rt7's blog

Since Previews is cancelled, students had the chance to virtually host a prefrosh by talking to them online. My two dudes were both from Japan, near where I live. I emailed them both a couple of days ago introducing myself and talking about common interests, and just last night one of them replied. 🥰 He had six questions in mind, and it was a nice reflective moment for me trying to come up with answers. I’ve copied the Q & A below if some prospective students are curious and stumble upon it.

Q1: How is Williams dealing with Covid-19? (classes, for instance)

😷 In comparison to other top schools, I think (and others agree) that Williams has done an excellent job responding to the pandemic. After classes moved online, people who had to fly back home (like international students) and were on financial aid had their flights booked and paid for. If you couldn’t go home because of travel ban, family concerns etc., you could petition to stay on campus. A lot of people were rejected initially because they didn’t want to overload the medical system here (Williamstown is rural and has a large elderly population). I was one of them, but after talking one-on-one with the dean, she approved my re-appeal. Other people were also accepted their second time like this, and I think it shows how the college really listens to you. Classes have been a smooth transition, because professors got three weeks to restructure their teaching and accommodate everyone. For example, my CS professor hosts a live meeting during the day but also records it for people in different timezones. She also set up office hours for people specifically in these time zones (in the morning or at night), so you can ask questions in real time!

Q2: What are some things you LOVE at Williams?

🥰 I LOVE my friends here! International orientation introduces you to other internationals who you can always fall back on because they understand you.  The orientation leaders (sophomores+juniors) are also your friends. On top of that, the entry system really helps people to get to know others you normally wouldn’t interact with. That said, there are tons of clubs to join to branch out, and you end up bonding with people in your class too! I think you’ll have a similar experience at [other top school] too, but just know no matter where you go, friends will be the best part about college.

Q3: Do you feel Williams is friendly towards international students?

🌏 As an institution: yes. Like I said, during the pandemic they were mindful of everyone’s unique situation and helped out. There are also resources catered towards just international students (workshops on CPT/OPT etc) and Dean Ninah is awesome. As a student body: I think for the most part, people will be interested in your background and are welcome. That said, some groups (e.g. predominantly white sports teams like football) might not be as inviting but that might not be unique to Williams sorry!

Q4: Have you taken any tutorials? I am really interested in them.

✍️ I’m actually taking a tutorial right now! Writing isn’t my strongest skill, so it’s been challenging but very rewarding. At first, I would doubt myself while doing the readings + writing a 5 page paper every other week. But then, we’d have our weekly meetings and it made me confident that I made the right choice. The level of engagement is incredibly high, and I feel like I’m really learning with an expert in the field. I 100% recommend you take one here, even though it’s a lot of work!

Q5: What are some aspects of Williams that you learned after arriving?

💯 This might be true at [other top school] too, but it shocked me how much support there was. Everyone wants you to succeed! I thought you had to struggle through class to survive, but every professor I’ve had is so caring. If you miss a class because you were sick, they’ll go over it together with you. If you did poorly on an assignment, they’ll help you identify your mistakes. They’ll even take you out to dinner for free (paid by college) if you want to! Williams is on your side, which I appreciate greatly.

Q6: Is there anything else I should know?

🥶 I’m sure you know this already, but Williams gets very cold in the winter (October -> March). I think that’s going to be the biggest difference with [other top school], since [top school area] is hot and humid. If you strongly prefer one weather over another, maybe consider that when making your decision. But, when it’s warm, Williams is gorgeous with the mountains. Also, on a clear night, you can see the Milky Way!!! Unheard of in Tokyo. Just know that it’s going to be freezing for half the time here, but it’s worth it for the other half.

 

First Zoom meeting went well.

Pro tip if you don’t want to download it due to security concerns:

1. when someone send you a zoom invite, cancel it and click “having problems” link.
2. cancel it again.
3. option to join by browser shows up, use that

Anyways, after the call ended, I glanced outside. It was absolutely beautiful! 15 Celsius with clear skies. Partly inspired by nature, partly procrastination, I spontaneously decided to hike up Pine Cobble. I’ve always wanted to, but never woke up in time for the sunrise hikes.

I packed two water bottles and a granola bar. After telling Abu that if he doesn’t hear back from me in 2 hours assume I’ve been eaten by a bear, I left for the mountains, frisbee in hand. (To toss to myself) It was a little further to the base than I expected (30 minutes from Frosh Quad), but once on the trail, it was all trees and rustling leaves. I did run into one or two people, which surprised me, but we passed each other keeping distance and went on our merry ways. After another half hour or so, I began to see a clearing. At last! Climbing up a boulder, I could see all of Wiliamstown from above. Turn around, and I saw Bennington(?). I tried taking photos but it didn’t do justice so I just stood for a while, taking it all in. Wish you could see it <3

First day back!!!

…

Pretty anticlimactic for me though, I just watched one pre-recorded lecture and finished my essay from yesterday. (Un)fortunately for me, I don’t have any seminars this semester so I feel like my transitions going to be smoother than most. No “hello, is this thing on?” and “how do I zoom?” for me. Part of me is sad that I don’t get to partake in this historic moment where old professors (boomers) and young teenagers (zoomers) collide in a remote setting, trying to figure out the best course of action. It just kinda feels like I’m attending UC Berkeley or something, where all the lectures are recorded anyways. But I guess I’m also blessed in that I’ll have a newfound appreciation for face-to-face seminars without having to deal with this current struggle. Tomorrow’s going to be my first SYNCHRONOUS meeting with my tutorial partner and prof, which I’m excited/scared for. (I keep remembering that if I were back home, we’d have to schedule it at some obscene time like 7am or 7pm for all of our time zones to work). Maybe I’ll even throw on a pair of jeans for the first time in a week? Who knows what the future holds.

It really says something about someone’s time management skills when you pull an all-nighter for an essay due the next day when you’ve had three(!) weeks of break to write it, doesn’t it. Oh well. What can I say, I enjoyed my time settling into quarantine life, my mind unobstructed by 18th-century Russian judicial punishment and the likes.

But there comes a time in life (namely, today) where you have to buckle down and think hard about 18th-century Russian judicial punishment, especially how the usage of capital punishment and penance can coexist in a time of Enlightenment ideals that espoused secular and rational modes of thinking. I don’t know if I fully understand what I wrote — that’s a problem for Future Me — but after a grueling seven or so hours, I’m done! I really wanted this class to be a learning opportunity for me (hence the Writing Skills designation) but now I’m afraid I’m going to slack off and not get the personal improvements I had hoped for. But I’m painfully aware that this is a problem that lies entirely within me, and if I just put in the effort, I can have this class be what I want. I’m rooting for Future Me to do what’s right.

What to do on the weekend in quarantined Williamstown? Watch a Jordan Peele film with your friends of course 😎 Abu assured me this wasn’t a scary movie, much like how he assured me last time that Us wasn’t scary, which, by the way, is false (but still very good). I had always wanted to see Get Out though, so with a blanket in hand, I took the plunge.

Wow. I have to process this in my head for a couple of days, but wow. I had no idea what it was about going in, except for the fact that there was overt racial commentary, so the turn it took (no spoilers! 🤫) left me speechless! I feel like a walking talking clickbait article but if you haven’t seen it yet I highly highly recommend. Reason #5 will shock you!

Oh shoot, class starts in four days!!!

I just realized today that I have a 5 page paper due on Monday after opening an email from a prof sent a couple days ago 😬I’ve made some progress on the readings, but speaking from previous experience, it’s gonna take me all weekend to finish. Or will it? Now that it’s pass/fail, I could theoretically scrape by with minimum effort. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have Div I genes in me so I lack the talent to bs a paper in a couple of hours. I need to actually understand what I’m arguing about to write it out, and by then, I’m 80% done. Oh well.

But that got me thinking, how should I tackle this semester? I knew my courseload was going to be heavy to begin with so having it be pass/fail may seem like a blessing in disguise. But I’m also afraid to throw away four classes worth of education. At least two of them are directly relevant to my major, and I want to do good in the other two to prove to myself and gain a better general understanding of the world. I guess there are corners I can cut like not doing extraneous psets if I already understand the material, or not over-cramming before an exam, but in the end I feel like I’ll give (mostly) 100% effort—just as I had planned to before.

This time, I didn’t overprepare! Pipe texted me asking if I wanted to go on another hike, and even though it was forecasted to rain in the next hour, of course I said yes. It was a bit further than Stone Hill (a 30min drive, actually) but eventually we got to the base of Haystack Mountain. We had promised ourselves that we’d turn back if it was raining heavily there, but it was only… snowing? In April? Oh well. I was a little under-dressed for the cold but convinced myself that I’d warm up on the way up, and off we went!

It was a bit difficult, especially with the lack of traction in the snow, but after an hour or so the trees parted and made way for an absolutely gorgeous view of Vermont. For a while, we just stood there, six feet apart with the wind whipping our faces, taking in the beauty. Then our faces started to hurt so we hopped back down into the trees. In that moment, I forgot about all my troubles, all the world’s troubles. I felt cleansed of all my worries. Nothing on my mind but mountains and family.

It’s been 14 days since all my friends went back home 🙁 Which means if any of them had the coronavirus and passed it onto me, I don’t have it anymore! As a mini-celebration, Abu and Chloe and I decided to hike 20 minutes to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. Okay, maybe it had more to do with the fact that it was 2pm already and Driscoll brunch was already closed, but still. We couldn’t walk in, so we went through the drive-thru (a walk-thru, if you will) to order. Something about eating a $3 bacon egg sandwich in the driveway of one of America’s most desolate Dunkin with your entrymates on a beautiful lazy  afternoon, makes you feel so at peace. Afterwards, we stopped by the dollar store where the cashier lady (rightfully so) told us that only one of us is needed inside to do the shopping. We ended up getting some cheap plastic bowls for potential ramen nights(!) Afterwards, I swung by a friend’s house to pickup a free microwave(!!) And with that, Sage EF has moved up in the world of on-campus cooking.

First laundry since moving into Frosh Quad! Honestly I probably should’ve done it earlier but I was too lazy / scared to go down into the basement at night. Running out of underwear finally forced me to. And to my surprise, washing and drying both only cost 5 cents! Apparently it’s to incentivize more frequent washing to remove possible germs (oops), but it’s not like I’m going to do my laundry 25 times more frequently? I’m not complaining though.

As I was waiting for the cycle to end, I went on a 30 min run again. After staying inside for 90% of the time here, it feels great to stretch your legs. I really hope I can stick with it and make it a routine! Now that classes are resuming soon (yikes), I really have to find a groove and get back into a ~reasonable~ lifestyle.

This general theme of getting into habits seems to signify that this is the new normal. My high school in Japan just announced that they’re going remote for the rest of the school year, and now this pandemic normalcy is really starting to settle into my brain. I think I’ve experienced the past few weeks in a temporary state of mind, mentally cataloguing this time as an exception, when I know that this will continue for the foreseeable future. Time to face it reality I guess.

I kinda wanna talk about two separate things that happened today that I’m too tired to figure out how to fuse together. So here we go.

1) It was pouring outside when Abu and I got brunch, so we decided to crash at Morgan with some friends instead of walking all the way back to Frosh Quad. It was a group of mostly international students, and we got around to talking about the situations back home. Takeaways: governments are almost universally inadequately prepared for pandemics like this; it’s hard to balance economic stability and strict health measures (especially for LEDCs); everyone is worried about their families and their families are worried about them. It was nice being able to hear each other’s stories — it made me feel like there was a community left on campus after all. Too bad there can’t be mass gatherings so we can all get to know each other, but little interactions outside my usual 2-3 people I see everyday is healing.

2) I cut my hair today! Or more precisely, Abu cut it. I think I’ve had the same haircut for the past ten years now, but today we switched it up ever so slightly with a fade. To be honest, it’s not that much different than before but it does feel slicker. I see a bunch of girls getting DIY bangs just for the change, so I guess this is my version of it? Maybe it’ll inspire a different side of me to come out, who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯