Biggest Summary Ever.

First thing´s first:

M E R R Y x C H R I S T M A S !

¡Feliz Navidad! (In honor of my being in Madrid right now.)


I forgot to post. For a very very long time.

So here comes the longest summary ever.

Michaelmas term ended December 6th, and after that I went straight to Tignes, France, for the Oxbridge Varsity Skiing Trip! Then Jon (a Clare friend of mine) and I joined Teresa, Marianne, Nati, and Miriam (fellow CMErs) in Barcelona to embark on a small Euro-trip. We spent 5 nights in Barcelona and am currently in Madrid before leaving for Lisbon on the 26th. And then I´ll be back in London for New Year´s.

I will post about each city destination in separate posts for organization´s sake.

But for now, I´ll attempt at a summary of the past term. I guess I have November and December to cover. Oh boy.

1. Classes and such

I found myself in a bit of a doozy by the end of the term for my Cambridge classes. Because classes are organized by lectures and example papers (like problem sets without formal deadlines), I literally had 1/10 of the motivation I usually have at MIT. We also have supervisions which are led by a grad student and shared between 2 students, but my supervision leaders were all chill, so I never felt too nervous around them. Whiiich meant I never started example papers earlier than ~3 hours before the supervision. (New Years Resolution #1: Start example papers at least 1 week before the supervision!)

We also have one laboratory paper to write per module and one huge FTR (final technical report) to write by the end of the term. Needless to say (because I´m a classic procrasinator), I blew off the FTR the weekend (because I had BCD (Clare´s boat club dinner) and a swap) before it was due and was cramming the whole way up to the morning of the deadline (bad, disgraceful even). So lots of room for improvement next semester! I resolve to fix these horrible habits.

I did enjoy the classes though! I was taking 3B3 Switch-Mode Electronics (power conversion for devices), 3B5 Semiconductor Engineering (lots of band diagrams, very relevant to my UROP freshman summer), 3F5 Computer Systems & Networks (a mix of 6.004 and 6.02 and 6.033 for you MIT folks), 3E2 Marketing, and 4C4 Design Methods.

One thing I´ve found is that I really respect my peers for having the self-discipline for studying on their own, and also more importantly, knowing the right amount of time they need to study.


2. Fun stuff

First of all, Cambridge food >>>>> (you get the idea)> MIT food.

Clare´s Christmas formal! (photo creds to the very hipster Jon Lee)

Yay, a proper Christmas tree! (We determined it´s real too.)

There are so many opportunities to eat at Formal Hall, which is the 3-course formal dinner offered by each college. I got to visit Jesus College´s formal hall with Adrian, go to Queens College´s for RAG swap, go to Robinson College´s with Robinson Chapel Choir, and Pembroke College´s for Halloween Formal (which was with the CMErs). 

Queen College Formal Hall

Callie, me and Teresa dressed up as lax bros for Halloween.
Apparently British people only dress up as scary things (think Cady as the "ex wife" from Mean Girls) for Halloween, so we stood out quite a bit...

After Pembroke Halloween Formal. Uhh, I don´t even.

I also went to a few swaps (kind of like mixers) and bops (college dances)! 

Predrinks at Hillside (a Clare dorm) before Clare´s Christmas Bop

At Clare´s Christmas Bop 

(why yes we did have our very own Grinch but he gave us free candy.. and condoms if I recall correctly)

3. Extracurriculars

Remember that long list of clubs I said I was going to try? Haha.

I´m still participating in hockey, squash (though to be honest, I didn´t play at all in the last month of term!), rowing, and Christian stuff. I was in Robinson Chapel Choir, but I auditioned and got into Pembroke´s Choir which has less time commitment (er, better free food to rehearsal ratio), so I decided to sing there instead. They are definitely different in style and culture to Robinson, but I like the people so far! I also decided to join a Eco Product Design contest with 3 other CMErs so we´ll see how that goes! Sadly, I haven´t been doing anything with EcoRacing, but I still really want to, so I´m going to try joining one of their projects next semester.

I also miss coding. So I´m going to try doing something on my own next semester to keep it going.

4. Trip to London

I made a weekend trip to London during Thanksgiving! It was fun and I´ll put up a separate post link here for all the stuff we did there.

5. Rowing

Rowing has been super rewarding and I really enjoy it!

Because I missed two morning outings (I suck at waking up at 6:30am for my 7:15am outings :/ - er I hope that´s the reason haha), I was put into Novice 3rd women´s at the beginning of the season. But then I was put into Novice 2nd women´s for our first novice races of the season: Queen´s Ergs, which is an indoor ergs 8-person race. We actually won our division and I got a decent time (best out of the boat at least) for never erging before this. They had put me first in the lineup and then realized I´d never erged a few minutes before the start of the race and put me second instead.
And then we had CNR (Clare Novice Rowing, another race), where we were finalists in our division. Don´t give us too much credit though - in 2 out of 4 races, the other boat would be ahead of us and then crash into the side of the river while we slowly passed on ahead.
The last race of the season was Fairbairns, and I got to race on Novice 1st, but on stroke side instead of bow (just the two different sides of the boat), which felt different at first, but because of how I hold a stick in hockey, it actually worked out better. We finished 7th, which I think is good enough :)

I´m definitely going to continue with it! I trained with the senior girls a few times, and really missed the feeling of working out and feeling sore the next day. We´ll have training over January so I´ll update on how that goes :)


6. Varsity Trip!

All I will say here is that Tignes is beautiful. More in a separate post!


So there you go. There are a ton of photos from my trip to Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon so far, so I hope to get those up in a post soon as well! Missing everyone for Christmas back home, and hope you have an amazing winter holiday and new year!

xx
Becca