Ratna writes

I'm waiting at the airport for Priya to clear security, after an amazing weekend spent with my sister and world's favorite person. Seeing my college experience through her eyes has made me even more grateful for the freshman year that I so enjoy everyday. Priya landed Friday morning while I sat in Latin class, and was received at the airport by my sweet friend and hallmate Sophie. I snatched my sister from her and we raced to my math class, where we sat in the back giggling as I learned nothing about reference angles. We ate lunch at the unbeatable Science Center Cafe (Indian food!) before heading to the Square to bother Reylon at his job at Harvard Student Agencies. We dragged our brother down to the river, where we took iconic Charles River selfies before enjoying some bubble tea and existential conversation. Next, we really got down to business, each splurging (actually bargain hunting) on a pair of shoes before heading back to my dorm to get dressed for the night. On...

The water pressure in Greenough is terribly low. It makes the bathroom line notedly slow. We stand exchanging pleasantries as one of us washes her hands, another steps back from brushing her teeth, we each take a turn between getting into conversations about rushing and a cappella and archaeological evidence about death rituals of the Neolithic Era. We stand looking at ourselves and the other in the mirror, reflecting on our days and how we don’t quite like how we spend our nights and I wonder if our conversations would last this long if the water moved faster. Maybe waiting takes some of the pressure of “everything else” off  and so we’re not in such a rush and perhaps I won’t email YardOps with my work request just yet.

Click here for a serenade.

This weekend is turning out to be a ghastly one, work-wise. Two of my classmates and I have been tossing around puns all day about how we are being absolutely inundated  by this Environmental Policy class on water scarcity, and it's completely  drowning  our dreams. The assignments we have to prepare for this week seem to have no beginning and no end and no clear directions on what to do. Welcome to policy-making, I guess. (The last thing this brain-baffling I encountered had to be something assigned to me by Trish Deveneau junior year of high school.) Don't get me wrong -- I've taken hard classes before. But I'd rather translate Ancient Greek for hours or even do calculus over this nebulous (for lack of a better or more alliterative word) nonsense. It really has been quite disheartening. But walking back from the cafeteria and a lunch spent grunting and groaning, two small but wonderfully heartening observations struck me about my weekend: 1. I'll be starting ...

I'm very excited to be back for my second semester at Harvard, and looking forward immensely to the classes and activities in which I'll be enrolled/involved this spring! I wanted to give you all a brief overview of what a week in my shoes will look like this semester, obviously minus the spontaneous wandering that will of course also take place. My mornings will start a bit like this: At 10, I'll walk just across the street from Greenough to the Barker Humanities Center for an expository writing class called  Indian Philosophy and the Search for the Self . I'm super delighted to have gotten into this class because of my personal interest in meditation and yoga -- the course description reads as follows: Who are you? What does it mean to have a self, and how do we even know we have one? This course explores the views of thinkers who radically challenge our everyday notions of self: Buddhist philosophers who denied the very existence of the self, and Hindu phil...