The Scoop

Right now, I'm in the middle of writing an article for The Scoop, the monthly dining services newsletter. My friend Betsy is the Editor-in-Chief so I'm writing a piece about Driscoll naan and how delicious it is. I'm flopped on one of the couches in Paresky, listening to a Mozart piano concerto.

Everyone else is very busy with finals and papers, but I don't really have much left to work on. So I'm left flopping around in Paresky writing articles about naan. It's so delicious!

Soon I will depart for Russia! I intend to write lots of letters. So...if any of you want a letter from me, you should give me your summer address! I will definitely write letters to anyone who gives me a summer address. I probably won't have many opportunities to talk on the phone and I think I might avoid Skype, so letter-writing will be my primary contact with home.

Skype...one thing is that I've never used it and I'm not sure how to use it. But also, I think it will be helpful for "immersion" to not be holed up in my room, on my computer, on Skype. Letter-writing, for instance, even though it's not a particularly social activity, can be done in someone's living room, in some public space, or whatever.

The thing is, I really have no idea what things will be like. When I say "in someone's living room", I'm thinking of the family I will live with...perhaps they will sit around in the evening reading books or a newspaper, at which point I could sit around with them and write postcards. But perhaps this is just a fantasy.

I'm playing in the commencement band this year. But the violins have been switched from flute parts to clarinet parts...which means we have to transpose!! For anyone who doesn't know, that means the notes that are written are all a certain interval above or below the ones you play. This is very confusing for string players who never have to transpose! Steve, the conductor, is going to transpose the parts for us, but I told him not to transpose mine. This will be a good opportunity for me to learn how to transpose, and I know how some of the melodies sound already, so it won't be so bad. Right now it sounds very funny at rehearsals because half of the time, I forget I'm supposed to be transposing.

I really enjoy playing at commencement. I think of it as my personal, final salute to the graduating class. At Williams, the procession of the graduates is led by a band of bagpipes. We, the band, play in unison with the bagpipes, but we are sitting at the graduates' point of arrival. So sometimes we're not completely coordinated as the bagpipers approach, usually due to complications relating to the speed of sound. But it worked out well enough last year.