Tufts Blogs

Most of my blogs have been general overviews or about larger ideas, so I thought I’d zoom in and give you a little microcosm of my life after a semester at Tufts! I would say this day is fairly emblematic of how I spend most of my weekends.

9:30 am: I wake-up, brush my teeth, get dressed, and make the trip up the hill to meet my friends at Carm for breakfast. Most people at Tufts seem to prefer Dewick, but I’ve always liked Carm because it’s quieter, has healthier options, and has consistently good berries and pancakes. 

11:00 am: After breakfast, I grab my history books and head to the Lilly Music Library in the Granoff Music Center to work. Granoff is probably my favorite building on campus, and is always a nice respite for the arts/humanities (the nicest buildings always seem to go to STEM…). On the first floor there are four tables next to a large wall of windows open for anyone to use. I usually go here because I like to hear the bustle of the Tufts music world, with the stray jazz piano or occasional choir harmony making my work a little more enjoyable. But today I decided to go down to the basement where the Music Library is. The Music Library is a quiet space that feels a lot happier than Tisch (the main library), because of its cozy size and wall of windows bringing in constant sunlight. It is also open to ALL Tufts students to use to study or check out scores, music, or books, and it’s a resource that not enough students use.

3:00 pm: After grinding my readings on the Ottomans, I’m ready to meet my friend to take the shuttle to the SMFA. The shuttle is free for all Tufts students, and I’ve used it many times to visit the MFA, the Stewart Gardner Museum, and the BSO. Once we arrived at the SMFA, we met up with another friend who is an SMFA Combined Degree student and together we all went to the MFA. The MFA is completely free for Tufts students, and I love being able to have a trip to such a distinctive museum always be free. We spent a while looking at the American art for the first time (before we’d always done European art), and then since we’re all taking Classical Archaelogy, we looked for Minoan pottery and Cycladic folded arm figurines to see if we could recognize what we’d talked about in class. Every time I visit the MFA I seem to stumble upon new rooms I’d never seen before, and I can’t wait to go back because even after four visits I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the MFA’s holdings. 

5:00 pm: The MFA closes at 5, so we had to leave soon after finding the Classical Greek section. My SMFA friend stayed to work on her painting, and my other friend and I took the T back to campus (we missed the shuttle). We luckily left right as the sun set and got a great view on the Greenline of the sun setting over the water. After getting back to Tufts we went to Carm again for dinner, which again was quiet and fulfilling. 

7:00 pm - 1:00 am: After dinner I still had a lot of work left. First I met with my Balkans history study group to split up our 300 pages of reading for the week, and then I went back to Granoff to work on my Archaelogy homework. I then caught up on the work for the book researcher job that I mentioned in my last blog, before I finally returned to my dorm and slept. 

All in all it was an incredibly busy day, but one that was both productive and enjoyable. Tufts does have a lot of work, but I think it’s vital to always do something you enjoy on the weekends. Having fun is not only necessary for your mental health, but can sometimes teach you as much if not more than your classes, and I’m glad that I always have so much to explore in Boston and that Tufts provides me with resources to explore it.

Photo by Tess Harmon