I've had a travel sized Rehab since last year, but I've really started using it again this month, which has been fun. In addition, two new things: Rimmel London's BB Cream in Medium and Exaggerate Waterproof Eye-liner in 290 Precious Gold. Now, I know not everyone wears make-up, and to be honest I am very hot and cold with make-up (I'll wear a full face of make-up for weeks straight and then have a few days where I don't wear any at all, or vice versa), but I honestly think one of the most important things to remember about make-up is that you can look beautiful with or without it. I know that sounds horribly cliche and I'm definitely not trying to preach at you, but I just thought I'd put that out there.

Now that we're officially in November, I thought I'd also add a little bit about a few things that I'm looking forward to moving forward. One of them is NaNoWriMo! If you don't know what that is, it's a completely awful form of self-torture and stands for National November Writing Month. It's a challenge to write 50,000 words in one month for a novel. I'm already procrastinating, haven't started yet, though I have a fairly concrete idea and I'm definitely excited. Second is that I'm going to England for Thanksgiving. I'm going mostly to visit my grandmother because I was not able to go during the summer when my parents and brother went, but I'm sure I'll get to see other family too. And finally, I'm really looking forward to more excuses to drink hot chocolate AKA, hopefully, the weather deciding that it wants to do autumn and get a bit colder so that I can drink more hot chocolates. Starbucks' Christmas red cups have just come out again for the season, and I really want to have some Starbucks. So yeah, those are a few things that I am looking forward to this month!

Where is the Buddha in me?

Hey, everyone!

There's currently a commercial break during Grimm so I figured I would start writing this week's post.
It's been kind of another semi-insane week. I probably say that every week, but it's true. Too many things going on. My brain can no longer keep up with all of the emotions. I have to learn how to maintain a state of neutrality no matter what's going on. Gotta learn how to reach my inner Buddha. =)

This past Tuesday was the one year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy. I remember the night of the storm so clearly. Things seemed so surreal. There was so much flooding and destruction on television. None of it seemed real. When I was getting back home this past Tuesday, I saw the beautiful Manhattan bridge all lit up and the buildings alive with activity. It's hard to believe that this same area was completely dark a year ago.

In my Asian Religions class, we've been learning about Buddhism the past couple of weeks. I don't know what made me remember this, but the other day, I remembered the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who set himself on fire in 1963 as a protest against the South Vietnamese government. There's a famous picture of the act, which I won't reproduce here because it makes me incredibly sad. At the time, it was noted that he sat perfectly still during the entire ordeal. I find that to be amazing.

I'm having a hard time finding things to talk about for this week. Maybe my mind is just wiped out.
But I'll give you guys a list of random things from this week:

- My stats exam got postponed till Monday yay!
- A girl who I knew in high school is currently a freshman at Macaulay Hunter. I accidentally ran into her yesterday after not seeing her for more than two years.
- I got into an argument with my friend about the meaning of the word "oligonucleotide". Don't ask me why.
- I had several panicky moments about my grades.
- I laughed a lot, and I almost cried a couple of times.
- I got really really annoyed with people.
- I felt enlightened.
- I found it hard to get up in the mornings.
- I decided that there's hope for the world after all.

Have an awesome weekend, everyone!

S.

Song of the Week

Hey brother, there’s an endless road to re-discover.
Hey sister, know the water's sweet but blood is thicker.
Oh if the sky comes falling down, for you, there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do.

Hey brother, do you still believe in one another?
Hey sister, do you still believe in love I wonder?
Oh if the sky comes falling down, for you, there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do.

What if I'm far from home?
Oh brother I will hear you call.
What if I lose it all?
Oh sister I will help you out!
Oh if the sky comes falling down, for you, there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do.

~ "Hey Brother" by Avicii

P.S. Avicii named himself after the lowest level of Buddhist hell.