Daily Migration in Green Mode
It's crazy that we are 6 weeks into the semester already. Before returning to campus, I was dismayed at the prospect of being trapped in solitary confinement on campus, but the freedom Green Mode brings and the lovely Northampton spring I didn't get to experience during my first year have been overall a delightful surprise. Exhilarated, I’ve been trying to spend as much time as possible outside my room. I am always on my way somewhere: to a dining hall, to an academic building, to the gym, to a friend’s house, etc. A migrating homo sapiens I have become indeed.
The list below answers the question: What are some of my blog-worthy destinations?
SCMA: Search for Identity
As one of the perks of Green Mode, Smith College Museum of Art is open to students and faculty in the testing protocol. Last Thursday two friends and I signed up to visit the lower level and first-floor galleries where Monet's La Cour d'Albane and Picasso's Table, Guitar and Bottle were on view. The quietness of the uncrowded museum allowed me to feel calm inside and be immersed in art.
A piece that struck me the most during the visit was Birth Certificate by María Magdalena Campos Pons, a Cuban-American artist. The giant woodcuts of fingerprints and palms of her art confused me at first, but the meaning became clear to me after I read the texts in the frames below the woodcuts: Even If My Hands Are Clenched By Mud My Finger Prints Are My Own Let Me Be Myself Let Me Be Alone. In my head I was picturing a giant (in the cold, sunless Jotunheim, far far away from Asgard), or a misfit, an outcast, who stumbles in the darkness, seeking a place where they belong, staunchly repudiating assimilation and invalidation. The caption helped me better understand the work: It represents the symbols of personal and national identity and how they are communicated to the world. The message resonated with me, since as a non-US passport holder, I am sensitive to the subtle ways where my identity is perceived differently in a country that isn’t always friendly to foreigners.
Writing about the art museum provides a perfect segue into the next place I have in mind: Sage Hall, home to the music department. It is unofficially my second home that I visit almost everyday. There I take private lessons, practice the violin (and sometimes fall asleep on the piano. Shh!); before the pandemic, I also helped set up the stage for rehearsals every week as part of the concert crew. Sage the only building on campus that has a cool dome (the rooftop observatory of McConnell doesn't count). This semester, the practice rooms and the locker rooms are accessible to students, the only significant difference being that we need to sign up in advance to use the practice rooms. Isopropanol wipes, paper towels and hand sanitizers are placed in every practice room to keep the shared space clean. A typical practice room (pictured below, where my violin made a cameo appearance) has a grand piano, chair, and music stand.
Ford: Getting Hands Dirty
The third place I spent a significant amount of time in is Ford Hall, the home for the Picker Engineering Program. I had my first in-person lab of this school year two weeks ago in the organic chemistry laboratory on the second floor of Ford. My orgo professor also held in-person office hours in a classroom in Ford. It was nice to see the professor and classmates in 3D.
It is worth mentioning that a few changes had been made to my previous schedule: I dropped the 4-credit Classical Mythology and took a 2-credit special studies instead to make my workload more manageable. So now I go to lab with my special studies partner/ lab buddy about twice per week. I actually like working with chemicals while masked (once I found a way to make the goggles less foggy). It offers an extra layer of protection. The special studies focuses on the synthesis and characterization of different types of nylon. Ultimately, we’d like to design a lab for polymer chemistry students where they can repeat our experiment during two lab periods. (I might write a blog about this in greater detail.) Although I am only a first-semester organic chemistry student, the two professors I am doing the special studies with and the senior chemistry major working on the same project are super friendly and patient as they explain to me the science of polymers.
