Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Pretty eventful day. I ended up going to the multi fandom Boston Tea Party (thanks a ton for coming here, Cara :)). But I was late and hangry as hell, because I’d skipped lunch after storming out the apartment after a big fight with my Mom. Then I spent a while wandering around in the rain, lost as always and getting no help from the many Boston tourists, who were more confused than me. 

I finally made it to the venue, and I gotta say, Suffolk University’s main building is hella fancy! I was so out of it that although people were hella nice, introducing themselves and such, I didn’t even tell them my name, just went, “Oh, um, nice to meet you.” Yep. So good at being socially awkward and abrupt. I got to sample two of Cara’s Adagio tea blends, the Sherlock and Mycroft ones, and I liked the latter so much I brought some of it home- it’s a rooibos vanilla chai chocolate chip amalgam and it’s so nomz!

I had a pretty good time creeping on the cosplayers, whose fandoms ranged from Merlin to Sherlock to Supernatural. I was disappointed that there weren’t any from Harry Potter, but perhaps they’d left before I got there.

I left in a hurry because I was starving, seeking refuge in the Boston Public Library’s Maproom Cafe (of course). On the subway ride back home, an elderly man showed me his super old Cal ID and went “Go Bears!” It really made me feel better :) He then told me how much he liked my Berkeley sweatshirt and wanted one like it.

Then I had a really good time retail therapy-ing and cafe exploring. The usual. Despite sucky, rainy weather, today turned out unexpectedly good.

Gonna upload some pics from the Boston Tea Party soon. I realized most of them are hella crappy though, because I was so excited and distracted. I’ve never been to any sort of fandom convention before!

Watching Basic Instinct at long last and the thing that interests me most is that both Catherine and Beth went to UC Berkeley, too.

:D

musaafer:

It really bothers me when people dismiss Humanities/Arts majors as something that is less challenging and, somehow, less crucial to a functioning society. I really understand your titrations and extractions and also incidentally note the reluctance with which you pursue your degree in the natural sciences and the lack of passion that is as hand. But if you were truly confident about your field and its relevance to both you and your greater space in society, you wouldn’t have to put others’ pursuits down in order to feel better about your own. 

This is not to dismiss the natural sciences — I love them each individually and have great appreciation for them — but this is to say that no one single field is superior over the other and that if you need to constantly diss other fields, you have some serious self examination to do. Everyone has a different field of contribution to the world and if yours is biology, that is great. But don’t hate on someone who doesn’t share the same talents and interests. You can’t run a society with doctors and engineers, after all, right?

So, next time you’re about to talk down on someone because they “picked an easy Political Science major because they’re lazy and not smart enough”, please do write a 20 page persuasive research paper on contemporary politics analyzing a myriad of data, survey some art history, create some works of art that move hearts and change minds and make music and write poetry, and if you can’t do that please, kindly, shut up. 

So much this. As a science and humanities double major (I studied both Media Studies and Molecular and Cell Biology in college), it always amazed me how a single choice of major determines one’s perceived intelligence.

What was sadder was the fact that, whenever I told anyone in Media Studies that I was doubling in Biology, they would always gasp and exclaim that I was so smart/ hardworking, even the graduate student instructors. When I told people in my science classes about my humanities double, they would grin and shrug and be like, “Must be a nice break, huh?” Implying that the arts are just a “break” from science, which is after all, the real thing, amirite? Arts are just about frat parties and such.

Wrong. So wrong.

The OP is right about people in natural sciences hating their choice of major. I still do love Biology, but it was chosen because of both parental pressure and thinking of my vague “future”; I regretted my decision halfway through college but there wasn’t much I could do, I felt I had invested too much time and energy to give up the major altogether. So (very) many days, the only thing that got me out of bed and to my classes was the anticipation of a fun Media Studies lecture or a pending book discussion; I loved reading the assigned articles, I loved articulating my opinions in class, and as an international student, I gained a different perspective on both my country and America.

I am no longer afraid to ask inconvenient questions, or to have an opinion that makes people uncomfortable. And looking back as a recent grad, that is the part of my Berkeley education that I treasure the most. I know that without my humanities degree, I would be a very different person than the one I am today. Perhaps my science GPA would be higher, but as a contributing member of society, I would be far more timid and far less informed.

Okay this has gone on for long enough. But seriously people. Most of my allnighters in college were for humanities research papers, not science midterms. Don’t shit all over something you don’t really know about. K. 

So I just registered as an alumnus on the UCMeTalk site.

NOT YET ANOTHER SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE. Dear God no!

It even has a “dashboard” and everything. 

I don’t really know what to use it for, but if you’re a student/ alum/ professor/ just affiliated to any of the UC campuses in general, you might want to check it out.