New England Summer!

I spent the first two weeks of "summer" (summer = anything post-semester) wondering why I'd decided to stick around New England. The majority of my close friends adventured to far away places for internship opportunities, or graduated and are moving for their jobs. My roommate moved, and I found myself wandering around the apartment not knowing what to do with my kitchen, now foreign without her kitchen appliances, or the empty bookshelves in our my hallway. Right before my roommate moved, I found out I'll be moving sometime in late July anyway, so now I have no incentive to re-decorate or fill those shelves...I'm not a fan of this in-between world that I seem to suddenly exist in.

Thankfully, work picks up this week. I've been working with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, serving as an Academic Advisor for first-year and transfer students who come through orientation. Basically, I spend an hour of one-on-one time with each student and advise them on which classes to take in their major, which general education requirements and competencies they need to meet, and by the time we're finished meeting, the student is registered for their first semester! Coming out of a year in ResLife, my first few advising sessions felt like I was shorting a student, as I'm used to working with the same student on a fairly continuous basis. I attribute the awkwardness to knowing that their advising session was a "one and done" type of meeting; I already had one student who was, for lack of better terms, sad and confused that I wouldn't be his permanent advisor (I found that somewhat hilarious as I literally serve as a guide to walk students through the registration system and course catalog, but hey, he liked me, I guess).  So far, I like it, though!

To be clear, because I've already been asked to clarify a few times, I'm also continuing to work at the Asian American Cultural Center this summer (hurray!), and since I'm living in ResLife housing, I have some special projects that I'm working on this summer to cover my apartment/rent.

As anticipated, I LOVE HAVING EVENINGS FREE! It's been wonderful to have time to either take to myself or to spend with friends. I definitely needed a break from the evening work world, and it's nice to break from academics (though I keep finding myself reading more journal articles and books on my own...).

To illustrate my new-found appreciation for New England in the summer, here's a collection of pictures from the weekend, taken by my friend Allison Hopkins. You can find more of her beautiful photography here.

On Friday, I went to a Greek Festival in Hartford, on Saturday I went to the beach, and today I went to my favorite Farmer's Market, followed by kayaking.