I need to be honest with you. For all the beauty and glory of Western Mass, we pay the price with cold, dark winters, and this winter has been my coldest yet. Coming from Baltimore, everyone around me warned about the famously freezing New England winters, but I was honestly underwhelmed by my first few…Continue Reading Snow Day at Amherst
This year, I celebrated my first birthday in college, and it turned out to be more meaningful than I could have ever imagined. It was a day full of love, laughter, and deep reflection on how much I’ve grown since arriving at Amherst. The day started with a delightful surprise—my friends had decorated my door!…Continue Reading My First Birthday in College
Some might question the point of writing this blog, but I think that it answers one of my biggest questions about coming to Amherst/College in general. How/when do snow days happen? Being from the other side of Massachusetts, I knew it would snow, but I also knew that out west here around Amherst, it snows…Continue Reading Snow Days at Amherst
A few days ago, it was Chinese/Lunar New Year! As I have been living in China for 18 years, this is one of the most important holidays I look forward to in the year. Back in China, weeks before the celebration, my family and I would visit (or at least make some video calls to)…Continue Reading Celebrating Chinese New Year With Friends
Hi friends! Welcome back to the blog 🙂 I hope everyone had a lovely holiday season! Personally, my New Year’s resolution is to drink more water (dehydration is not the vibe I want to bring into 2025). Anyway, for those of you tuning in from warmer climates, I’ll be the first to admit that Massachusetts…Continue Reading Amherst Winter Survival Guide
Amherst College turned me into a speed demon. The town got five inches of snow on Sunday (1/19). What did students do in the snow? We went sledding (duh)! We also raced one another. Unsurprisingly, I won. I hadn’t gone sledding since I was little and was definitely afraid to go down the giant hill…Continue Reading Speedy Sledding (ft. Memorial Hill)
Hello everyone! I’m writing from a cold, snowy Amherst moving at half speed. We’re still a week out from the start of classes, and the only people on campus are those either doing research, working campus jobs, or writing theses. We’re very fortunate that Amherst allows us to stay on campus with a meal plan…Continue Reading January Thesis Work
Hi everyone! Consider this one of my final blogs for 2024—though who knows, maybe there’s more to come! Today, I wanted to share a perspective that might differ from what you typically hear from students at Amherst. I won’t dive too deeply into personal details, but I do want to take a moment to highlight…Continue Reading Staying on Campus during the Winter Closure!
One thing that’s vastly different about high school versus college is the length of time you get for breaks. It’s typical to get almost all of January off, making winter break about 4-5 weeks long (my freshman year, we had a late start to the second semester due to Covid, so the break was six…Continue Reading Winter Break in Baltimore and J-Term in Amherst
In this blog post, I hope to share a glimpse into my journey as an international student traveling back home for winter break. For many of us at Amherst College, one of the most pressing concerns isn’t just the excitement of the holidays but also the logistics of transit. When I first arrived in the…Continue Reading Navigating Travel as an Amherst International Student and an International Journey to Japan