After a whirlwind of catching up with work, dropping a fifth class, and finally, finally unpacking completely (I came back to campus a week late because of my cousin’s wedding) I can finally sit down and tell you all all that needs to be told.

And that is to start at the beginning.

When I came to Bryn Mawr College one year and one month ago, I had no idea what to expect. The summer before school started, I had had people alternately congratulate me on my choice of an independent, free thinking school or criticized my disavowal of larger, more popular universities.

And though Bryn Mawr had been my first choice, when I actually stepped onto campus, I was far from certain.

So still pestered by voices that held practicality and clear sight of a path above all else, I enrolled in a math course and a physics course. My other two courses were the ESEM, which was mandatory, and introduction to cities, that my faculty advisor Gary McDonogh had suggested as an in to a multitude of social sciences since it was so interdisciplinary.

The semester progressed and as I chipped away at numerical problem sets and observational pieces on the way people interact in a neighborhood, I slowly began to realize what kind of work I dreaded facing at nine in the morning and what kind of work I would happily spend six hours on.

Mind you, I was still far from an epiphany where I smack my head in ‘Duh!’ moment and head over to any one department and declare it my reason for existence. But I had begun to recognize my strengths and weaknesses in the academic field.

Through out fall semester, I attended lectures and lunches, some by visiting speakers other by visiting alumni. One of the most memorable ones was near the end of the semester.

It was a dinner I went to where a bunch of past physics majors chatted about their experiences and their trajectories. Emily Gallaghar ’85 there said something that maid a lot of sense to me which essentially translated as “You can’t plan for what you’ll be doing in ten years time. You can only try and have an idea of what’s important to you and each step of the way see if you’re still working for those priorities. At the end, you’ll automatically be somewhere you want to be.” Sound advice from a woman who had been at IBM for 22 years and was a senior technical staff member who was working on some of their most important projects.