So what do I do instead? This past semester, I’ve had to memorize poems and facts about writers’ lives that I forget within a week or so after the test. I’ve been going to two-hour lectures where the professor rattles off dates, publications and surface-level analyses. For instance, question: What does the river symbolize? Answer: Freedom.

The classrooms are large, and I’d estimate there are about 50-70 students in each class. Virtually every lecture is the same: the professor will talk almost nonstop, and the students will all have their laptops out to transcribe every single sentence onto a Word document. Only rarely does someone raise their hand, and when they do, it will only be to ask something along the lines of, “What year did you say Hernandez’s second son was born?”

I’ve never struggled so much academically. The language isn’t really a barrier — I can understand my professors perfectly — but I do not have it in me to memorize 80 poems, the dates they were written and the poets’ entire life stories.

I decided early on that I wasn’t going to torture myself memorizing things for hours a day. The students here have superhuman memories, probably because they’ve been learning that way since elementary school, but my brain just doesn’t work like that. So since I’m not writing essays, and I’m not making thousands of flashcards either, I have a lot of time on my hands that at first I did not know what to do with.

Over the past few months, I’ve loosened up quite a bit, and I think that’s a good thing. I went to a bar for the first time, and travelled by plane without my parents for the first time. I picked up the guitar and took a photography class, just because. I’ve watched Netflix for seven hours straight, read tons of books in Spanish and been out with friends until 12 a.m. — at Wellesley, I’d normally be asleep by 9:30 p.m.

All of that is okay, because I didn’t come to Spain for any academic reasons. I mainly just wanted to become more fluent in Spanish, and I’ve definitely done that. Staying with a host family has helped my speaking skills enormously. I live with a mom, a dad, five cats, two dogs and two tortoises. I have learned words that I can’t believe I didn’t know before, like “cuenco” (bowl), “chulo” (cool) and “vaso sanguíneo” (blood vessel) — words that have never come up in my Spanish classes at Wellesley. I have also learned how to baby-talk to animals in Spanish, and how to text in Spanish.

And Córdoba is beautiful, especially the old portion of the city, with its narrow cobblestone streets and flowers spilling out of every balcony. With only about a month left here, I am trying to soak it all in as much as possible. Life in general here is slower, and much more relaxed; going back to the United States, where everyone is always work-obsessed and rushed, is going to be a shock for me.

But there are many things I miss from home. I really, really miss writing essays, even though at the end of every semester at Wellesley I always tell my friends that I’ll never write another essay again in my entire life. I miss Dunkin Donuts, waffles, my dog, Lake Waban and that time in early spring when it’s still a little snowy but a few flowers are starting to poke out of the ground.

If anything, I have acquired a new appreciation for Wellesley after seeing what classes are like at the Universidad de Córdoba. It’s been a fun semester, but I am ready to fly home.

“It’s a lot about celebrating the diverse stories of South Asia, but mainly it’s about understanding how South Asia, and Wellesley, fit into our own stories,” said Aliza Amin ’20, the co-cultural chair of WASAC. Amin joined WASAC this year mainly so that she could have a role in organizing the show.

The idea for “Katha” — which means storytelling in many South Asian languages including Hindi, Urdu and Bengali — came into being after Sitara Sriram ’19, co-president of WASAC, spoke to Professor Radhakrishnan of the sociology department about possible themes for this year’s show.

“We were talking about storytelling and institutional memory, and how so many South Asian cultures use oral storytelling as a way of passing down different stories and identities … South Asian history in American textbooks is colonizer’s history … using the theme of Katha, [we wanted] to push back against that and create our own institutional memory as WASAC,” said Sriram.

Other recent themes include “Ekta,” Sanskrit for “unity,” in 2015; “Junoon,” Urdu for “passion,” in 2016; and “Humans of South Asia” in 2017.

Beginning in 2015, WASAC has tried to represent a larger number of South Asian countries in Shruti Laya, rather than only a handful. For instance, within the past few years they have added a dance by the Pakistani Students Association (PSA) and the Bangladeshi Students Association (BSA), as well as a South Indian dance. This year, they have a spoken word performance by Tamil and Sinhalese Sri Lankans.

In their own performance, WASAC’s eboard members generally try to feature a country that doesn’t appear in the rest of the show. This year, they will perform two songs, one Punjabi and the other a Gujarati folk song.

“In the fall of 2015 was when [WASAC] started to make the push towards making sure Shruti Laya was more than just a Bollywood, north Indian-centric show,” said Sriram.

In addition to featuring a larger number of countries, WASAC has also tried to incorporate more diverse forms of performing arts. In the past, they focused primarily on song and dance, but in the last couple years they have experimented with other forms of expression.

“We wanted to make it a balance between all sorts of performing arts and not just a dance-heavy show. So we got more spoken-word, we got short films that we showed, we got more types of performances,” said Sannidhi Joshipura ’19, the other co-president of WASAC.

WASAC has also taken a step towards making the show more “political,” according to Amin, through the inclusion of current events.

“We try to highlight news that’s been going on in countries that are generally less talked about, like Bhutan and Sri Lanka and Nepal, trying to decenter from the North Indian-ness that Shruti Laya used to be,” she explained.

Shruti Laya took place in Jewett until 2016, when it was relocated to Alumnae Hall. Since making the shift, the members of WASAC have noticed a positive change. Whereas Jewett felt smaller and more intimate, Alumnae Hall provided more room and allowed WASAC to better publicize their event to the Wellesley community.

The performers, whether they are dancers, singers or poets, usually start preparing a month in advance. However, expertise is not required to take part; the point of the show is to bring South Asian students together so that they can have fun performing to songs that they love, or that they have grown up listening to.

“The dances are not technical. The main aim for Shruti Laya is that you bring the South Asian community together on stage and have fun while performing, so it’s not like a talent show,” said Joshipura.

As an umbrella organization for all South Asian organizations on campus, WASAC tries to invite many organizations to perform on the show, and earlier in the semester they sent out a signup sheet to the entire school. This year, they invited off-campus South Asian dance troupes from Boston College and Tufts to perform. Wellesley’s Blue Notes will also be featured in this year’s show, and in the past they have invited members of Wellesley Out Loud.

Amin, Joshipura and Sriram are especially excited when new faces who have never been part of WASAC become interested in being part of Shruti Laya.

“One thing that’s always been a goal of ours is to try to reach people who are South Asian, who are not necessarily involved in WASAC … [we] try to bring those people in,” said Sriram. “I think at our events we’ve seen a lot of people that we haven’t seen before, which is nice.”

Shruti Laya can be a way for first-years and upper-class people alike to bond over commonalities and learn about differences in South Asian cultures.

“You see a lot of diversity in the kinds of performance,” said Amin. “Being exposed to all that has helped not only my confidence grow performing on stage, but definitely has helped me find common bonds between people who have come from a different background than me.”

“A lot of the circuitry in mice is similar to humans, so understanding these pathways gives us a better understanding of mood disorders,” said Gross. “You can’t really ask a mouse if they’re feeling depressed, but you can see physical manifestations of anxiety, or the symptomatic things.”

At Wellesley, Gross had previously worked in Associate Professor Michael Wiest’s lab as a first-year, which was her first experience doing scientific research of this kind. Wiest’s lab uses rats to study attention, and it was more “computational-based,” according to Gross. Gross prefers hands-on research — such as performing surgery, mounting brains to a slide and training mice to do certain tasks. She also had a particular interest in understanding the mechanisms behind mental illnesses.

“The reason I ventured out of Wellesley was just because I was very picky, and wanted a lab focused on the molecular neurobiology of mood disorders. And that’s a very specific thing, and I was very lucky to find that,” she said.

Besides addressing her particular interests, part of what made Gross fall in love with the Tye lab was its emphasis on collaboration.

“[It has] a supportive environment that’s really healthy,” said Gross. “The cool thing about the lab is that people have all different types of projects that are related, but it’s really amazing because with the collaboration aspect, you can learn from other people’s mistakes and you can get feedback on your own projects.”

During her first week at the Tye lab, Gross explained that she went through extensive training which involved the ethics of working with animals in a lab setting. All of her equipment is sterilized, and she puts the mice under an anesthetic for the operations she conducts.

“Before I could even touch them, I had to go through at least a week’s worth of training … there [are] so many safety protocols, and at all times, the priority is to minimize any pain they’re feeling,” said Gross. “Performing surgery on mice and things like that are kind of scary, but [they] also bring you closer to what you’re doing.”

Working with mice allows scientists to study the brain up-close and observe immediate responses to stimulation, which cannot be ethically done with live humans. After opening a hole into the mouse’s skull, Gross implants fibers that carry the laser’s light directly into the brain. From there, the light produces a reaction that causes certain neurons to fire. Gross compares it to a kind of “mind control.”

“What we’re doing is molecular-based, so we are trying to really understand the details of the circuitry, which areas of the brain are causing what — stimulating them, inhibiting them,” said Gross. “You can’t just stick an optode in a human’s brain to do that. So this allows people who are developing drugs, or therapeutic ways to treat these disorders with more information that they can use.”

The Tye lab will be moving to San Diego in 2019, but Gross plans to continue working with them over the summer. She found no other labs at MIT that matched her interests as much as the Tye lab did, so she will begin looking into research labs at Wellesley, including labs in the psychology, neuroscience and biology departments.

Gross plans to double-major in studio art and neuroscience. Though her work at the Tye lab takes up a significant portion of time — student researchers at MIT are required to commit at least 10 hours per week — Gross also pursues a passion for drawing and printmaking. She sees commonalities between science and art.

“A lot of people say that science and art are like opposites, and I’m trying to bridge the two as much as I can,” said Gross. “Sometimes I try to incorporate scientific elements into my art, but a lot of times I just feel like both of them help you better understand the world, or better understand yourself.”

“[The program] helped us understand our strengths and gave us the resources we needed to improve upon our weaknesses. In many ways it helps even the playing field against our more financially stable peers who have such resources at their disposal,” said Garcia, who started on the premed track at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, but is currently exploring more options at Wellesley.

The Kaplan Leadership Program is highly competitive, and only accepts seven students per year. Students can be any age — ranging from 18-year-olds to students in their 30s and 40s — but must have completed one year at their two-year community college by the time they apply. The program looks for students who have demonstrated qualities like persistence, leadership and a desire to help others. They enter four-year universities with associate degrees.

“As a Kaplan Scholar, you’re required to apply to at least 10 colleges. Most students in the program have never thought of transferring to colleges out of state, so this is an opportunity to expand our horizons and dream big,” said Poggi, who also graduated from the Borough of Manhattan Community College. At Wellesley, Poggi plans to double-major in political science and theater.

The program provides writing and math tutors, college essay tutors, financial support and group trips to colleges that the scholars are thinking of applying to. The Kaplan Scholars meet at least once a week for an entire day and discuss everything from current events to the obstacles they face.

“[A typical meeting] was a reflection on how the week went, then we would present an article we thought was interesting to our cohort. We would then be given tasks to complete by our transfer adviser Deb Shames and writing coach David Green,” said Garcia. “Sometimes we would have guest speakers who would come and tell us about their academic and professional journey.”

In addition to academic and financial support, the program also provides students a close-knit network that supports them on a personal level. All the Kaplan Scholars at Wellesley feel as though the program has provided them with a family, which includes their mentors, students in their own cohort and the cohorts that came before them. For instance, though Love transferred to Wellesley before Poggi, Garcia and Alvarez, the four have a close relationship.

Love, now a women’s and gender studies major looking to pursue a teaching certificate, graduated from LaGuardia Community College after coming to the United States from Ecuador as an asylum seeker. Not only is she Wellesley’s first Kaplan Scholar, but she is also one of the first openly transgender women accepted to Wellesley. In 2016, when she applied, she found out there were no openly transgender women at the college; nevertheless, Love knew that this was the place for her.

“Wellesley was always in the back of my mind. I came to Wellesley, I visited and I just fell in love with it,” said Love.

Considering that there are only seven students per year in the program, the four Kaplan scholars at Wellesley make up a significant percentage.

“Wellesley is becoming a school that [Kaplan Scholars] see because … sometimes we don’t feel that we’re going to belong, that we’re going to feel comfortable,” said Alvarez, who graduated from Bronx Community College and is interested in pursuing a career in healthcare. “But now, once you see that a student from New York, that came from the Dominican Republic, whose first language is not English, is in this school, that’s opening the door for them to say hey, I can do it!”

As Wellesley’s first Kaplan Scholar, Love feels a huge responsibility on her shoulders as she looks out for Alvarez, Garcia and Poggi.

“I just want to make sure that all is fine, I feel like their mother of some sort. Not because I’m older … but it’s just that since I’m here first, I have to make sure they navigate the system that I figured out for myself,” said Love. “I think it would have been nice for me to have someone here who was older. But at the same time, it felt great to build that for myself.”

From the very beginning, the Kaplan Scholars get to know each other intimately through talking about their personal lives and going on long road trips together.

“By the time you are off to your four-year college, you have a support network which follows you everywhere,” said Poggi.

Alvarez remembers that when she graduated from Bronx Community College, she had not expected anyone at the ceremony, since her family lives in the Dominican Republic and she sometimes felt alone in New York. However, she was surprised on graduation day.

“When they called my name, my friends from Kaplan, they were back there cheering and screaming, and I was like: No way! And it was too much, it made my day, my entire day,” she said.

The Kaplan Leadership Program prepares its scholars to tackle whatever challenges may come next.

“Being a Kaplan Scholar taught me how to advocate for myself. Kaplan taught me to believe in myself, to dream big, to make goals that are somewhat scary,” said Poggi. “Kaplan also taught me how to put a goal into action and not just have a wishlist. It is important to provide students this outlet because we have mostly been told our whole lives we can’t.”

Alvarez also felt that the Kaplan Leadership Program was an important stepping stone in her life.

“I can say that Kaplan is the step in between what you want to achieve and how to achieve it,” she said.

Minor first began digging around Claflin Bakery and the Lake House parking lot in the fall, but she closed those areas as the group did not find many significant objects. She then redirected her attention to Tower Court.

“It was very difficult to get through. There were a lot of rocks in the top 40 centimeters, so we got about halfway down, and the ground was freezing, so we stopped,” said Minor.

By that time, Minor had started to think about creating a course during the first summer session that would continue the excavation.

“We found so much more in the summer! Part of archaeology is…you never know what you’re going to find until you dig,” said Minor. “From what we had seen before, we knew that the courtyard had the highest concentration of artifacts, and we found pretty much immediately that we had stopped just above the layer that the debris from the fire was.”

No former experience was required to enroll in Minor’s summer course. In addition to those who were registered, many other visitors and volunteers decided to help over the summer, such as the Davis Museum interns and staff from the Clapp Library. They worked from 8:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m., three days a week.

Both Rachael Tao ’19 and McKenna Morris ’21 had been in other courses taught by Minor, so they knew about the College Hall project beforehand. Both of them felt so drawn to the work that they seized the opportunity to continue the project over the summer. Most of the class period was spent digging and sifting smaller objects, but there were other tasks as well.

“Keeping meticulous records is a fundamental part of archaeology, so a good portion of our day was spent measuring and recording depths, cataloging soil color and texture, photographing the units and processing finds,” said Morris.

Once the group reached a point about half a meter down from the surface, they started finding scorched brick, ash, rusted nails, melted glass and then, to everyone’s surprise, skull fragments.

Adam Van Arsdale, an associate professor in the anthropology department, was the one who identified the fragments through sifting. Though they were small—two the size of a quarter, and one the size of a silver dollar—he immediately recognized them as fragments of human skulls.

The fragments were found in the ash layer, but Minor knew that they did not belong to anyone living at the time, because according to historical records no one had died in the fire. They also knew that they did not come from an early burial site, because of the way the fragments were bisected.

“We could tell it was an anatomical specimen from the early College Hall natural history collection. There is an archival picture from the late 1800s of students looking at a similar skeleton in one of the classrooms,” said Minor.

In Massachusetts, if you’re excavating an area and come across human remains, you must report them to the police. The team talked to both the campus police and the town police, who turned the fragments over to the state archaeologists, but Minor hopes to eventually get them back for further study.

Though the skull fragments surprised Minor and her students, they were not the only interesting finds.

“The randomly preserved garbage is more informative in that way, because then you see what kind of activities people were really up to,” said Minor.

Minor, Morris and Tao were all amused by the sardine can key they found in Tower Court. Since students at the time were not allowed to have food in their rooms, the key implies that someone was sneaking in sardines.

“It shines a fun light on the students from the pictures of that era, who otherwise look very serious and stoic when they pose for the camera,” said Tao.

In addition to Tower Court, the group also excavated around Severance Hill during the second half of June, which is actually where they found the highest concentration of objects. These include minerals and geodes, likely from a geology lab, and a glass bottle stopper.

Minor plans to pick up where she left off at Severance Hill this fall. She will have a few dates in October dedicated to digging, which will be open to the community. Interested students should contact her if they’d like to take part. The students in Minor’s fall anthropology class will curate an exhibition of the project either in the Clapp Library Archives or in one of the display cases at Pendleton East by the end of the semester.

Both Tao and Morris were disappointed that their summer dig had to end where it did.

“We found more objects in the last two days of our excavation than we did the entire summer, and it was frustrating knowing that we would have to stop right when we had finally reached the heart of the fire,” said Tao.

Though Morris felt a similar frustration, she also felt the excitement of not knowing what she would uncover in the future.

“The best part about participating in a dig is the knowledge that today could be the day that you uncover something great,” said Morris. “The excitement you feel when you get a glimpse of something in the dirt that maybe looks like it could be something…there’s nothing like it.”

The Gardens are about a 10-minute walk from the Child Study Center, and they are easy to miss if you are not sure what you are looking for. The entrance is marked by two brown signposts. Regeneration’s plot is visible from the road, and compared with the other 80 plots in the Community Gardens, it is fairly large.

“We run a plot that is an eleventh of an acre, which is about 4,000 square feet. Our primary purpose is to take care of that plot and plant things in it,” Regeneration President and Co-Treasurer Johanna Leslie ’18 explained.

In the late spring, Regeneration plants anything from radishes to basil to raspberries. In the fall, members harvest what they have planted, and the rest of the year is spent taking care of the land in the plot. The town only turns on the water after the last frost, however, which is typically around mid-May, when most students are not on campus to plant.

“I was actually on campus this past summer, and there was a group of [Environmental Horticulture and Sustainable Agriculture] interns who were also going out there a few days a week, planting,” Co-Treasurer and Farm Manager Isabelle Raposo ’19 said.

Last summer, Raposo set up a paywhat-you-can farm stand over the summer for crops like arugula and other greens. Informal events like the farm stand over the summer also helped to attract new members to the organization. Raposo herself was partially inspired to become part of Regeneration when she ate a fresh-picked raspberry at an open meeting.

“I [had] gotten an amazingly warm community feeling at the open meeting, from the existing members who were there, and I was like: I should do this,” she said. “I went to my first plot trip, and someone handed me a raspberry from our raspberry vines, and I ate it, and I was like: alright, I’m joining this org.”

Though they are willing to try any kind of plant, the e-board said that herbs and dark leafy greens tend to work best because they can survive in colder weather. Some plants, like basil, can be used as cooking ingredients.

“Things like basil are also awesome because the window for harvesting is way longer,” Leslie said. “Almost every fall we do a pesto party.”

At the annual pesto party, Regeneration cooks lunch with the basil produced from its plot. In addition to the pesto party, the group also hosts a handful of events that are open to the entire Wellesley community. For example, its biggest event is the pickling party, which happened on March 17.

While the members of Regeneration have learned a lot about gardening while being part of the group, they stress that no experience is needed to join. Even Leslie and Raposo sometimes need to rely on the help of books and the internet.

“I spent a lot of time Googling: can I cut this down? How do I do that? This is getting overgrown. I learned that we somehow have to figure out how to prune the raspberries, which I’ve never done before. But we’re going to learn!” Leslie explained.

Even if they do mess something up, it is not the end of the world.

“It’s nice that if we make a mistake, it’s okay,” Raposo said. “Plants grow back. Even if we kill it, that’s also fine. No one is like depending on it to come up.”

This is even true for senior members, according to Leslie.

“Last year’s president Amy [Isabelle] walked in with zero gardening experience at all, and her reason for joining was that she just wanted to play in the dirt, which is what she would always say,” she said. “That’s a lot of what we do. We go, and we hang out, and we try to keep things from getting too overgrown, but… you’re going to learn on the job, and that’s ok.”

As the weather gets warmer, Regeneration will replace its weekly meetings with trips to the plot. Leslie has already visited the plot three times during the week after spring break and completed various tasks before planting season begins. For both Raposo and Leslie, getting off campus provides an enormous stress relief, and they love being part of a small, close-knit community. It was one of the reasons they joined Regeneration in the first place.

“I was excited about the prospect of like getting off campus a little bit, and not thinking about school for however long I was out there,” Raposo explained.

“I think I was trying to figure out why women, especially the young women around me, made the choices that they were making. I kind of stumbled into a women’s studies course…It made me say, ‘Oh, I understand,’” Mata said. “It was really important in introducing me into thinking critically about structures, critically about roles that we are conditioned or taught to perform.”

Mata ended up majoring in both English and women’s studies as an undergraduate. After considering the possibility of law school, she ultimately decided to stick with literature after getting her master’s in English at NMSU.

“I knew by this point I was very much a feminist scholar, I was very much committed to gender equity and fighting for the rights of women, but I think what my master’s program did is that it allowed me the opportunity, for the first time, to work with a woman-ofcolor professor,” she said. “Working with this womanof-color professor taught me about intersectionality and other structures of oppression.”

Pursuing her passion, Mata later obtained a doctoral degree in literature from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she was also a teaching assistant. Though her degrees are heavily focused in literature, she has been especially drawn to the narratives of women ever since taking her first women’s studies class.

“I ended up taking a bunch of courses that centered on the stories of women. It made me want to incorporate the study of women into an English degree,” Mata said. “It also made me question how women were represented in literature by men.”

As a teaching assistant during her time at UCSD, Mata fell in love with having discussions in the classroom with her students. After she had studied for six years at UCSD, her best friend sent her the job description of an opening in Wellesley’s WGST department.

“She knew how much I loved literature, but she also knew that my heart was in women’s and gender studies. And so I came out here, gave a job talk, fell in love with the department and fell in love with the students,” Mata said.

Mata has been a faculty member since 2007. She currently teaches the intro to women’s and gender studies course, in addition to four classes in the department ranging from popular culture to theater, all of which focus on Chicanx and Latinx representation. This year, she is also teaching a first-year seminar on representation of difference in children’s media.

Teaching at a women’s college like Wellesley has been a very different experience for Mata than being a teaching assistant at UCSD. Not only does she always feel confident that Wellesley students have come prepared to class and can engage meaningfully with the texts, but she also finds that students begin with a more advanced understanding of gender equality compared to the students she has previously taught.

“I think even where we start the conversation here is different. The conversation we can have is much more complex; it can be much more intersectional than if you’re starting off just trying to explain to people that gender equity is something we should all want,” Mata said.

Like the discussions she has in class, Mata’s research focuses on the intersectional aspects of women’s and gender studies. Apart from sexism, many women are faced with additional sources of oppression.

“My research is very much invested in interrogating how Chicana and Latina bodies are represented in mainstream media,” she said.

Mata’s first book, which she published in 2014, is called “Domestic Disturbances: Re-Imagining Narratives of Gender, Labor, and Immigration,” and it emphasizes the stories of immigrants.

“My first book was [about] how the immigrant narrative has been used by current Chicana and Latina writers to complicate what it means to be an immigrant subject and to complicate how immigrant women are represented,” said Mata.

She is currently working on another book which will examine the role of art, literature and cultural productions in social movements. She plans to study the immigrant rights movement and the ways in which it became more inclusive, building off the queer rights movements.

“It’s creating these new ways of thinking about activism that is inclusive of queerness, inclusive of being undocumented, inclusive of women, inclusive of men and that doesn’t exclude different members,” Mata explained.

Mata said that if she had joined an English department, her books would have turned out very differently. Through working in an interdisciplinary setting, she is able to combine several perspectives, taking into account literature, art, theater and the experiences of immigrants.

WGST professors at Wellesley come from a diverse array of academic backgrounds. These backgrounds include sociology, consciousness, health and bioethics. In fact, only one professor in the department, Professor Musto, actually has a PhD in women’s and gender studies.

“All of us do very different work. What makes our department function really well is that we bring our disciplinary frameworks into this interdisciplinary space, so that we can have conversations around specific issues from all these different viewpoints…and the department supports that,” Mata said. “At the end of the day, I’m a literary scholar. So I love it.”

According to swimmer Patricia Chen ’18, she and her teammates practice twice a day and lift weights twice a week during Wintersession. The practices are aimed at improving both endurance and stroke technique.

“During Wintersession, we have the chance to focus solely on our dedication to our sport and work out and practice for four to five hours a day in order to reach our goals for the regular and championship season,” she said.

For the basketball team, however, the rigor of their practices is about the same over Wintersession as it is during the rest of the year. This year, the team will be traveling to participate in a two-game tournament in Florida from Dec. 27 to 31, and then they will return to Wellesley for the remainder of Wintersession.

“Because we are playing games during Wintersession, the practices are like they would be during the normal semester in regards to intensity. We do have a lot of extra time on our hands, though, so we do try to work on individual skills on our own,” said basketball player Zojajha Ayub ’19.

During their free time, athletes see each other in the dining halls and may take the rest of their busy days to relax. When she is not at practice for four hours a day or lifting weights, Fiona Harrigian ’20, a long-distance runner on the track team, plays games with her teammates and applies for summer internships and watches TV.

“It can, at times, be lonely, but there are a number of athletes here over Wintersession and many people taking Wintersession classes,” Harrigian said.

In general, athletes on these four teams are required to stay on campus for Wintersession, and their opportunities to participate in other activities during this time period are limited because of the substantial time commitment that being on an athletic team requires. However, coaches understand that a student may want to accomplish things besides training. For example, some members of the track and field team are participating in alternative breaks. Additionally, over the past few years, the swim and dive team recently learned they would be allowed to participate in the Albright Fellowship, though scheduling all of their potential responsibilities into one day would be difficult. They are also allowed to study abroad during the Fall or Spring semesters.

“One of the requirements for being a part of the team is attending Wintersession if you are not going abroad in the spring. [The swim and dive team] is lucky to have a coach who understands the value of studying abroad, and I was able to take advantage of that my junior year and go to Amsterdam in the fall,” Chen said.

For athletes on all teams, it is important to train as consistently as possible. If student athletes go away during Wintersession, they may struggle to return to their previous level of performance. Ayub, for example, notices a drop in her overall fitness when teammates miss wintersession training.

“If we don’t practice on a regular basis…I would get really out of shape and wouldn’t be able to keep up. It would take a couple of weeks, if not more, for me to get back to where I was before,” she said.

For instance, since fencers rely heavily on their legs, their strength in that area may suffer when they stop practicing regularly.

“Not working out for an extended period of time dramatically influences a fencer’s point control. Fencing also requires strong legs because we are constantly moving back and forth in a squat-like position,” said Taylor Hood ’18, a member of the fencing team. “If a fencer were to not fence or work out their legs for an extended period of time, this large muscle mass would diminish quickly.”

Harrigian also notices a difference in the strength of her legs after she takes a break from running, but she says it doesn’t take long to get back to where she had been previously.

“If you do not run over winter break before you come back, it is harder to keep up on runs with the team because you will be out of shape. However, after about two to four weeks of consistent training, you should be able to feel better when you run with the team,” she said.

Both fencing and swimming are unique in that they require specific training for an athlete to maintain their skill level. Working out by running on a treadmill, for example, isn’t enough.

“Something unique about swimming is that you cannot simply workout on dry land to practice. You must also stay ‘in touch’ with the water and ‘keep your feel’ for the water,” explained Chen. “‘Keeping your ‘feel’ for the water is a very subtle feeling, but it makes all the difference.”

Hood finds herself having a similar experience if she doesn’t work on her fencing techniques.

“The changes in our point control can occur much faster than the loss of muscle mass. Our point control can be thrown off by not practicing for a few weeks. It takes about a month or two for differences to be noticed in leg strength,” she said.

During the summer months, student athletes are strongly urged to keep training for their sport if they can, or to at least exercise regularly in order to retain the strength they built up during the year.

“The general idea is to stay fit and keep the muscle mass that you end with at the end of the season,” Chen said.

Before using Wellesley College students or preschoolers at the Child Study Center as test subjects for a study, researchers must first send a proposal to Wellesley’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), which ensures that no one is harmed during the study and that people’s rights are protected. Since 1991, federal regulations have required an IRB at all institutions that perform research on humans. The psychology department at Wellesley also has an ethics review board, which adds an extra layer to the review process.

Petrie decided to return to work at Wellesley because she wanted to take a gap year between her graduation last spring and medical school in the fall. After discussing the opportunity with her professors and with the previous research coordinator, Julia Kim ’16, she felt that the position would be a good fit for her.

“At first, it was very strange being back at Wellesley and not attending classes. It took some getting used to, to be on the other side of things,” said Petrie. “But it has been very nice to be here for work. I was already familiar with Wellesley and the psychology department, so coming back to work was not as big of a transition as it might have been if I had started working somewhere new.”

As research coordinator, Petrie interacts with both students and faculty, but she spends most of her time with the students.

“The most rewarding part of the job is being able to help and work with students, even in a small way. It’s gratifying to watch them brainstorm and create a research project from scratch and take it all the way through the ethics review process, collecting data and then analyzing and presenting those data,” said Petrie.

Another aspect of her job entails visiting all the 100- and 200-level psychology classes at Wellesley to discuss the research requirement. All psychology students in these classes must take part in their peers’ research projects at some point over the course of the semester.

Petrie also has the opportunity to work with the faculty in the psychology department. For example, this year, one of the Research Methods classes started using a new software called PsychoPy, which is used to record accurate reaction times. Petrie learned how to use the software so she could teach students how to use it. She is also currently organizing all the information stored in cabinets in her office and transferring it into an online database so that students and faculty can use it in the future.

Apart from being the research coordinator, Petrie also plays soccer in various leagues around Boston. When she was a student at Wellesley, she was part of the soccer team. She was also part of the Athlete Mentor Program and the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and she worked as a fitness instructor and a fitness center monitor.

Petrie never did psychology research at Wellesley, but she did conduct research during the summer of 2016 at the University of North Texas, where she worked on several different projects. She presented her research in the 2016 Tanner Conference.

“One [of the projects] was on stress, maladaptive coping mechanisms and how those were related to emotional well-being in lesbians and gay men over 50,” Petrie explained. 

Although she enjoys her work as the department’s research coordinator, Petrie does not plan to pursue a career in research and instead hopes to pursue medicine.

“After medical school, I want to become a practicing physician, though I would be interested in participating in occasional research projects through that. But I think the research component would be secondary to the clinical aspects of my career,” she said.

Petrie advises students who are interested in conducting psychology research to reach out to faculty in the department.

“The best thing to do is talk with a professor, especially one who is doing research in an area you are interested in,” she said. 

“If this project were only about recognizing overlooked histories and overlooked cultures.. .that in itself would be enough,” said Mendilow, the group’s director. “The fact that this history also touches our own story, and has so much light to shed on current dilemmas and perspectives and struggles, is one of the reasons I’ve been coming back to it.”

Mendilow sings and plays the guitar and berimbau. The other members of the ensemble performing at Wellesley include vocalist Sofia Tosello and violinist Chris Baum.

Mendilow has been working on “The Forgotten Kingdom” for the past seven years. The show features songs from Sephardic, or Judeo-Spanish Ladino communities in the Mediterranean and Balkan regions at the turn of the 20th century. Many of these communities, as well as the Ladino language, are disappearing from cultural memory. Though these are Jewish communities, Mendilow says the music “has nothing to do whatsoever with any religion.”

Before the performance, the ensemble will present a lecture called “Myths, Lies and Truths: Romanticizing Traditional Cultures” at 12:45 p.m. in the Multifaith Center, where they will discuss the sand animation to accompany “Forgotten Kingdom” and present recordings sung by members of the original communities.

Originally from Jerusalem, Mendilow’s singing career took off at a young age. He was exposed to Ladino songs as a child and was captivated by the melodies, rhythms and lyrics.

“I come from a family in which stories and storytelling have always been very important. I love good stories, and if you’re looking for good stories, then Sephardic material is the place to be… if you want stories of kings and queens and armies and beheadings and all that good stuff,” he said.

Mendilow feels especially drawn to this particular time period in Ladino history because these communities were eyewitnesses to a major turning point in history: the first World War.

“To me what is so haunting is what it means to be the people caught in the middle: the people who get to see the old world and the new world,” said Mendilow.

Though the Ladino language itself traces back hundreds of years, the music in “The Forgotten Kingdom” isn’t that ancient.  

“There a lot of myths about Ladino language; [for example], that these are songs that have been handed down from generation, from mother to daughter across 500 years, etcetera, etcetera. Unfortunately that’s not true, for the most part,” explained Mendilow. “There are in fact some songs that are part of [“The Forgotten Kingdom”] that do come from pre-expulsion Spain and that are over 500 years old. But that’s only for the lyrics.”

The music itself, Mendilow explained, is relatively new. In the context of the Ladino language, this means that it dates back to the late 1800s or early 1900s. It is virtually impossible to know exactly how these songs would have sounded back then. Mendilow began working on “The Forgotten Kingdom” in 2011, but he says it is far from finished, and since he began, he has gone back to write and rewrite the music numerous times.

“At a certain point in this research, you can go down a rabbit hole—that’s what happened to me, that’s why I’ve been working on this for so long,” said Mendilow.

As he works on a project, he researches the songs’ original contexts extensively and listens to field recordings of the original “culture-bearers,” or the people of the original communities. Most of the songs in “The Forgotten Kingdom” were sung by women at community events, such as weddings, or even in their own homes.

“These songs were never meant for the stage… sometimes they were sung in situations where men weren’t really allowed, like the bridegroom party. And so you get perspectives that are pretty raw sometimes,” said Mendilow.

But despite his devotion to contextual research, Mendilow does not simply replicate the songs as they would have been heard in the early 1900s. He explained that a “historically correct” performance would include the exact tone, mannerisms and instruments that would have been present in the time period. That isn’t the purpose of “The Forgotten Kingdom.”

“On the total other end of the spectrum is what you would call ‘artistic creation.’ It’s where you do something new with something that’s old. And you let go of the tradition, you let go of the historically accurate representation, in order to make the song live and breathe in your own way,” said Mendilow.

However, in the process of adding his own twist to these oral traditions, he must sacrifice certain aspects of the music.

“What I give up in the process [are] those cultural identity markers that would have made the song recognizable from Salónica in 1919. I replace them with my own baggage and with the ensemble’s baggage,” he said.

For example, as he was putting his ensemble together, Mendilow envisioned a specific sound for the vocals that would not have been historically accurate. He chose Tosello, an expert in Argentinian tango, because of her fiery voice.

“I looked for someone like Sofia, who was a native Spanish speaker, who had experience and expertise with these singing traditions from South America—so that we can tell those stories using those colors,” said Mendilow.

Additionally, as one of the recipients of the 2017 Live Arts Boston awards, the ensemble will have the opportunity to include animation to go along with their show. To do so, Mendilow is working with Kseniya Simonova, a sand artist and a winner of Ukraine’s Got Talent.

“Being able to tell this project through the visual medium as well, and with something as beautiful and symbolic as sand, is extremely meaningful,” said Mendilow.

By blending these creative additions with an existing oral tradition, the Guy Mendilow Ensemble calls on listeners to think not only about the past, but also about the ways in which the music resonates with their own lives.

“What this ensemble has in common in all our shows is this marriage of storytelling with music to whisk people away to places that are different from their current setting, so that they can look at their current setting in a new way…It’s a meditation on our own humanity and our own situation,” said Mendilow.