Hey, everyone!

First off, congrats to the early admits of the class of 2017! Getting into Harvard was one of the best feelings in my life, and you all should be very proud of yourselves. Harvard is an awesome place, so if you’re having trouble deciding between your options as the year progresses, just check back on this blog for an in-depth description of our day-to-day lives!

Since my last post, a whole lot has happened. Most importantly, I went to the doctor at Mass Eye and Ear and received some bad news; I have Laryngopharyngeal Reflux Disease (LPR) which has caused calluses to form on my vocal folds, a term that’s called ‘vocal nodes.’ This means that I won’t be singing very much or at all next semester, depending on the appointments I’ll have in January. I also had to change my diet a good amount, cutting out all chocolate and spicy foods (that’s the hardest part), as well as caffeine, fatty dairy products, carbonated beverages, citrus, and tomatoes. The list is long, but I’ve started taking medicine to help decrease the symptoms, and if something as simple as following this diet regimen will help me get back to singing, I’ll do anything I can. If you’ve followed my blog at all, you know that music and singing are a huge part of my extracurriculars, as well as my academics, and this news was a serious blow. I’ll definitely be updating you all as this goes on.

On a really bright note, I am totally done with exams and papers and projects for the year! Yesterday morning, I had my 3 hour stat final, and it did not go as poorly as I had expected. I still haven’t figured out the best studying techniques, as high school was a breeze, but I’m getting closer to the best method, and will certainly publish it once I’ve discovered it 🙂  We have a nice set-up at Harvard where we have a week for studying, called ‘Reading Period,’ and at the end of the week, we start our exam period. Unfortunately, a lot of humanities classes or courses that are writing heavy actually have the due dates for their final papers during Reading Period, so I ended up working from last Thursday to this Friday nonstop, with photographing Rent as my only break. I wrote a 25 page paper about public school lunch systems, finished a final visual study for my printing class, wrote up my first stats study, and had a few days to cram for stats. None of that was particularly fun, although I got through my endless paper by listening to WHRB, our radio station, as they played a whole two nights of only Stevie Wonder. That was epic!

So back to Rent; my friends were absolutely incredible, and photographing the event was surprisingly exciting. Because the show was held in a cabaret-style club (Oberon), the actors moved all around the building, which meant that I had to move as well; a few times I was really close to getting stuck in the middle of a scene, which would have been mortifying. Luckily, I avoided that tragedy and got some great shots:

I am very proud of the amazing student-run productions on campus, which means that I’m proud of ALL of the productions here!

Ok so that is all for now; I am going to go edit a video for The Nostalgics in order to get it ready for Christmas! Happy holidays to all of you, and congrats to the new Harvardians again.

-Reid

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