International opportunities

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A Midspring Night’s Dream

March 28, 2012 in Jeanie's Blog by Jeanie Nguyen

This past week was phenomenal. I can say this fairly because bad events occurred as well, but ‘tis life – nay – ‘tis a great life because I’m perfectly ecstatic with how things unfolded.

As I’ve stated (desperately) before, my well being was basically dependent on whether I go abroad this summer. At this point, I truly can’t think of any better way to improve my Spanish proficiency other than forcing myself to think, breathe, speak, and eat Spanish. I’m more than happy to report I’ll be doing all of the above for 8+ weeks this summer!

I’ve been scrambling to research and apply to many summer opportunities (including research and interning abroad) ever since my return to campus after J-term (January break/winter break) – so much so that it felt like a fifth class! Being a research assistant at the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory, which is more of a social science lab, has really made me miss wet labs (pipettes, microscopes, etc.). This isn’t to say I don’t like my job there because I definitely do and intend on working there for many more semesters! Seeing the economics/psychology behind so many common, daily tasks (such as first impressions) has truly propelled my curiosity. Nonetheless, wet labs were my focal exploration point throughout high school and this is an area I feel like I’ve been failing to pursue during my precious and fleeting time as an undergraduate. Therefore, I applied to various REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) programs at universities and companies as a Plan C.

Plan A and B were quickly formed after further investigation of the DRCLAS (pronounced Dr. Class, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies) Summer Internship Program (SIP) as well as Sustainable Development Programs. I applied to work in Latin America and Mexico, and with luck on my side, I got accepted into both programs. My first choice is definitely interning in Latin America so that I can join my friends and teammates on Refresh Bolivia (a student run organization here at Harvard College) after my internship ends. Fun Fact: Refresh Bolivia was founded by a current senior who will be heading to Harvard Medical School this fall!! He’s been my friend since my freshman fall, but now I’m just star struck by him!!!!

Returning from my tangent, the real kicker is that my funding request was accepted as well! One of the main factors that initially attracted me to Harvard College was its incredibly generous financial support – both in and out of the classroom. Many have heard of Harvard’s renowned financial aid in the classroom, but during my first tour of the undergraduate campus, I was in shock that Harvard also financially supports its students in endeavors that make/keep us happy such as partying (safely of course!!!!) and working abroad!! I’m so beyond eternally grateful that my summer adventures will be partially funded so that I can avoid being an actual adult for that much longer by putting off organizing my finances.

The plot twist (cue scary music here) is that my funding request was approved for the Mexico Sustainable Development program when I prefer Latin America. When I spoke to a few friends, they only worried me by emphasizing how inflexible the protocol for summer funding is. Thank goodness they set my expectations low because that only set me up for a higher rise after I spoke to the faculty in the DRCLAS and OIP (Office of International Programs) offices who are currently working so that my funding can be transferrable in between the two DRCLAS programs. Everyone affiliated with Harvard University has been so kind and helpful that I doubt I could ever be thankful or appreciative enough!

I’ll definitely update when my summer plans are set in stone. For now, I can happily enjoy the present. Spring was here last week with temperatures in the high 60s(?), but now Spring is just near as everyone busts out their puffy jackets with a pout once again.

Things I’m looking forward to: my best friend from home visiting me this weekend!, catching up on sleep and classes (I feel guilty when I’m so behind on lectures!), my sorority’s (Kappa Alpha Theta) Spring formal, YardFest, Relay for Life, PreFrosh weekend … DUDE I LOVE SPRING

Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our very own Jesse Sanchez!!!

Double also, best of luck to everyone waiting on decisions tomorrow. My judgement day was April 1st (April Fools Day – which is pretty cruel) so consider yourself lucky! Know that the Admissions staff is really in an unenviable position because there are SO many qualified applicants! Keep your heads up and whatever happens, happens for a reason!

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Realizing How Smart You Are Not

February 29, 2012 in Jeanie's Blog by Jeanie Nguyen | 2 comments

Last week, I had a depressing blog about my experiences with the (unavoidable?) demon popularly termed Sophomore Slump. BUT! I’m back a week later to uplift your spirits, happily reporting that this week has taken a turn back to happy norms – or as happy as possible in the gloomy presence of midterms and deadlines. Although the workload conditions haven’t altered much, the difference is that I’m not hating existence and my professors are once again able to heighten my intrigue with binary numbers and Aspartic catalysts, can I get a WOOT WOOT?

I pinpointed the root of my slumpish nature as my anxiety revolving around my summer plans and the big possibility of not being immersed in the love of the people I spent my first 18 years of life with; the alternative would be a cultural and/or scientific immersion. So the moral of the story is: I’m a brat. Clearly, I don’t have much to say on this topic because it happens so rarely ….… but having rough weeks is actually a great experience because I wouldn’t appreciate the good as much if it were good all the time.

There were two prominent things that helped me cope with my disaster week – one of them being my upperclassman house, Mather! (You can’t say it without an exclamation mark!) As I’ve said in previous posts, I’ve been feeling pretty stagnant with regards to my Spanish learning curve which has catalyzed my desire to study abroad. But since I’m a 20 year old brat who still gets homesick, I’d never be able to stick it out as a foreigner for a semester, so I’d ideally like to go somewhere this summer where I can think, speak, live, breathe and blink Spanish. My resident tutor (freshmen here call it proctor, but it’s more widely known as RA: Resident Adviser, basically someone older/wiser who lives in the dorm and repels chaos) and current Spanish 50 class TF (Teaching Fellow) holds a “Spanish Table” every Wednesday during dinner time and last Wednesday was my first (but definitely not last) partake. Spanish Table gives students a chance to have a meal over Spanish conversation. All levels are welcomed and encouraged. The atmosphere is really chill and not intimidating at all! Thinking and speaking Spanish outside of the classroom, in a casual setting, really refueled my excitement about the possibilities of going abroad! Southern California, I’ll thank you endlessly for literally being one of the most influential factors for shaping who I am – from the way I dress, think and speak – but I’ll be okay if we don’t see much of each other this summer.

Studying at a college so far away from home and with seemingly endless possibilities has really made me feel like a globalized person – or maybe just a country-ized person? I’ll earn the term “globalized” if I do indeed go abroad this summer (I’m typing with my fingers crossed here). Harvard offers a plethora of opportunities I never thought existed and recently, its international opportunities have really caught my eye. Everything from Harvard offered programs to non-Harvard programs (campus organizations like OCS: Office of Career Services will work with you to apply and even transfer credit!) to professors who offer to connect you with organizations such as WHO: World Health Organization (my Bioethics professor, Dr. Daniel Wikler, offered to do so!) is just so extraordinarily unbelievable that I can’t wrap half my mind around it. Living and thriving in an environment with massive opportunity, filled with driven people is truly a humbling experience, which brings me back to the second thing that helped me during my disaster week: talking with my best friend from home.

It’s strange how, for me at least, the beginning of college came concomitant with living in a split dimension: your high school life vs. your college life. It’s easy to get caught up in your busy college life, but during sophomore slump weeks, you just want to escape and I accomplished that by catching up with my besties from middle/high school.

I’m pretty confident when I claim that the Sophomore Slump has been a nationwide epidemic because a handful of both friends from home and Harvard have had rough weeks recently. (I partially blame pre-Spring Break Fever) So my best friend from high school, Emily, and I were retrospectively examining our lives (some pretty profound stuff if I dare say so myself) and she mentioned how college is an incredibly humbling experience in the realm of grades which help you realize how smart you are not. I wholeheartedly agreed as I thought about all my premed classes and how students legitimately earn A’s without the curve – snaps AND kudos to everyone because one form of encouragement wouldn’t be enough. This makes it really easy for the majority of students to feel stupid and unworthy, but I’d like to point out that these two things are mutually exclusive. I’m not sure if that makes things better, BUT at least it’s true! I’d like to remedy this situation by telling myself (and you!) that college isn’t all about the grades – it’s about the experiences too. When I look back at college, I won’t remember the 100% I got on my organic chemistry final (not based on a true story), but what will indeed stand out is that time my roommates and I watched scary movie trailers all night for no reason.

My take-home message would be to relax! I feel like 149% of the prospective students I come into contact with (their parents representing the extra 49%) expect that Harvard students are the definition of perfection and that our records/transcripts/etc. should have their own exhibition in the Smithsonian, BUT this is so wrong! Your imperfections shape you just as much as your more admirable qualities and admissions officers realize that you, buddy, are a package deal. Harvard students have their fair share of imperfections and rough weeks – and that’s perfectly fine.

 

Preemptively striking, Housing Day – the epic day that freshmen find out which upperclassmen house they’ll be residing in for their remaining years as an undergraduate – is in just one week! See for yourself why Mather! can’t be said, but only exclaimed!

*props to Scott for helping me share Mather! Love

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The Scientist Part 2

April 30, 2011 in Alumni Blogs by Alissa D'Gama | 1 comment

As promised, here is part two of how I decided what to do with my life. Sophomore year was definitely the hardest in terms of classes. Because most into and mid-level life sciences concentration classes have lecture+section+lab I had 25 hours of class per week balanced with working in lab and participating in extracurriculars. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the classes I took—the classes started going deeper into the how and why of things, and I found out that subjects I thought would be scary (organic chemistry) were actually a lot of fun. In particular, my MCB and organic chemistry classes showed me how research done at the bench could be translated to the bedside and vice versa. What really solidified my decision to pursue an MD/PhD was what happened after sophomore year, when I had the opportunity to spend the summer in Tokyo, Japan through the Harvard Summer School Program at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute.

It was really nice to sleep in a little during the summer – I would normally get up between 9 and 10 am and eat a melon bread from the 7-11 across the street (7-11 in Tokyo is like the 24-7 CVS in Harvard Square. It has everything!) along with a glass of orange juice (Vitamin C!). Then I walked the five minutes from the international house to the central research building where I worked in the Lab for Alzheimer’s Disease studying potential drugs. While I was at lab, the cleaning staff would not only bring me fresh towels and empty my trash, but they made my bed! It was like living in a hotel, especially with the tiny bars of wrapped hand soap.

The weekends had me armed with a subway map as I ventured out to explore Tokyo – going hiking amid the ruins of ancient Japanese castles, watching fireworks during the Hanabi festival with over 900,000 other people (yes, there were really that many people there and we had to get there very early to get a spot!), making okonomiyaki — which looks like an English pancake but is filled with meat, vegetables, and cheese, getting woken up by an earthquake or two, and taking a nine hour overnight bus ride to the temples in Kyoto (including The Golden Temple, which is literally plates with gold). The coolest thing I experienced were tornado potatoes – the street vendors took a knife and cut around the potato in swirls, then put in on a stick and dipped it in melted cheese. So good.

Tornado Potatoes at the Hanabi Fireworks Festival with Stella ’10!

When I arrived at Narita Airport at the beginning of June, I only knew how to say “Good afternoon” in Japanese and how to eat ramen with chopsticks. By the time I left in August, I could have a basic conversation with my lab members and had discovered that the ramen in Japan is much better than the fifty-cent packs from CVS – in fact, I even had “Spanish-style” ramen with melted cheese and tomatoes at a café in Yotsuya. One of the great things about Harvard is the opportunity it provides students to go abroad during both the summer and the academic year to learn about other cultures. Back on campus, I have continued to research in labs on campus and have explored other cultures through Core and General Education classes that take me from the courts of Florence to the streets of London. I also arrived back in Boston with a renewed excitement for research and the decision to pursue an MD/PhD.

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Harvard Takes Me to Dubai

March 28, 2011 in Alumni Blogs by Punit Shah | 2 comments

One thing I didn’t expect coming to Harvard are the number of international opportunities, generally funded by the university or other means, that allow students to explore the world. This spring break, I traveled to Dubai for an academic, cultural, and social exchange conference through the Harvard College in Asia Program (HCAP). Over the week I saw and learned about the United Arab Emirates, but more importantly, I made a really close group of friends from both Harvard and abroad.

The HCAP experience is a set of seven conferences that take place at Harvard and across Asia with all expenses paid except airfare. Each February, nearly 50 students from the top universities in their country come to Harvard for a week-long conference Harvard students put on for them. After a few lectures in the morning, we show the students Boston and give them an introduction to American culture. Then, over spring break, approximately 70 Harvard students split into six groups to visit one of the six partner universities over spring break. We aim to make the conferences accessible to all by having all expenses covered while abroad and by helping students gain university funding for the flight if they are unable to pay. This year, we partnered with schools in Dubai, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Mumbai, Seoul, and Tokyo.

Participating in HCAP and this trip to Dubai have been experiences I could never have imaged I doing just three years ago as a high schooler. My trip to Dubai took myself and ten other Harvard students abroad. We visited with high profile speakers such as the US Consulate General to the UAE to a leader in the push for opening medical tourism facilities in Dubai in order to learn about healthcare in the the region, the theme of this year’s conference. But after the academic portion of the conference, the American University of Dubai students took us for sightseeing, to the beach, and to their favorite hang-out spots. From the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest man-made structure, to hidden gems like an Indian street food restaurant, we saw all aspects of Dubai and gained a thorough appreciation of the locals’ propensity for setting world records. The students were frank about life there, both about the  opportunities they’ve had in Dubai as well as the darker side of the city with workers living in harsh conditions to enable the emirate’s quick growth.

Spending nearly every waking hour with both my Harvard peers and having my life saved from crazy drivers by the Dubai students served as an effective formula to create strong bonds. Indeed, the relationships I built on previous HCAP trips I took to Singapore and Tokyo persist. I’ve received emails asking for a place to stay from my friends abroad, and I know if I ever travel through Asia, I  have a bed waiting for me. These bonds have become even stronger in the past; HCAP’s first president eventually married a student he met while at the conference abroad. While I may never have that strong of a bond with the students abroad or even see some of them again (except possibly through Facebook), they have challenged me to think deeper, question assumptions, and peer outside my American paradigm for viewing the world.

Here are some photos from the trip:

HCAP on Jumeirah Beach

Spelling HCAP on Jumeirah Beach

 

The view from the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest man-made structure

The view from the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest man-made structure

Taking a break from the desert safari through the sand dunes outside Dubai

Taking a break from the desert safari through the sand dunes outside Dubai

Taking a camel ride after the safari.

Taking a camel ride after the safari

Visiting the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, which honors the popular founder of the UAE

Visiting the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the eighth largest mosque in the world, which honors the popular founder of the UAE

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. . . Social Studies

November 2, 2010 in Alumni Blogs by Punit Shah | Comments closed

Whenever I go home, the typical conversation when I meet people goes something like:

“What are you majoring in?”

“Social studies!”

“What? Like that class I took in fourth grade?”

Yes, I’m in probably the worst-named concentration at Harvard, but also (in my opinion) the most interesting and flexible. I basically get to take any class in the social sciences and count it towards my concentration. Then, senior year, I write a thesis on a topic of interest after conducting research.

This past week, I just declared my focus field, the selection of classes that define what you choose to focus on within the social sciences. My focus field – “Political Economy, Technology, and the NGO-Government Complex” – looks at how new technologies and NGOs affect development and economic and political outcome in Latin America.

The story of my focus field originates a few thousand miles away in Argentina, where Harvard sent me this summer on a fellowship. Working at a microfinance NGO in La Plata, Argentina, I saw first hand how governments, foreign aid, NGOs, and technology can work together to give citizens new economic opportunities. In between meeting their loan recipients, I worked on implementing a new IT system for the organization as well as experiencing the World Cup (which they take really, really seriously, by the way). But I saw that for almost every client we spoke with form the bank, each was excited about how they wanted to use their profits to bring their children out of poverty through education. I also noticed that many countries like Uruguay were spending on programs like One Laptop per Child while there was still limited data on how this can actually help students come out of poverty despite the dreams of the international community.

What do you get combining a desire to go back again to Latin America on Harvard’s dime; an interest in economics, political science, and computer science; and the flexibility of Social Studies? For me, I got my focus field. I still have a lot to do, but I’m excited about what I’ll be able to find (and experience during my next trip to Latin America!).

Me with one of our bank’s clients

Me with one of our bank’s clients

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