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