The past week has been an incredibly busy one, filled with deadlines, interviews, and big fall events – definitely a hectic time of year! For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll focus on two major events from the past week: Dunster Senior Common Room dinner and Head of the Charles.
Each House has a “Senior Common Room,” which is both a physical space/room within the house itself and a group of people who are affiliated with the House, including the Masters, Resident Dean, tutors, visiting fellows, and honorary members. The Senior Common Room is meant to serve as a resource for the undergraduates in the House, and each House finds its own way to connect these adults with current students. Dunster does this by hosting “Senior Common Room Dinners” 3-4 times per year, when both the SCR and current undergrads are invited to eat together and get to know one another.
Dunster hosts its dinners in the Junior Common Room, which is literally just a room within the house, but because space is limited a couple dozen undergraduates are randomly invited to attend each dinner. Despite this being my third year as a Dunster resident, this was only my first time being invited to a Senior Common Room dinner, so unsurprisingly I was pretty excited to get the chance to join in on the fun. As it happened, this dinner in particular had a heavy representation of seniors from Dunster and residential tutors, which offered a really nice opportunity to get to talk to classmates and meet some of the new tutors I hadn’t yet been introduced to. The evening started with a reception in the Masters’ house (which is attached to the actual “House” where students live in dorms), which had awesome catering, and then we moved into the JCR for dinner. After about an hour of great conversation with some fellow seniors and a couple tutors, our Housemaster Roger Porter stood up to give a few remarks and reflect a bit on the history of Dunster House. Overall, it was an awesome night!
Senior Common Room Dinner
A delicious dinner spread!
On an unrelated note, this weekend was Head of the Charles, which I would argue is the second biggest athletics event Harvard takes part in every year (behind Harvard-Yale, of course). Head of the Charles is a two day rowing regatta held – obviously – on the Charles River. For rowers, this is actually a really big competition, and for spectators, it’s a great chance to take in some beautiful fall weather, cheer on friends, and snack on the freebie food being passed out on the riverbank. This year the weather was unbelievable, which made the whole thing even more fun. Plus, I got a chance to cheer on one of my good friends who was rowing in the womens’ doubles!
A shot of Head of the Charles – rowers, beautiful fall weather, and lots of spectators by the river!
Cheering on friends!
In other news, I officially wrapped up the fall job recruiting season last week when I had my last interview (Teach for America on Friday). Definitely a relief to have that all over with! Slightly tempted to ceremonially burn my stiff interview suit in celebration but realize that would probably not be a great idea, given that I’ll definitely be needing that next year. Also looking forward to Dunster Faculty Dinner tonight – tune in for more details about that in my next post!
And to wrap up, just a couple of snapshots of campus – Harvard is really beautiful during the fall!
Not a bad walk home!
Dunster Courtyard