Guest Blog: MA Gammas Across the Pond

MIT allows it's students to participate in the Cambridge-MIT exchange in their junior year while at MIT, a wonderful opportunity for students to study abroad and experience another university. Yes, that is Cambridge University in Cambridge, England (i.e. the other Cambridge). For those of us who stayed on this side of the Atlantic, we miss our sisters who go abroad. This year Anne Warren ('13) and Meghan Kenny ('13) both chose to go abroad.

Although we miss them very much, Meghan and Anne are having an incredible time:

Greetings from England, my lovely Pi Phis!  To current students, I hope your semesters are off to a great start and that informal recruitment goes well – I’m sorry to be missing out on that experience.  To alumnae, I hope this finds you well and not too inundated with real-life work.

Being abroad has been one of the best experiences of my life, and it’ll be difficult to capture all of that in a blog post; but here is a quick overview as well as some more exciting tid-bits! 

I have met some great people and made some good friends here at Cambridge.  It’s certainly been incredibly interesting meeting non-science majors.  While I sometimes struggle when more philosophical conversation comes up, it’s been a very diverse atmosphere.  The courses are about the same difficulty as MIT, but the work schedule is much different – I must say, I sometimes miss recitations and a scheduled problem set in comparison to the biweekly meetings here where the work doesn’t really count and your entire grade is dependent upon exams you take at the end of the year.  Needless to say, exam week will be extremely frightening.

Outside of courses, Anne and I have participated in a number of extracurricular activities – we’re both rowing for our respective colleges.  Anne’s boat at St. Catherine’s has actually won a number of competitions!  She is also swimming for the university team and is gearing up for the upcoming Varsity match (Cambridge v. Oxford).  In addition to rowing, I’ve been playing netball for the college, which is a bit like basketball without the dribbling (perfect for me!).

On to travel!  I was quite the busy bee from October to December.  I visited my parents in Dublin for a weekend, visited a high school friend in Barcelona, and spent Thanksgiving in London with a few friends.

After term ended at the beginning of December, Anne and I travelled to Prague (where Tori (MA Gamma '11) met up with us for one weekend!) and Istanbul.  It was extremely cold in Prague, but absolutely beautiful and we enjoyed going out for Anne’s birthday (which included an interesting 5-story club).  Istanbul was also fantastic – great food, beautiful architecture, and so much warmer – a pleasant way to spend December.

After the New Year, we’re both back at Cambridge, in the middle of our second of three terms.  It’s been a much different start than the beginning of last term, as we’ve both already settled in.  Cambridge life is great, if cold!

PPLAM,

Meghan