A First Semester Redux

I just arrived back on campus for 2nd semester which begins on Wednesday. I wouldn't blame you if you thought I didn't even have a 1st semester, since I didn't blog a single time. Sorry!! I guess one of my new year's resolution should be to try to post more. For now, though, I'm going to try to make up some lost ground by jumping on the "year/decade in review" trend.

If there was one word that could sum up my most recent August-December it would be: sleepless. If I had a few more words to budget, I'd also add: busy; stressful; challenging; good.

So, a few things to catch up and then we'll be on to 2nd semester.

Fall Redux
Classes: I took a full load last semester comprised of Spanish 1, a cultural anthropology seminar called Human Rights Activism, a graduate level ethics seminar on refugees and humanitarian aid and a course that was cross listed among several departments called The World Cup and World Politics. All of my classes were really engaging and they all seemed to connect/have a little bit of overlap at times, which was nice. My professors were AMAZING teachers and individuals. I've never had to work harder in my life, but the sleepless nights and stress were manageable (even if just a little bit) by the fact that I found the topics really interesting and overall just LOVED my classes.

For our final, instead of a more traditional paper or exam, my World Cup and World Politics professor assigned us to create a website based on some research we'd done earlier in the semester. You can check out my website, on Muslim women's soccer, here. Also, my profile has links to other posts I wrote last semester as a contributor to our class blog.


Crew: Many of you know that this past summer I spent a considerable amount of time weighing my options for the coming year. Part of this concluded in the decision to join the Duke Women's Rowing team. DWR is a varsity level sport at Duke and I compete on the "novice" team. The novice team is for anyone who has never rowed before--sort of like a team of all rookies and we mostly compete against other novice squads. This past semester I practiced four days a week and competed in two regattas. We traveled to the D.C. area for The Head of the Occoquan on Halloween weekend and a week later competed at The Head of the Hooch in Chattanooga, TN. This semester I will (for the most part) be practicing six days a week and competing in five or six different regattas (including once in south Jersey *cough*family*cough*). The biggest difference between our fall season and spring season is that in the fall our races are 5,000 meteres but in the spring they are only 2,000 meters. So far I've had a great experience--it's been fun getting to know my teammates and my coaches are really wonderful.

Living: At Duke, the freshman live on East Campus. As a sophomore, however, I have the privilege of living on West Campus. West Campus is the main part of Duke and living right on the main quad is really convenient. I'm literally a minute walk away from almost all of our food options and less than a five minute walk awak from our main academic quad. I'm roomming with the same girl I lived with last year and we're having a great time together. So far, after a year and a half together, we've found only one incompatibility: we like the room at different temperatures [I hope I'm not jynxing myself!]. Being my mom's daughter, I like the room much colder than she does.

Classes start Wednesday, so I'll check back soon after that!