The other day my Russian TA said, “It’s a brave thing to take a new language. It’s scary.”

And she got me thinking. I would have been terrified to pick up Russian as a freshman at Bryn Mawr. I thought Russian majors were crazy, what with that weird Cyrillic alphabet and all.

And then I started thinking about all the things that I do now (besides take Russian) that I would have been terrified of as a frosh:

1) Go to Special Collections. I LOVE Special Collections, it’s a special section of the library filled with all sorts of cool old things, like old letters and journals. Haverford has a copy of the original Merriam-Webster’s dictionary and we have a bunch of letters written by John Quincy Adams.

2) Go to the dining hall alone. I used to only eat in the dining hall if I had someone to go with. Now I trust I’ll run into someone, or have a lovely lunch with the New York Times.

3) Take weight lifting. There’s a caveat to this one. I’m doing it with a friend. I don’t know that I could really do it alone. But I’m trying it and I feel like that’s something.

4) Start talking to a stranger at the Blue Bus stop. This happened last night and now I have a new friend.

5) Go to a Professor’s office hours for no particular reason. I now go and say hi to my major advisor and former professors pretty regularly. It turns out they like knowing what’s going on in my life.

My major advisor once told me that I miss the forest for the trees. I tend to get caught up in details and miss the big idea. So I was trying to figure out what the big idea in all these details is: and I think it’s confidence. After three years at Bryn Mawr, I’m just not as scared as I was when I first started here. I have a lot more faith in my self that I’m capable of trying new things.

What about you? Scared of anything weird as first year?

I faced that question a lot from friends last week as the semester started. I decided last spring that my senior year would be an excellent time to take up Russian language. Why, you may ask, as almost everyone else has.

1) I’m a history major focused on the Soviet Union. If I want to continue researching this area (i.e. grad school) after Bryn Mawr, I’m going to need to know Russian.

2) I LOVE our Russian department. I’ve bounced around it since I’ve started here, taking classes in translation. I think Russian classes taught in English are some of the best kept secrets on Bryn Mawr’s campus. The professors are awesome and so enthusiastic about what they do. And in the end, I wanted to be just like them.

3) Bryn Mawr’s Russian department is actually one of the best in the country. Senior year might not be the best time to start, but I have an amazing opportunity here.

4) Anna Karenina has possibly replaced To Kill a Mockingbird as my favorite book since I read it last fall semester in Liz Allen’s Realism class. I really want to read it as Tolstoy wrote it.

If this sounds rehearsed, it’s because I’ve been making this argument to a lot of people (especially myself) since classes started. Elementary Russian  is 8 hours each week of class. That’s a lot of class time. Especially when I’m writing a thesis.

And it initially induced a bit of a panic in me. But a week in, I can say it’s manageable and a decision I’m happy with.

I’m meeting a lot of people I wouldn’t have otherwise met and the class moves fast, but it’s a supportive environment.

And to be honest, it’s fun. We’re watching a ridiculously hilarious soap opera and learning how to spell our names in Russian.

My friends too have warmed up to the idea, especially after I learned how to say Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Russian. And lunches and dinners are now spent with me teaching my new Russian vocab to them.

Yesterday was my fourth and final welcome back picnic at Bryn Mawr. I’ve actually been on campus for a week now, but I still really love the picnic.

It’s one of the few times a year when the whole campus community (students, faculty, administrators and staff) are all together.

The theme this year was “Southern Barbeque.” I was really excited about this because I spent the summer in North Carolina, where I got addicted to pulled pork.

Dining Services, as always, did not disappoint.

Here are some pictures of the barbeque:

The best part: Red Velvet cupcakes with the number four on them. Why four you may ask? Well Bryn Mawr was just ranked fourth on Princeton Review’s list of colleges with the best food. And Dining Services decided to celebrate with these treats.

I really appreciated the cupcakes.

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