Advising Week Panic
It's officially advising season here at Tufts, meaning students get to browse through all the courses offered in the next semester before enrolling in a couple of weeks. Looking through SIS to add classes to my cart for my last semester at Tufts was already sad, but then I realized there are so many classes that I still want to take and not enough time to take them all!!! I've taken so many wonderful classes during my time at Tufts, but I feel like I could stay here for another four years and continue learning about a wide variety of subjects that I've so far left untouched. "Is it too much to take a seminar in immunology and a seminar in endocrinology? What about medical Spanish? Public speaking? I need to make sure I have enough time for my thesis, too!" I was starting to spiral with the stress of all my options, when I took a moment to realize how lucky I am to have so many wonderful classes to choose from.*
*Fair warning: as someone who actually uttered the phrase: "I was going to tell you that I've been watching an embarrassing amount of Star Trek lately, but then I realized that, to most people, any amount of Star Trek would be an embarrassing amount of Star Trek" this weekend, it's safe to say I'm a nerd, so maybe take this with a grain of salt.
When I was applying to Tufts, I got to be interviewed by an alumna who lived in my hometown. I remember telling her at the time that I was so excited for college because you could take both a wide breadth of classes but also go so completely in depth into one subject. I've had the privilege to take classes that were so incredibly comprehensive about the smallest details in biology, but I've also been able to take classes about everything from tort law to Spanish poetry to children's play. Having distribution requirements can sometimes be a pain (I've learned I'm really not into philosophy), but it also forces you to get outside your major and maybe shop around if you're still undecided. I'm always an advocate for learning for the sake of learning, and getting to take classes where you gain skills that you may not ever use again is something you can only do in college! Take advantage of that!
Yes, in college you form lifetime friendships, create innumerable amazing memories, and maybe, just maybe, best of all, learn that in a molecule of DNA with runs of poly(dA)-poly(dT) tracts, adjacent adenine and thymine bases forms a third hydrogen bond, creating DNA that deviates from the canonical B-DNA conformation to form propeller DNA (that's a better biology fun fact than "mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell," isn't it?).