Empire State of Mind

Sometimes, its easy to forget that I live and study in one of the world's greatest urban centers. It should not feel like this, but it is especially true when I spent time traveling outside the New York City. In the past month, I've spent a night sleeping in three different beds in three different towns, two of which are technically "urban." And when I return to this city it seems like there isn't much that is different.

Where ever I am, I study textbooks (that moves), in the most quiet places that I find, and write papers and procrastinate on my laptop (that moves). Although some of my classmates, like Ting, trek out to the farmers market, I generally buy the vast majority of my groceries from Trader Joe's. I eat in restaurants that are priced to suit a young adult's budget.

Traditional college work and little play makes Danielle a dull girl and the city of Manhattan not unlike the town of Bellmore where she came from. My conversation topics don't change when I change location...

...but sometimes they do. My perspectives on different cultures seem almost more authentic. I find that my conversations on vintage designer finds, quirky odd jobs from AgentAnything.com, and little film festivals and and museums competitions that I devote bits of free time to are unique, compared to my pre-Manhattanite days. I'm working with my adviser, Adrienne, to find internships here in the city. The big names that seek student labor, surprise me. The schoolwork can be the same-old, but the eventual outcomes are very, very different.

I've let lights inspire me everywhere, but as I turn 19 tomorrow in the Brookdale dorm....Let's hear it for New York........

Midterm Mayhem

Midterms are coming up! And if you're like me, then you're anxious and stressed out with the amount of work that continues to pile up and the exams that are approaching quickly. The one thing that keeps me sane? Good food.

One of my favorite things to do on a Friday night is go grocery shopping and then make dinner. I know. I'm a party animal. I make my way down to the Farmer's Market in Union Square where the fruits are fresh, vegetables are organic, and cheeses are delectable. They also sell ground beef and lamb, but I try to stay away from meat except for the occasional fish. The craziest thing I've seen there is ostrich eggs. Yes, you heard right. Ostrich eggs. They look like large rocks and I can't image eating one, but hopefully I will before I graduate!

After getting my usual bag of groceries (usually bunch of carrots, bag of red onions, mushrooms, some apples and whatever is in season or looks good), I head back to the dorms to make dinner. It's always so relaxing and comforting to just be alone for a while, make good food and enjoy it. At that moment, school and work and midterms seem far far away.

The main topics of conversation for me this week have been graduate school and honors theses, especially since many of my friends are also juniors. I'm not usually prone to getting freaked out about the future, but it's getting way too real for comfort; this week my boyfriend and I sat down and started mapping out which grad school's we'd both want to go to, and my research mentor has started referring to other researchers as my future PhD advisors! I feel like I'm so far behind too - many people have already taken or started preparing for the GRE, and they all seem to have such solid ideas of what fields they want to study and what schools they want to go to. I'm still doing my characteristic wavering - at least every couple months or so I feel like I have no idea where I'm going to various degrees. I'm increasingly sure that I do indeed want to go into neuroscience, which has been my plan all along, but it's a pretty big field and I just don't feel like I have enough knowledge in it to know what I'm interested in, which in turn makes it pretty hard to decide what grad schools would be a good fit. Plus, I just don't feel ready to go to grad school at all. Maybe I will in a year and some when I actually get there, but I feel like I want to go in with all guns blazing, not just sort of get by.

Very recently (as in, while my mind was wandering during class a couple days ago) I've started toying with the idea of taking the fall semester to return to the lab where I worked at Johns Hopkins and do my honors thesis work there, and in the process tagging an extra semester to my undergrad time and postponing grad school one year. In the past when I've considered taking a gap year I always thought of doing it the other way around - finish school, then take time to go do research somewhere. But I find this way much more appealing. For one thing, I won't feel as much like I'm just bumming around while all my friends are off at grad school, because I'll still be taking classes. And I won't just be adding an extra semester to make my courseload per semester lighter, but instead actually using some time in a productive way. And... I'm just really not good at doing things in traditional ways, so the idea of skipping out and going to work for a while instead of taking classes straight through is extremely appealing. There would be a lot to coordinate, but it might be exactly what I need... definitely food for thought.

- Celine