We’re currently in the middle of Family Weekend, and it’s funny because it’s also Halloween weekend, one of the main party weekends for any college. What better time for family to come visit, right? Either way, Family Weekend is always nice — the college arranges events for families that visit, the acapella groups have a joint concert (which I’ll be going to later today), and Val generally serves better food than usual.

Being Halloween weekend, several friends and I went to our church, MERCYhouse, and stayed there until 2:30 a.m. — every Halloween, the church rents vans and runs a huge crew of volunteers to provide free rides to college students so that they can get to and from places safely. We were on the “switchboard” team, taking callers’ info and relaying them to people who would then dispatch the vans to various places in the Amherst area. I could barely keep my eyes open by the end of it, which was really strange for me, because until this year, I was someone who would stay up until 3 a.m. (or even later!) and wake up really late, too. I guess my internal clock has adjusted to being more like a normal person’s.

The weather’s also been pretty spooky. I guess, since we had our first snowfall on Thursday, and it actually stuck for a whole day. We were NOT ready for this, and I had to dig through my suitcase to find my snow boots. Pro tip to prospective students: buy good snow boots (so that you don’t slip and die on these hills…). Honestly, I’ve barely begun to enjoy actual fall, and now it’s almost winter??? Talk about unfair.

Thankfully, before this unacceptable form of precipitation began falling from the sky, I had gone on a hike last weekend. This was the second such hike in which my friends and I had woken up at an ungodly hour in hopes of catching the sunset, only to wake up to an overcast dawn. (This time was worse than overcast — it was actually raining.) We still went, though, and scaled a relatively easy but pretty slippery rock mountainside to catch some awesome views.

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hike 1
(In the very far distance, you can see the top of Johnson Chapel on Amherst campus - and to its left, UMass.)
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hike3
(Group photo on the mountain!)
 
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hike2
(Went to Puffer's Pond on the way back. If we dropped an album, this would def be our cover.)
 

I’m on the biology student-faculty committee, which held the biology department’s annual pumpkin carving contest. It was a really good and relaxing way to (almost) end the week. I had actually never carved a pumpkin before (I was really confused at first that the carving tools were so small; I had envisioned huge kitchen knives), and it was actually pretty fun. The carved pumpkins were then displayed during the biology department’s family weekend reception on Friday, where people could swing by, have some food, and vote for their favorite designs.

 
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pumpkin carving
(Hard at work on pumpkin carving. This event space is in the new Greenway dorms.)
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pumpkins
(A look at some of the final pumpkins after carving!)

Since it’s about halfway through the semester, we’re already thinking ahead to next semester — advising for pre-registration will mostly take place in the next few weeks, so classes have already opened up. It’s always difficult to choose what classes to take for the next semester — we joke that we can’t look at the online course catalog because once you open it, you’re effectively going to commit the next several hours browsing possible classes and imagining what could be — because there are always so many great classes offered and we generally only take four a semester. That’s where the benefits of the open curriculum come in, though. I’ve been able to take a lot more random, non-major-related, and really interesting classes because we don’t have distribution requirements.

Speaking of random, non-major-related classes, I’m going to go back to studying for my intro econ midterm. (Don’t get me wrong, the open curriculum has been great, but sometimes I question my life choices when I’m struggling through econ and people ask, “why are you taking that?” and I respond, “for fun.”)

Tags:  biology  fall