A lot of big things happened in September. Here are the 10 most significant things in my month.
1. Elina & Kaba's Wedding
I couldn't start with anything other than my sister's wedding! On September 3rd, 2023, Elina got married to Kaba! It was a wonderful event at a lovely vineyard in New Hampshire.
We had a rehearsal on Friday September 1st, a fun day with the "Bride Squad" on the 2nd and then on the 3rd, the big day! I arrived early with Kaba on that day and we worked on the finishing touches at the venue. The bride squad arrived soon after, then the guests and finally Elina, and my parents arrived and the ceremony commenced.
It was great to meet Kaba's side of the family and I met one of his cousins who actually also goes to Brandeis. Since then, I've seen him a few times while I'm working at the Sound and Image Media Studios.
The wedding was such a whirlwind event. I was setting up one minute, then we were watching Elina and Kaba get married, we took some photos, ate some salmon, I gave a speech and the next thing I knew I was decorating their car and they were off to Puerto Rico for their mini-moon.
2. Starting my Senior Year
A couple days before the wedding, I moved into Brandeis and began my senior year! I am living in a suite with five others. Three of them I knew and was great friends with and now I am friends with the other two as well! The group has worked out great! And our building is full of a lot of my other friends so it's a lot of great people under the same roof.
3. Classes
This semester, I taking a variety of classes. the first is Natural Language Processing. This is a course about doing computation in regard to languages like English. It is an introductory course but sort of the basics for how large language models like Chat-GPT might work. My next class is Japanese Film. This one isn't my favorite (I needed to take a World Cinema class) but I didn't know anything about Japanese film before so it has been interesting to learn more! It's just a lot of work and kinda time consuming.
My next class is Oral Communications for Computer Science. In this class we basically just have to get up in the front of the class every week and give some sort of presentation. The first week was just for us to introduce ourselves and the next week we did a presentation about a quote we find impactful.
My fourth class is Screenwriting for Film. I had taken Screenwriting for Television two years ago with the same teacher and its similar but being a creative writing class, taking this one is really just an opportunity to get more experience screenwriting so it should be very useful!
4. Media Support Specialist & Teaching Assistant
In addition to my classes, I have two paid on-campus jobs. The first is being a Media Support Specialist at Brandeis' Sound and Image Media Studios (SIMS). Early in the semester, I had the opportunity to train some of the new SIMS employees which I realized was like reaching a whole new level of leadership because I was training the people that work training the students to use the equipment.
I started working at SIMS in Fall of 2022 and it is nice to be back! I help students use film and audio equipment, software, recording spaces and manage checkouts and returns. When there isn't any of that to do and there aren't DVDs to digitize for the library, I work on my cartoons for the Hoot and my travel videos I am making about my time abroad.
My second job is as a teaching assistant for an Intro to Python course. In this position, I run two weekly office hours, grade assignments and quizzes and every few weeks, I run a "recitation" which is basically an additional class period run by the TAs. There are four TAs for the course so we alternate running the recitation. When I ran my first one, I gave the quiz we were supposed to provide and then everyone started leaving while I was trying to run the review part of the session. It was a humbling experience asking for people's ideas as hoards of people left. But also, I get it, the recitation is from 8:50-10:10 at night. I wouldn't want to be there either lol.
5. Adventures in Boston
In September, I went on two adventures to Boston. The first time, on September 9, I took the train in with my friends and we went to Build-A-Bear Workshop near Faneuil Hall. We had been wanting to go for a while and when we found out it was National Teddy Bear Day and that Build-A-Bear would donate a stuffed animal to a child in need for every bear purchased, we were sold!
On the way to the shop, we stopped to check out a street performer. He ended up being one of those guys that takes too long to do the act (a lot of "give around of applause for this person holding this pole") and the actual stunt at the end wasn't memorable.
Here is our Build-A-Bear Haul!
After Build-A-Bear, we got lunch and ate on the common and then checked out a neat bookstore.
My second time in Boston was the following weekend. I went to visit Elina and spend the day with her. We went all around Boston! We got pasta takeout (and a cannoli) from the north-end, walked to the Boston Common, got gelato from a TikTok famous gelato shop that scoops the gelato in the shape of a flower (so yummy!!), went to the rose gardens (they were closed though), stopped at Boston Public Library and ended up near Fanueil hall and took photos with the "Boston" sign. It was a fun day!
6. Adventures in Waltham
The day after visiting Elina, I went to Prospect Hill park with my friends Jamie and Michael. I hadn't been before but had kept hearing about it so I really wanted to check it out. We had a lovely time walking around and then stopped by the pet store on the way back to check out the Skinny Pigs (Hairless Guinea Pigs lol).
The following weekend, I went with all my suitemates into Waltham's Moody Street and we got empanadas, went to the comic book store, the dollar store, Lizzy's Ice cream and the arcade. We bought a "Party Zone" sign which now proudly hangs in our common room.
7. Suite life
Living in a suite has been so fun! We've been slowly decorating our common area. I set up the LED lights I was programming this summer and they work great! We also now have a TV, the "Party Zone" sign, a bulletin board and more. It looks very homey.
8. Study Abroad Fair
During September, Brandeis had a study abroad fair so I was invited to stand at the Victoria University of Wellington table and help answer questions and tell people about how great Victoria is for a place to study abroad. The Victoria University representative gave me a little Victoria University care package which was really sweet.
9. Brandeis Buddies
I also started volunteering with a new group. I used to be a math tutor but my tutee got a job and didn't have time to continue so I decided to try something new. And the new thing is "Brandeis Buddies". It's a program where adults with developmental or intellectual disabilities, some of whom work at Brandeis, come to the program and we do various activities such as arts & crafts as a big group.
10. Visit to Cambridge
At the end of September, I went into Cambridge to take photos and videos for a project about my cousin's grandfather who creates these very unique impressive paintings. I brought a bunch of equipment from SIMS, to the train and was picked up by my aunt. After getting me a hot chocolate (so sweet of her!), she drove me to my cousin Zev's apartment. He had many of his grandfather's art pieces on display so I took photos there. It was also a great opportunity to finally see his apartment! It is lovely!
Next we headed over to my aunt and uncle's place, I took more photos there, ate lunch with my aunt and Zev and then made my way downstairs to film Zev's grandfather. We did a little interview and then I took some additional shots that I can edit together. So now there's another editing project for me to get started on!
So it's been a good month! A lot has been happening and October will only continue to have a lot going on! We'll see you then!
Comments