It happened

Today was the official last day of class of my undergraduate career.

In a somewhat poetic fashion, I make reference in this entry's title to the blog entry I wrote after my first day of classes as an undergraduate at Harvard.

While my concerns back then had to do with finding a German class and being interested in linguistics, my concerns at the moment are:

• my thesis defense on May 1st
• my thesis presentations tomorrow and on the 27th of April 
• my mom's visit
• my final paper for a History of Art and Architecture class 
• a Kinyarwanda oral exam 

I don't think I could have fathomed back then that this is what my last day of undergraduate classes would be like. But while I still have all this work to do before truly being "done" with the semester and with my undergraduate career, I will save the more reflective entry for later. 

There is something I wanted to put in an entry, though. The Arts and Humanities division released a competition called The Transcript Project, where they called on people to creatively represent their academic trajectories at Harvard. I joined and I was one of the joint winners, yada yada, here's the poem I wrote and then read and sent as a recording. Just so I could prove I learned some languages decently.  

A Tale of Tongues and a Transcript [I really like alliterations, okay] 

Whenever I tell people what I study, I also usually say 

“I basically do whatever I want: learn languages and travel”  

It's that adventure story my transcript does portray  

A complex one I’ll now attempt to unravel  

At the beginning, like many, I was a pre-med 

Though looking at semester 1, it doesn’t show  

No math, no bio, no chem, but instead  

More about social science, I was curious to know  

Cross-cultural contact zones was the theme for expos writing 

It made my busy schedule quite full to the brim   

Intro to African Languages and Cultures ended up delighting 

And that was a class I actually took on a whim  

When I finally got around to taking science and math  

During freshman spring and sophomore fall  

I realized being a doctor should not be my path  

Since I did not enjoy the premed courses at all  

From there, I decided to throw myself into doing what I love 

Fitting learning about people into my declared concentration 

Yes, social anthropology really fit me like a glove  

From then on I only felt eager anticipation  

Le deuxième semestre lors de ma deuxième année 

J’ai pris trois langues étrangères en même temps   

En effet c’était une décision spontanée  

Mais dans ma vie c’était que l’un de ces instants  

(The second semester of my second year

I took three foreign languages at once

It was indeed a spontaneous decision 

But in my life, it was just one of those times) 

Fue bastante valiente tomar Español y La Comunidad  

Porque era la primera clase del idioma que había tomado  

Pero es una clase que me dio mucha felicidad  

Y más y más del español me he enamorado  

(It was rather brave to take Spanish and the Community (Spanish 59)

Because it was the first class of the language I had taken

But it was a class that gave me a lot of joy

And I fell more and more in love with Spanish) 

Język polski to jest naprawdę bardzo trudny  

Ale po polsku już mówiłam, czytałam, i śpiewałam  

Kiedy uczyłam się go w Polsce i w Bostonie nie był nudny  

Rozmawianie idzie mi lepiej niż tego oczekiwałam  

(Polish is indeed a difficult language

But I have already spoken, read, and sung in Polish

When I studied it in Poland and Boston it was never boring

Speaking goes better than I expect) 

Im Sommer habe ich noch mehr mit Sprachen gelernt 

Ich bin nach Wien mit anderen Studenten gereist  

Von dem Yard war ich dieses Mal weit entfernt  

Und mit meinen Kollegen war ich ziemlich oft dreist   

(In the summer I learned even more with languages

I traveled to Vienna with other students

This time I was far from the yard

And I was cheeky pretty often with my classmates) 

Junior year, I knew I would spend the spring abroad  

To follow up on that class about Africa I took  

So to Rwanda and Uganda I went, from the quad  

It was a way to learn more than what I could in a book 

Mu Rwanda nize ibintu byinshi  

Ururimi rw’igihugu rimwe na rimwe navuze  

I Kigali nahakuye inshuti nyinshi 

Kandi na barumuna banjye naririmbye  

(In Rwanda I learned a lot of things

From time to time I spoke the country’s language

In Kigali I made a lot of friends

And I sang with my little host sisters) 

Back in the yard with only one year to go  

I wondered how I would spend the remainder of my time  

My thesis would take a lot of it, I did know  

And at times it felt like quite an upward climb 

Because if I had no language classes it’d feel strange  

Spanish and Kinyarwanda made an appearance once more  

Looking back on it all, I really did go through a big change 

And looking ahead, I am excited for what’s in store  

It’s somehow now senior spring, thanks to time and its designs  

I’ve finally finished my thesis, and I’ve had my last bit of fun  

And on my transcript, there will be no more lines  

But to that I only need to say, the adventure has just begun.  

And with that, I forge bravely forward through the month I have left of living the life I have created for myself here the past four years.