BE.110 | Thermodynamics of Biomolecular Systems

This class was taught by Linda Griffith and Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli. It was really nice to have female professors, and I think they both did a really good job. The class felt like a good community. Although the subject matterwas neat overall as a fusion of physics, chemistry and biology, I especialy enjoyed the units on cooperativity and polymers. Towards the end, the concepts got very complex and it took a lot of time to understand them.

5.601 | Classical Thermodynamics (half-semester)

Taught by Moungi Bawendi. I thought he went a little heavy on the mathematical derivations for a chemistry course, and it was a little tricky to pull out the important equations from the jumble of numbers in my notes. But I guess it's important to know the basics, and I learned them.

7.03 | Genetics

I really love genetics. There were 4 different professors for this class: Chris Kaiser, Gerry Fink, Leona Samson, and Megan Rokop. Kaiser, Samson, and Rokop (though she only gave 3 lectures) were very good teachers and I found myself consistently interested in their lectures. Gerry Fink was a nice guy - he wore a bow tie every day - but his lectures were absolutely horrible. It seemed as though he talked for an hour without saying anything at all. Although I was really excited to learn everything in this course, I especially liked bacterial and viral genetics, population genetics, and cancer units.

5.12 | Organic Chemistry

Although I wouldn't have predicted it, I actually really enjoy organic chemistry. I had previously been annoyed by chemistry because it seemed like a bunch of reactions you just had to take for granted - and in organic chemistry, I found out exactly why they happen, and how. It was also really neat to learn about how natural molecules work in the body, and how drugs and industrial chemicals are synthesized. Kimberly Berkowski and Sarah O'Connor taught. Berkowski spoke a mile a minute and was incredibly detailed and precise, while O'Connor projected a laid-back attitude and gave the "overall picture". Note: I'm not gonna lie, this class is a TON of work.

21F.101 | Chinese I

Chinese I was like Kindergarten - in the best way possible. We got to have food in class, sit in a circle, and talk for an hour. Class was every day, and it was definitely not lecture style. Most of the hour was spent practicing with classmates. By the end of the semester I felt I could competently carry on a basic conversation, and read, in characters, some easy stories. The teacher was Jin Zhang, who is just an extremely likable person. The class required quite a bit of memorization (vocabulary and characters) but overall the work load wasn't bad.

12.000 | Mission 2009 (as a UTF- Undergraduate Teaching Fellow)

They say you don't really understand Mission 200X until you teach it. I think that's true - this was a great job. I liked my students, the other UTFs, the topic (tsunamis), and having some spending money. Mission is an amazing program.

21M.421 | MIT Symphony Orchestra

MITSO is pretty awesome. This semester we played: Schubert 9 ("The Great"), Carmen Fantasy by Sarasate, Carmen by Bizet, Tchaikovsky 4, The Blizzard by Sviridov, and 3 arias (2 Tchaikovsky, 1 Rachmaninoff).