Harvard you this fine day?

 Hey everyone and welcome back to month 24 of #faltufriday!

And no, this post is not clickbait - I really did go to Harvard for their summer school!
I spent a few weeks learning not just my course content but also a lot of other things I wanted to share with y'all.

So, without further ado, let's get to it!

My Course

I am fascinated by the links between computer science and psychology so the course I had gone with was Digital Media: Society, Culture and Economics.
This turned out to be the perfect fit for me which also made it so much easier to learn because it didn't seem like a burden. We would have daily readings as homework, but on the days that we were lucky, we'd get movies to watch as homework too!
In fact, the first class was so engaging that we could complete only half of what we had planned for the day.

Throughout the course, we went in-depth with a lot of digital media concepts; my favourite being when we learnt about VFX and had a (horrendous) screening of the movie 'Cats'.

For our final project, we were given the liberty to do anything as long as it correlated with our course because well, Digital Media exists everywhere!
My team and I chose to do our project on Mickey Mouse as we thought that was one character which encapsulated the past and the present perfectly and has had an immense global impact. However, my favourite was of another team enacting and presenting on the feud between Taylor Swift and Kanye West (2009)

This course opened my eyes to the world we are living in, what we can become and how movies portray the indefinite possibility.  

Experience

I had an amazing and smooth check in on move in day and was lucky to have had a suite as a room which I shared with 2 roommates. I shared my room with one and the other had an individual room. 

Move in day was however really tiring because we had about 3 orientations. Nevertheless, I had dinner(AT 5PM???)  - food was amazing, packed for the next day and went to sleep(AT 9PM??)

The sun would wake me up really early everyday, but that was good for me as it would give me plenty of time to get ready before class at 8:30am.

On the first day, class got over at 11:30am, I had an extracurricular that started at 12 noon. Since it was drizzling, I decided to stay back at my hall - all to get absolutely drenched (I did not have an umbrella) after the activity. The Harvard Yard was HUGE and I had no idea how to get back to class. With a laptop in my bag, I began wanderlessly running, hoping Google Maps would be my saviour. Luckily, I met a few of my classmates and tagged along with them to the dining hall - an amazing first day indeed!

My personal highlights or favorites over the course were these:

1. The trip to the Harvard Art Museum: I'm not a person who gets art but the place was absolutely magnificent. With over 5 floors to it, the best was the café where I ate a ham and cheese croissant.
   
   
   Harvard Art Museum
   
   
2. Stranger Things Watch Party!: During our time there the new episodes of Stranger Things came out. Since it had been left on a cliffhanger previously, all of us who watched the show HAD to watch the new ones. I spread the word and we had tons of people come in to watch. One person even bought snacks and an HDMI cable so we could connect it to the TV and watch it with loud sound in the basement!
   
   
   The set up
3. Trolley Tour: Another Personal Favorite; I loved the tour around Boston city and fell in love with it. The way the city is encapsulated by history and modernity is absolutely immaculate.
   
   
   A glimpse of Boston
   
   
4. 4th of July: The best day ever. We had a holiday from class so a couple of my friends and I decided to visit Boston city and explore it! We went to the Old State House and watched the Declaration of Independence being read and then just roamed the city and shopped! In the evening, I had another extracurricular which was a 4th Special: Board Game Night!
   
   
   My friends and I in front of Old State House
   
   
5. Scavenger Hunt: All over the campus. I did not not know that it was so huge. We literally ran for miles and miles and the clues were hard. But, the fun we had made up for our tiredness!

I also had a lot of other experiences such as a Pixar Themed Escape Room, an Amusement park and Music Trivia night!

The End

It was really hard. I made some really good friends globally and it was sad to think that we didn't know when we would meet again. It seemed really short. Pata hi nahi kaha chala gaya.

But on a happier note, we now have social media to stay connected so yay!

My classmates and professor 

That was it for today! Hope you guys enjoyed reading about my experience :)
Let me know in the comments if you guys have any questions and don't forget to share and follow for more!

Signing off,

Kuhu :)