Big news: I’ve accepted my spot at Weill Cornell Medical College, so unless some waitlist shenanigans happen, I’m headed there in August! Wooooo!!!
By the way, Cornell’s in Manhattan itself, Upper East Side, not in Ithaca. Back in April, I attended Cornell’s accepted student weekend and then bused over to Boston to visit friends. And boy, was it a weird trip, filled with some pretty fantastic adventures and some pretty questionable decisions.
On the plane ride there, the person next to me was a really nice fellow who wanted me to swap seats with his wife so they could stay together. I empathized with them and on most days would have switched without hesitation, but I didn’t… I really needed my window to 1) sleep for the busy next day; 2) take pictures. Sigh… Of course it comes down to pictures, but I have been hunting a shot for almost two years and 20+ flights now, one where it’s dawn on one side of the sky and still night on the other. It requires the altitude of a plane, a flight that lands either at dawn or dusk, to be pointing either perfectly north or south, and for me to have a view not obscured by the wing.
And it worked, and I got the shot.
It still hadn’t sunk in that Cornell would likely be my home for the next four years, but being back and with potential future classmates made it much more proximate and real. The entire weekend was just a solid block of socializing, be it at panels, meals, mixers, walking around, in the dorms, on the excursions… I had a great time getting to know some people, but it was also quite exhausting!
Thus, when I decided to skip out on one mixer, of course I immediately sought photo opportunities. The confusingly cloudy sky at dusk gave me an easy answer, so all I had to do was get to an open space. Manhattan is consistently bigger than I think it is, and the dash to Central Park was almost a mile long. Man… why do I do this to myself? In WashU I nearly missed out on a wonderful friendship because I doggedly pursued some photos in Forest Park, and here I was risking it again.
I went anyway. I ran the mile, perched myself on a rocky outcropping, waited for a pedestrian, and got the shot.
After visit weekend, I visited my friends who live in Midtown and work on Wall Street. I didn’t realize it before, but they live in a penthouse apartment with a straight-on view of the Empire State Building a mere five blocks away right out their window. They have direct access to the rooftop balcony and breathtaking views in every direction! Seriously, it’s unfair how good their views are. I guess that’s what being math geniuses working in finance will get you. Meanwhile I’ll be earning significant negative income for a couple years… but at least I trust that decision!
Anyway, we went back up after sunset for even lighting between the sky and the urban lights, and we got our shots.
Photography steers so many of my decisions, and sometimes it’s not even worth it. The first day I got to Boston, I set an alarm and got myself riled up for waking up at 4:00 am to view the lunar eclipse. Sure, I wanted to see the blood moon phenomenon with my own eyes, but honestly I wanted my camera to see it too. It didn’t even work out! Boston obscured my view with a thick overcast.
Some of my decisions are socially questionable. My friends sat around for a minute or two while I changed lenses in order to properly take pictures of my food. Now that’s Instagramming taken to a whole new inappropriate level…
Or they’re just wrong. Like focusing on capturing candid shots and ignoring the awe-inspiring art pieces surrounding me in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Or showing up late to a meetup because I was too busy standing still and doing nothing but waiting for the right lighting to come. Yep, all of that happened on this trip.
But one more story! The most questionable decision of all.
Weeks ago, my friend and I agreed to go running at Castle Island, a picturesque harbor and beach area in South Boston. It would have been a pleasant 6-mile loop with some beautiful scenery were it not for the terrible rainstorm coming in. The forecast was growing ever more ominous, but somehow we decided to go anyway (err, more like I decided and forced us out there). At least I wisely decided to leave my camera behind in anticipation of getting wet.
Oh, but it was worse than that. By the time we arrived, the wind had picked up to like a 15 mph baseline with 30 mph gusts. We had difficulty running straight! Then we got to the beach section, where we saw the storm picking up sand and throwing it across our path. It looked really cool, but running through it was pretty freaking painful, getting sandblasted on our calves and face. Once we passed the sand challenge, that’s when the rain set in. We were a good 2 miles from any rain cover or modes of transportation, and the rain turned to downpour. There was nothing to do but trudge back towards the T station, now trying to run against the strong wind that was now directly opposing us.
That was the most crazy-ass run either of us has ever embarked upon. No one in their right mind would do shit like that.
And yet, we did. And we got our memories.
