confirm: baraboo
MASTER’S PIECES
Hello, friends. Hope that you, each and every one, were able to sample the extraordinary loveliness of the past two days for at least a few hours. I admit to playing hooky in New York today, paying a visit to the High Line park in Chelsea. Wonderful spot – look it up. Now here’s some stuff to bear in mind:
· Monday, September 9, 10:23 pm - First TD Student Activity Council (SAC) Meeting Join returning officers Maia Eliscovich Sigal and Kellen Svetov for pizza and planning. The TD SAC makes it happen for various social events throughout the year, and if you come to the traditional 10:23 meeting on Monday night, you are thereby a member. No applications, no elections, no lengthy government forms. Just show up and eat and figure out some good stuff to do.
· Wednesday, September 11, 9:00 pm in the Selin Lounge: Mindfulness Meditation. Our resident fellow David McCormick will begin leading his weekly Mindfulness Meditation group again starting this Wednesday evening at 9 pm. If you have ever wanted to try out meditation, or are already well practiced, this is your weekly chance to clear your head, bring some peace into your life, and learn to concentrate. If interested, please email him at david.mccormick@yale.edu. Beginners are welcome!!!
Mott Woolley Council Elections. Love TD? Want to make it even better? Mott Woolley is TD’s college council, collaborating with the Master on improvements for our community. In previous years, the council has worked to buy new gym equipment, refurnish the buttery, upgrade the recording studio, sponsor trips to NYC and design loads of TD gear. Each class elects three representatives and anyone can run by emailing a statement of qualifications and ideas (maximum 300 words) before 6PM next Sunday, September 15th to mottwoolley@gmail.com. Elections will be held next week during dinner on Tuesday and Wednesday. Questions? Contact Emily.ullman@yale.edu or one of last year’s reps: 2014 - Emily Ullmann, Ariella Kristal, Jonathan Desnick; 2015 - Jan Zielonka, Mary Jo Medina, Sonya Prasad; 2016 - Ben Ackerman, Corey Malone-Smolla, Mac Mathews.
Safe Streets Committee of Yale/New Haven Ben Ackerman TD ’16 and Operations Manager Bob Kennedy have been working on your behalf today: in cooperation with city officials they joined other Yale folks in painting orange-colored reminders on the curbs at various intersections, including Temple & Wall Streets. Meanwhile, Bob asks that you not forget the laws of physics (F=ma) when sharing surrounding streets with 3,000 pound vehicles and unpredictable drivers. Reading, texting, and conversing at intersections is not advised, particularly at Temple and Wall where there is no stop light or stop sign. You should now see “Look up!” signs on sidewalks at the most dangerous intersections. Good idea to take your cue from these signs.
Other than that, turn in your course schedules on time and be a force for good.
TIMOTHY DWIGHT
TD Peer Adviser for Center for International and Professional Experience (CIPE) is Julian Chernyk TD ’15. Julian was abroad last spring in Brazil after studying Portuguese at Yale and a previous summer study abroad in Brazil. On his term abroad he studied at the Pontifical Catholic University in the mornings and had an internship in the afternoons. He also travelled extensively throughout northern and southern Brazil.
Yale Arts Calendar: The new and improved Yale Arts Calendar at http://artscalendar.yale.edu.
ACADEMICS
TD Dean’s Office Hours: Monday – Friday, 8:30 AM to 5 PM.
To make an appointment, visit or call the dean’s office (203-432-0754)
Course Schedule Deadlines:
Class of 2017 Monday, September 9, 5 PM
Classes of 2016 Tuesday, September 10, 5 PM
Class of 2015 Tuesday, September 10, 5 PM
Class of 2014 Wednesday, September 11, 5 PM
Schedules are handed in to the TD dean’s office
The deadline is strictly enforced. A late schedule incurs a fine of $50
A late schedule cannot elect any courses CR/D/Fail
Clerical Error on schedule: $50
A schedule of 3 or 3.5 course credits and a schedule of 6 or 6.5 course credits needs my permission before the schedule is handed in. Schedule an appointment to see me (see above).
Changes in Classes and their Meeting Times and Places: Course changes and courses added or deleted since the publication of the Blue Book are recorded on line at OCS. The on line list of courses is the most current one, updated as needed.
Overlapping Class Meeting Times: Class meeting times may not overlap by more than 15 minutes once a week. Required are a conversation with me, compelling academic reasons for the overlap, and with my assistance a petition to the Committee on Honors and Academic Standing.
A schedule with a course in The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (and also not listed in the Blue Book) or a professional school requires an additional form, which is available in the TD dean’s office and at www.yale.edu/sfas/registrar/blue_form.pdf . Hand in the completed form with the syllabus attached by the deadline for your course schedule. [Note: SOM courses cannot be added to your schedule through OCS; they must be written by hand in the “include” section on your schedule. The form (above) for those SOM courses must be handed in to my office in the first week of shopping period, well before the deadline for your course schedule, because SOM determines its class enrollments well before your schedule is due.]
Courses at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and at a professional school cannot elect the CR/D/Fail option.
Credit for these courses on your transcript: When you put a Graduate or Professional School course on your schedule, zero (0) course credits are recorded for the course until you hand in to my office the form for graduate school courses (syllabus attached) and the registrar’s office determines the course credits for that course after that. Some courses earn 1 course credit in Yale College and some earn .5 course credits (most commonly in SOM and EPH).
Independent Studies (Directed Reading, Directed Research, etc. as listed by most departments): There are limits on the number that a student can enroll in during a given year and over four years. See YCPS (Blue Book) page 42, paragraph 4. Enrolling in an independent study requires the additional permission of a Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Deadline to apply for a Fall-Term Leave of Absence: Friday, September 6. See me if you are thinking about requesting a leave of absence for this fall term.
List of QR and Science courses without prerequisite:
http://www.yale.edu/yalecollege/sqr/qr/courses.html
OTHER
The Creative Writing Program in the English Department is starting office hours on Wednesday afternoons from 1.30-3.15, LC 407 for any student interested in learning about the program or to talk about creative writing in general. The department wants to provide the opportunity for students to feel welcomed and included in creative writing at Yale. Questions to Richard Deming, Director of Creative Writing, Department of English.
Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics intensive Summer Institute in Bioethics for US and international participants June 2-July 25, 2014., which consists of lectures, seminars, and research exploring concerns relating to medicine, law, religion, public health, animal ethics, and the environment.
The deadline for US applicants is January 15, 2014. Tuition is $1,600 for undergraduates. More information and applications at http://www.yale.edu/bioethics. Questions to Carol Pollard carol.pollard@yale.edu Office Phone: (203) 432-6188
The Women in Science at Yale (WISAY) Mentoring Program pairs undergraduate women interested in pursuing a career in science or related field with graduate students in the sciences at Yale for a one-on-one mentoring relationship. The goal is to help increase the success of young women entering scientific fields. The mentoring relationship can often be a very productive and helpful one, with mentees benefiting from advice about future career goals and expanded networking opportunities. Mentees will be assigned a graduate student mentor to meet with one-on-one throughout the academic year. Mentors and mentees will decide together how often meetings take place, and what the focus of the mentoring relationship will be. WISAY will provide some structured events, including a mandatory mentoring workshop in early October. To participate in the mentoring program, fill out this short questionnaire that will help match you with a mentor: http://tinyurl.com/WISAYmentoring2013. For more information on the program, please visit our website: http://wisay.sites.yale.edu/mentoring. If you have any questions, please emailwisay.grad.mentoring@gmail.com. Please apply by September 27th.
Yale-China’s Open House on September 12 from 3:00pm-6:00pm. Connect with others interested in China, learn more about Yale-China’s 113-year history, find out about our current programs for students and the community, get a sneak peak at Michael Sloan’s Paintings of Hong Kong Street Markets, and enjoy some Chinese tea and refreshments. Click here to RSVP.
NOTES
This summer I drove to upstate New York to see friends and to celebrate a birthday. What a beautiful weekend it was! And there they are at their cottage along the stream with a small walking bridge over it, and a guest cottage, and a garden in transition. We sat at dinner together outside with candles. We sat and talked and laughed and played with words and stories and shared experiences as friends can, confident all the while in the lasting agreement of their friendship. Around us stood oaks and other trees.
And later back at my TD home and its own beautiful courtyards, I see our Gingko standing sometimes alone and sometimes with the other trees, our college walls, and the New Haven buildings beyond. That is a perspective (and agreement) that I bring to Gingko (not really a tree) and also that I attach to me as I do so. A Gingko is a gingko alone and also is a Gingko in contexts more elaborate and inclusive than I rightly know or understand. Speaking for him (yes, the Gingko is male): “I live in the Mill River Watershed and I have been here since before Timothy Dwight was built in 1934, starting my life in the back yard of the house that was on the corner of Grove and Temple. I have thus lived in the city for a long time. I also want to let you know that my family has been around since the Miocene, although I cannot say that for myself, of course.” Now that is perspective.
Perspective can be ours as well. Like our Gingko, we are both singular and live in a context of connections and agreements. Where one ends and the others begins is not simple to sort out (if it can be sorted out at all), but being both a part of and apart from seems to be our common experience. One advantage of part of is that others can give us perspectives when we need them (and when we don’t). It is common that when things are not going well, we imagine things will continue that way (maybe even forever). It is especially so, for some reason, with our feelings of being overwhelmed or discouraged. Actually, though, these feelings of discouragement do pass, as a reflection on our own experience can tell us and as the perspectives of others from their experiences can remind us, We may even learn just how much we have in common with others as we begin to share our own sense of discouragement and being overwhelmed and how we feel about that. Seeking those connections of shared experience can actually sustain and support us.
Once I saw a greeting card with a photograph of a very large and stately oak, standing alone in a field and in the context of its horizon. The caption read:Endurance. That’s all: Endurance. I bought the card and sent it to a long-time friend, not because he had anything in particular to endure at the time but because I thought the message in general was such a good reminder of a part of life we shared. Because the card was one of those blank cards, I had to create some message or find some suitable quotation from someplace. I forget what I wrote, but I can still see that oak in my mind’s eye. That image, like my daily sight of our own Gingko, continues to remind me that life is both about standing alone and about being connected to all of us who stand in our own ways – alone and connected at the same time, a part of and apart from at the same time. I am so grateful for my sense of part of in “all of us”: “We all live together in the Mill River Watershed and … .”
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