Harvard’s reaction to “The Social Network”

You could read the Harvard Crimson’s 5 star review of The Social Network to see what the journalistic mouthpiece of Harvard has to say about director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s new movie about facebook (and so much more), but I’ll give you a first hand look at how an opening night, sold-out audience at the AMC theater in Harvard Square responded to the critically-acclaimed movie. Admittedly, it’s impossible to know what percentage of the 7:30 p.m. viewing audience was made up of students, or undergraduates, or people in anyway associated to the university, but the theater’s entrance is only about 150 feet from a main Harvard gate (including a T entrance) to Harvard Yard and is definitely the closest theater to Harvard’s main campus.

WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD.

Only the first 60 minutes or so really have anything to do with Harvard, but here’s what I have for you…

Applause: There were two moments during the movie when the audience strongly applauded. The first what when the ever pretentious Zuckerberg character says “You don’t need to study: you go to BU.” The second was during the long, establishing shot of Harvard, immediately after the first (break-up) scene.

Confusion: there were murmurs throughout the theater as the Zuckerberg character ran through the “Harvard campus” to his dorm. Apparently many people in the audience didn’t know that no commercial filming is allowed on campus and most had been done elsewhere. My favorite comments were from the people behind me, who thought that “it must be at the Divinity school?” No, friends. No.

Harvard parties: There was a great deal of laughter regarding the absurdity of the initial “final club” party at the beginning of the film. I’ve never been to a final club party here, but as I understand it, there aren’t many lingerie-clad women dancing on tables or playing strip poker, even on weekends at Harvard. There was even more laughter regarding another party scene, at a Caribbean-themed, Jewish fraternity party. Speaking from some firsthand experience, this is much more what Harvard club parties look like.

On location: as far as I can tell, there were about 4 shots/scenes in the entire movie actually shot in Cambridge: 1.) the establishing shot of Harvard, which shows Lehman Hall and Out of Town News in Harvard Square. 2.) a shot of University Hall 3.) a shot of Weeks Bridge with Weld boathouse in the background 4.) on the Charles, rowing ridiculously early in the morning. (after watching DVD extras I’ve discovered they also actually filmed in Mr. Bartley’s burger place and the Thirsty Scholar bar).

The Harvard code of conduct: the idea of invoking (or reading, or owning) the Harvard code of conduct, or whatever they call it in the film, may have gotten the biggest laugh of all from the audience.

… but this is one audience’s set of expressive reactions. Go see it yourself and have your own.

On location

I’ve mentioned before that Harvard has not allowed any movie to film on campus since “Legally Blonde.” However, that doesn’t stop movies from being filmed elsewhere in Cambridge. I love movies, and I love movies that are shot in places I know well. So, “The Town” and “The Social Network” are basically rocking my world right now. It doesn’t hurt that they’ve also got great critical reviews going: “The Town” has a 94% positive rating and “The Social Network” is at 97% according to Rotten Tomatoes.

Aside from these films, I’ve also been know to re-watch (or watch) movies of varying caliber to catch the Harvard/Cambridge shots.  ”Love Story,” “Angels and Demons,” “Good Will Hunting,” “21,” and the aforementioned “Legally Blonde” have all been watched specifically for this purpose.

Instead of getting all verbose on these exciting cinematic moments, I played with Google maps and made this. Enjoy the map and the beautiful sights of Cambridge!

View Larger Map

Harvard Sailing Team

It’s not really about Harvard, but they crack me up. See more here.

Not their best, but at least it’s somewhat Boston-themed.  This one is probably their best and at least most popular:

10 big ways to enjoy your adventures abroad

It’s important to plan your travel, though of course the best travel experiences are what happen when plans go horridly off course.  Having conquered some travel of my own this summer, I feel I should document my experiences.  So, here we go, the Big Ten Girl’s 10 big ways to enjoy your adventures abroad.

1. Get the most out of your lodging.

• Free breakfasts, proximately to hot spots and friendly service are big pluses when finding the best place to stay. I’ve recently found air conditioning  can also be crucial (though if it is hot, men will likely go around shirtless, and that can provide some hunky eye candy).  Reading reviews really helps with finding a good place, whether you’re looking for a four star hotel on a site like Expedia or Travelocity, a hostel on Hostel World (which helped me find the excellent Sydney Hostel in Istanbul). That said, sometimes you just need to show up at a place your guide book recommends and ask for a room (as I did at the Fatima Hotel in Kazan, Russia this summer).

2. Get creative with airfare.

• If you can afford to be flexible with dates and times, and want to cut costs as far as airfare is concerned, get creative. I love using kayak.com to compare flights. Weird flight times, random or possibly long layovers aren’t really that much of an inconvenience when you’re flying around the world, so just suck it up. Being creative with your flights can even lead to more adventures along the way; if you wind up with a 22 hour layover in London (as I once did), you can take the money you saved for the cheaper flight and jump into the city for the $16 cost of tube fare. This summer I also wound up with a 7 hour layover in Riga, Latvia on my way to Odessa, Ukraine. I got to experience two countries for the price of one (almost)!

3. Eat cheaply.

• The best food I had this summer since leaving the US was at a falafel stand in Odessa, Ukraine. For 11 grivna (less that $1.50) I was able to get a delicious falafel wrap that didn’t even make me sick! Granted, street food can be super sketchy (there are so many stories of people disposing bodies by giving the meat to shashlik/shishkabob stands…) but if you do it right, and approach the situation with healthy skepticism it can be great.

4. Ask the locals for advice.

• During a business trip to Kazan I met with many people and in our social exchanges I asked them what they were most proud of in their home region. Through them I got great recommendations for sights like the Raifskiy Monestary, which wasn’t in my Lonely Planet guidebook. Sometimes asking locals can even have a monetary advantage: in Russia foreigners are charged a higher entrance rate at many sights, so if a Russian recommends a sight, they may also offer to buy you the cheaper ticket! (Спасибо, Рома!)

5. Prepare for any weather.

• The average summer time temperature in Moscow is supposed to be 75 degrees F. This summer we had a straight month where the high of the day was over 90 degrees. I also went to Arizona one year for Christmas and was thwarted from seeing the Grand Canyon by a snow storm.  Extreme or atypical weather happens. Pack accordingly.

6. Do not fly Aeroflot. (Upon reviewing this 2 years later, I can say Aeroflot is not so bad).

7. Know what to expect with your travel companions.

• Travel priorities differ greatly, so it’s good to at least have an idea of whether you’ll be eating big, long meals or quick, small ones; frequenting beaches or museums; putzing along for hours or hitting the town at full speed. It can get frustrating if you’re just too different, but being flexible and patient with someone else goes a long way. (I’ve generally had pretty good luck with this, but have heard some horror stories).

8. Don’t be afraid to travel alone.

• Okay, it can be unsafe to walk dark alleys late at night by your lonesome, but I had a great time this summer roaming Kazan and Riga by myself. I always thought I could only enjoy places when I could instantly share the experience with someone else, but you observe a lot more by yourself and can share great stories with other people later. Plus, you get to be completely selfish in your travel plans.

9. Take pictures that tell stories.

• Pictures can be “worth a thousand words” but only when they actually have something to say.  Since approximately 1 billion people have pictures of famous monuments, I think it’s better to make the picture your own, by purposely not cropping out the couple with the ridiculous PDA in the corner of your Eiffel Tower picture, or including the crazily dressed tourists in your Kremlin shot.

10. Do NOT fly Aeroflot. (Really, it’s okay to fly them now…)

10 big differences between the Ivy World and the Big Ten

Now a year into my Ivy league experience, I feel I am no less of a Big Ten, Minnesotan girl than when I came out here. I have, however, somewhat adjusted to the quirks of living on the East Coast and being at Harvard.  Here are the big takeaways from the year:

1. Drinking culture: Though there are certainly people out here who know how to throw a few back, I have not seen a keg here and still continue to be appalled by the lack of drink specials.
2. Library obsession: While there are libraries at Minnesota (around 27, actually), none are open 24 hours, they don’t have strict key card access to get in, or to the stacks and they don’t have hundreds (thousands?) of study carrels where students can be seen feverishly scrambling to finish term papers or study for exams. It would be impossible to exaggerate the obsession with libraries  at Harvard.
3. Customer service: Dear Boston/Cambridge cashiers, would it kill you to smile? Or say thank you? Contrastingly, I have had some of the most pleasant conversations of my life with cashiers in Minnesota.
4. State pride: Yes, I’m from Minnesota. Yes, can be cold there. Yes, we have lots of lakes. Yes, I say “bagel” oddly. And yes, my state is way more awesome than where ever you happened to grow up and no, it is not a barren frozen wasteland. What, you don’t love your state and think it’s the best thing ever? That’s because it’s not Minnesota.
5. Identity: Related to #4… most people don’t have much state pride and will identify with their undergrad (Princetonians…), or maybe their boarding school, or are mainly ambivalent. Midwesterners, and Big Tenners specifically LOVE sharing that identity and when I’ve met other people it’s amazing how much we have in common instantly. The Midwest identity is truly pure gold.
6. Holidays: What the hell is Patriots’ Day, you ask? I still don’t really know, but I think the first gun shots of the American Revolution were fired that day or something. I guess Minnesota has some specific holidays too. I mean, the fishing opener is celebrated pretty well across the state.
7. IM sports: Getting to be on the IM crew and fencing teams this semester was awesome and gave me a great opportunity to try two sports I’d always been interested in but had never had a chance to learn. Indeed, the most obscure IM teams at Minnesota continue to be ultimate frisbee  and  broomball, because really, what Minnesotan doesn’t love any game on ice?
8. Bad weather: Both regions can have their sucky days, but I would hands down take snow, blistering wind chill and subzero temperatures in Minnesota over the dreary wintry mix days with lakes of water covering all sidewalks that you get in Massachusetts.
9. International atmosphere: Between my language classes, international students and foreign tourists, it’s a rare day when I don’t hear at least 6 languages being spoken. Some of the regulars:  Russian, Chinese, French, German, Welsh, Turkish, Uzbek, Korean, Hindi, Polish, Japanese and Spanish. I kind of feel like I’m always in an international terminal at the airport and I love it! It would be hard to find a similar experience in Minnesota.
10. Guilty pleasure food: I probably eat a bit healthier here in Boston, where my fave food places serve up delicious frozen yogurt (Berryline!) and veggie burgers (Grendal’s Den or b.good). In Minnesota it’s all about the cheese and carbs, whether at Mesa Pizza in Dinkytown, or a Noodles and Co. And of course there are those amazing Idaho nachos at Granite City…

The differences between these two places make me appreciate each of them each more. I’m sure when I jet off to Moscow for the summer I’ll miss both!

If grad school was a video game…

… it would probably be a really lame RPG where professors give you tasks, annoying classmates challenge you to a battle of pretentious wits and you gain skill points for attending classes.

However, there are some extremely sleep deprived days where everything about grad school can start seeming like an epic virtual world of adventure.

Take the libraries for example. There, after finding a reference code you race around the stacks, which in Widener are a complicated labyrinth of staircases, hallways, secret study rooms and tunnels connecting different buildings. In this 10-storied building (just one of score of libraries at Harvard) there is also an east and a west wing and these don’t attach on every floor. So, the challenge becomes, how can you most efficiently travel around the library collecting all the books you need?

Avoiding slow moving tourists is another constant task while on campus. This can be reminiscent of a game of Frogger, and you can definitely look as ridiculous as a jumping frog when maneuvering around those massive tour groups, but hey, at least you’re not getting squashed by them!

A final joy I’ve gotten to experience is the Tetris-like calculation it takes to pack up a dorm room to put in storage for the summer. Unfortunately, when you get things to fit together perfectly together in this “game” there’s no satisfying flash of bars disappearing, but rather you get to lug the meticulously packed box down three flights of stairs…

However, moving things into storage and finishing all my finals does mean I’ve reached the big “level up” in my grad school experience, as I am now a G2! Only a year until I complete this very spendy and time-consuming “game” and move on to the game of life.

Data set drinking games

This semester I got into data more than ever before. GINI coefficient scores, FDI per capita, % of population achieving secondary education, Internet usage per 100 people, World Value Survey data, Transparency International Corruption Perception Indexes, and of course my all-time favorite: Freedom House Freedom of the Press scores, kind of rocked my world with their vast information and incredible applicability.

Now, I didn’t actually make these data sets into drinking games, but, generally when I was going from the CIA World Factbook, I would pull up an indicator and try to guess what countries would be at the top or bottom. It was addictingly awesome. If one was making this into a drinking game, I would suggest you look at an indicator, everyone takes a  guess about what country is best/worst and the person closest gets to choose who has to take a drink. Intoxicating in education and fun!! I also recommend using data from the UN database and Freedom House.