Research Opportunities at Tufts
With all the newly accepted Tufts students looking to make their final college decisions, I started to think of what blogs might be helpful in making…
When I think about the past few weeks of summer, I realize I haven’t really done much (but don’t worry, I’ll try not to make this blog post ridiculously boring). The first few weeks back from school, I reconnected with my high school gang. We have a GroupMe with all ten of us, so it’s not like we’ve been out of touch, but being all together again simply opened a door to endless opportunities for summer plans. A few weeks later, I traveled to Israel. Woah, so cool right?? I have traveled to Israel before. Seven years ago I went with my family and experienced all the popular areas: Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv, etc. My trip this summer was a five day excursion with my mom and my oldest brother to visit… BABIES! Most of the family on my mother’s side lives in Israel and we don’t see them often. All of my mother’s first cousins are grandparents now and we had only met the eldest of the new generation… three years ago. Since then, five new babies had been born. FIVE! So that was an amazing five days playing with my baby cousins. There was a language barrier, as I don’t speak Hebrew and they don’t speak English, but the language of play is universal, and we made it work. Chalk drawings, bubbles, sticker books, I was reliving my childhood while helping them have theirs. They taught me a few words in Hebrew and I doubt they learned any English from me. The three words two of them knew? Elsa… Anna… Olaf. It is official: Frozen has taken over the world.
After my short trip to Israel, I came home with not much to do. So I spent my time reading academic journals to help me with my research at Tufts. I’m only a freshman and I’m already involved in astrophysics research. It’s pretty much amazing. I had done two projects in high school (one working at Cornell University and the other working at the University of Virginia), but neither of them were like this one. For this project, I have access to images from the Hubble Space Telescope of hundreds of galaxies! When I started my astrophysics career, all I wanted to do was work with images and telescopes. Heck, I thought, maybe I’ll even find a planet or aliens or a super awesome beautiful distant galaxy! But that didn’t happen. I sat in a room and crunched numbers: some by hand and some using FORTRAN (all computer science lovers reading this: insert laughter here). Don’t get me wrong, I love math. Always have and always will. But compared to that, making colored images of galaxies is beyond a dream come true. I don’t know if I would have had this opportunity at any other university where most research positions are given to the upperclassmen.
Now for the next two weeks, I’m finishing up an intensive German course, which fulfills two semesters of language requirements. I’m taking this course because I started my freshman year as an engineer and switched out halfway through. I wanted to be able to enter German 3 with my classmates, so I’m taking two semesters of German in six weeks. German is a great language to learn and I recommend it to anybody who doesn’t know what language to study. I mean… Who doesn’t want to make a fool of themselves trying to pronounce “Eisenwarengeschäft”, which translates to “hardware store.” But, the language makes sense. “Eisenwarengeschäft” can be broken down into “Eisen”, “Waren”, and “Geschäft”. These three words translate to “Iron Merchandise Store”, which is appropriate for a hardware store. This is called word compounding, or putting several words together to make a new word and everybody who speaks German does it. So, to put it roughly, German is a language which encourages you to make up new words. I think it’s worth knowing and if I’m not convincing enough, watch the video below captioned "Barbara's Rhubarb Pie Bar".
And last, but not least, I want to tell all you readers to be creative. I’ve never been artistic. I can kind of sculpt and I play the trumpet, but other than that I have no skills with a pen, pencil, or paint brush. Being home and being bored has taught me to explore things I might not be good at, and to get better at them. I’ve taught myself the basics of painting with water colors and I can play at least four songs on the ukulele (check out "Learn to Uke" if you're interested in learning the ukulele) and I think I’ve become better at sculpting. I actually want to take a sculpting course next semester at Tufts because why not? These new skills I’ve acquired will be coming back to Tufts with me. I never realized how much I missed art and crafting at school until I started up again at home. It’s important to balance my creative side and my academic side, especially since I am most likely following a science track (I’m still technically undecided). Being creative can help in the long run. It opens the mind to new ideas, which is definitely welcomed in problem solving. So please, if you take anything out of my first (and probably terrible) blog post, take this:
If you are ever bored and can’t think of something to do, go to a craft store and buy a chunk of clay or a ball of yarn and a crochet hook or paint and a paint brush, and teach yourself a craft. Challenge yourself. And never let yourself be bored again.
With all the newly accepted Tufts students looking to make their final college decisions, I started to think of what blogs might be helpful in making…
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