BOSTON!

That's right, I'm in Boston. Most of you that are reading this probably all ready know this, but I'm letting you know anyway. I have been here for a little over a week and I cannot believe how different my life is all ready.

Let me start by saying that I am here for graduate school. I am enrolled at Boston University's Science Journalism program. Details about the program may be found here. However, before I could start classes, I had to move 1,200+ miles from Murray to here, get settled in, deal with the newness of everything and still keep my composure (for those of you that know me well, you probably guessed that the last thing on that list didn't quite happen).

So, the drive. The drive was actually a lot of fun. It was tiring and a bit of a drag, but it was oddly exciting to have all my belongings packed into the back of a Dodge Caravan while we caravanned across the eastern half of the United States. I thought I could drive on forever. Needless to say, we reached Boston on Thursday, September 1 to a lot of unpleasant surprises. First: the tenants who had previously occupied my apartment had not completely moved out. They left virtually everything in the kitchen, several pieces of small furniture, everything in the bathroom (yuck!) and had not cleaned an inch of the space. So after a day-and-a-half of driving and a week of packing prior to that, my roommate, Patrick, Christopher (Patrick's brother who flew up to Boston to help with the move) and I had to clean out the place before we could move in. And the apartment wasn't exactly how I had pictured it (and I mean that literally--I had only seen pictures of the place). If I was unsure of the move before, this definitely didn't help. But I tried (very, very sincerely) to take it in my stride and move on.

We spent the next few days both moving my things in and helping me get settled as well as making sure that Patrick and Chris got the Boston Experience. The very night we reached Boston, we had tickets to see the Red Sox play the Yankees at Fenway Park. While I don't follow baseball, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The sheer energy of the thousands of fans seated at Fenway was enough to get even the most reluctant person into the sport. Mind you, I still don't understand baseball, but I would not mind signing up to sing some "Sweet Caroline" and watch angry, drunk fans yell at fans of the opposing team.

We also walked parts of the Freedom Trail, an historic walking tour of Boston. We visited Faneuil Hall Marketplace, the North End and its vivacious Italian residents, Harvard and its more composed residents and took time familiarizing ourselves with the T: Boston's public transit system.

After a teary goodbye to Patrick and Chris on Sunday, I was ready for classes to begin. Classes began on Tuesday, September 6 and I have had a whirlwind of a time all ready. I have an assistantship with the Career Services office at the College of Communication, and so on the first day, I was there all day before my first class at 6 that night. My first class, Broadcast Science Journalism, is a documentary making class. While that may sound cool, it is also very intimidating. The professor, Gino del Guercio, is a prominent director who has worked (and still does work) with PBS Nova, among other things. As if that isn't intimidating enough, I have no experience with anything video-related, whether it be iMovie or FinalCut Pro. And I'll need to use both for this class. Our first assignment, however, is just taking pictures of things around Boston. I spent a good part of my afternoon today doing just that. Depending on how well my work is graded, I may decide to post my pictures on here.

My second class, Science and the Mass Media, meets on Wednesday mornings. It is led by one of the co-directors of the Science Journalism program, Douglas Starr. While this class is also challenging, it is more in line with what I am here to do, which is write about science. Our first assignment, which all ready led me to break down in tears, was to find a published scientific article (one from a scientific journal, not magazine article), interview the primary author of the piece, interview a secondary person who is familiar with the field but not involved with the study, and write a one-page magazine "short" about the study. Apart from the fact that there are millions of articles to choose from, I quickly learned that most of the people involved with these studies do not like to talk and/or are unavailable. Brainy graduate assistants who have managed to publish, however, are much easier to get a hold of and likely much more fun to talk with. The article I decided to work in is based on a study conducted in California about the effect of hormonal contraceptive pills on emotional memory. According to the study, women who used some sort of contraception recalled emotional/stressful/sexual memories differently than did women who did not use contraceptive pills. How different were these recollections from each set of women? I will post my "short" here when I am done with it and then you can read for yourself. In that same vein, another scary part about this assignment: my writing will be projected onto a screen in class and the entire class will read it together, i.e. tear my writing apart. Doug Starr was brutally honest about that last part.

Since this past Monday was Labor Day, I didn't get to attend two of my classes, one of which is a workshop for the graduate magazine for the College of Communication, The Comment. I was accepted to write for the magazine in early August and I interviewed to be its Student Editor (which is another assistantship position) on Thursday. I am happy to report that I got the position, so I will get to direct/work with my staff to get out the 2012 issue of the magazine (and I will make more money!). To check out previous issues of The Comment, go here. However, we are changing the structure of the magazine. The magazine currently reads like a literary journal; however, it is supposed to represent the College of Communication. The restructuring will involve getting pieces in there that represent the various disciplines within COM: journalism, advertising, PR, etc. It should be a really good learning experience, considering I don't have much of a COM background. The other class I usually have on Mondays is in BU's School of Public Health: it's Essentials of Public Health Law, a class I'm very excited about. Since it is partially a law class, I have loads of reading all ready, and unfortunately for me, none of it is exactly stimulating.

The last class I attended this past week was Science News writing with Karen Weintraub. She is amazing. She had no journalism experience when she entered the field, much like my peers and I, and has still managed to come so far. She is chock full of advice about the "real world" and as new journalists, we devoured her every word. She gave us lots of advice about freelancing, working as a communications person for a laboratory, what to present to an editor (since she worked as an editor for The Boston Globe) and so much more. Our first assignment for her class is a relatively simple Q&A piece, in which we interview a classmate and write a 600-word article about it.

I hope you've gotten a sense of how much I have all ready done and how much I am going to be doing for a while. Not only is school work overwhelming, but I have to manage the house, go grocery shopping, pay bills, deal with the cable and Internet people, deal with the property management people...the list is endless. I have made several friends and knowing that we are all in a similar boat helps us all keep sane. In good news, Patrick will be moving up here! He has a job with a new tech company, a company he is very excited about, and so he will be here by the end of the month.

I still don't have wireless at the apartment--just an ethernet cord that my roommate and I take turns plugging in--so it may be a while before my next update. Until then, keep your fingers crossed that I make it through my first round of assignments!

An Anglophile Plus One

I'm adventuring again! Only this time Patrick is going with me (hence the "plus one"). Two years ago, I explored as much of London and the United Kingdom as much as possible; this time, we are out to explore other areas influenced by the British--we're in India this summer! I'm here for a month, and Patrick is here for about 2.5 weeks. We left Nashville on May 22, flew a very turbulent flight to Chicago, got delayed about two hours in Chicago, got engaged on the way to Brussels, missed our connection in Brussels, flew to London, explored London and then finally reached India. Yes, we have had a very eventful trip already. Let me go back to some of the journey's highlights.

First of all, Patrick and I are engaged! Most of you reading this blog are familiar with our story--we have been dating for about 3.5 years, so I expected an engagement sometime soon, but didn't quite realize when. What happened was this: I was having a bad time on the flight because I hadn't gotten to sleep much and although the flight was smooth, I was feeling sick to my stomach. The in-flight entertainment had thus far been a movie and some NBC movies. It then switched to show the flight map and we saw that we were flying over the UK, more accurately, over London. Then Patrick turned to me (he was in the window seat, I was on the aisle), told me that I meant a lot to him, etc., and then he said he had something for me. The moment he said that, I was skeptical and said, "Wait, are you kidding?," and as he reached for his bag, I continued to ask him if he was kidding. I even told him that if this was his idea of a joke, it wasn't very funny (he had faked proposals before, hence my skepticism). But he brought out a Tiffany box, and even then I was skeptical. He said that he would have opened up the box and shown me the ring, but that he knew how much I enjoyed the Tiffany wrapping and wanted me to relish it. So I opened the box--still half-skeptical--and the ring box within the box and there it was! My Tiffany flower collection engagement ring. I was in utter disbelief, and could only say, "Are you serious?" He then asked me THE question, and before I could answer he had put the ring on my finger, at which I said, jokingly, "I guess my answer is yes, then." We didn't make a big deal on the flight, no one else really saw, and that's how I liked it. It was surreal from that point on: I couldn't stop looking at my finger, and neither could I believe that I was engaged. My very pretty ring:

Given that we were 2 hours late in taking off from Chicago, we didn't make our connection from Brussels to Mumbai. Instead, we were re-routed to London! We had a 9 hour layover, and so we deliberated over whether to ask an immigration officer to issue me a visa (Patrick carries an American passport and can travel to many places without a visa), and much to our excitement, he did! And so we spent close to 5 hours touring London! If only we had known that we would actually get to go to London, Patrick could have probably waited to propose then! Regardless, it was a welcome detour and a great way to celebrate our engagement. We rode the tube from Heathrow to King's Cross Station, where Patrick took a picture with the Harry Potter Trolley on Platform 9 and 3/4 (except, it's not between platforms 9 and 10, but rather outside the station). We then headed to Tower Hill to get a quick look at the Tower of London--we're both big fans of the TV show The Tudors, in which several people are sent to the Tower to be hanged, and seeing the Tower offered us a way to bring the show to life. Right behind the Tower is the Tower Bridge, and so we enjoyed lunch by the river bank with a view of Tower Bridge and The Egg, London's Municipal Office building. We then went to Westminster, to see the Houses of Parliament, the Big Ben Clock Tower, the London Eye, and Westminster Abbey. We went back underground to take a train to St. James' Park and walked to Buckingham Palace--although we didn't realize it, Barack and Michelle Obama were in the Palace at that time! We took the tube back to Heathrow and finally made our plane to India.

Although I am behind in keeping you all up-to-date, I am going to have to stop at this point to get ready for today's activities. I figured, getting all the pre-India details done would be a good stopping point. I will try and update as and when possible. For now, enjoy our pictures from London:

Patrick at Platform 9 and 3/4.

The two of us with Tower Bridge behind us and the Thames on the side.

Patrick by the Houses of Parliament.