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Lessons from Meliora Weekend 2012

Meliora Weekend 2010 — my freshman year and my first foray with this crazy campus event — I unknowingly broke my foot.

Meliora Weekend 2011 — I nearly died in a head-on collision between midterm hell week and the surrounding festivities.

But Meliora Weekend 2012, I am happy to report, went off rather beautifully and painlessly in my world.

For those who don’t know, Meliora Weekend, or “Mel Weekend” as it is colloquially shortened, is an event on campus that celebrates alumni and homecoming weekend in conjunction with parents weekend. While some saner schools might separate the two, we go big or go home, which results in one over-the-top weekend every year that features keynote speeches by prominent public figures, interesting panels, performance art shows, symposiums, class reunions, campus tours, thousands of additional people on campus, and, most importantly, lots, and lots of free food.

Though it’s meant to be a celebration of all things “ever better,” this annual tradition can sometimes be really overwhelming, putting most of the pressure on current students. If you’re unlucky, Mel Weekend will compete with a mountain of midterm work that always seems to just suddenly appear, like it did for me last year. So, in the midst of needing to study for multiple tests and write pages-upon-pages of essays, students are also expected to hang out with their families who came all the way to Rochester just to visit, reunite with older friends who have graduated, and, most notably, perform in or help run events. Much of what gets relatively diffused into the overall grandeur of Mel Weekend is the fact that the legs on which this tradition stands is the involvement of current students, whether on a performance, organization, or volunteer level. It’s a lot to handle, and is exacerbated by experiences like being bombarded by alumni coming into the library and yelling, “ETHEL, I THINK THIS IS WHERE THE CARD CATALOGUE USED TO BE!”

Don’t get me wrong, I too miss card catalogues (seriously, I do. I think I’m an old soul . . .), but when even the library is no longer a sanctuary for some semblance of sanity during Mel Weekend, it’s kind of just like, the last straw, you know?

But this year, the anxiety was thankfully low on my end. I think karma dealt me a winning hand of cards this past weekend in exchange for breaking my 2nd metatarsal in a Celtic performance two Mel Weekends ago and giving me every midterm, project, and paper under the sun the year before.

My midterms this year were two weeks ago and next week, but not this week, so I could actually attend events with my family, go out for dinner with them, and invite them to watch Revenge with me and my friends, instead of cowering in a corner, clutching my textbooks with one hand and my broken foot with the other. . . .

The keynote speaker this year was Barbara Walters, and although this didn’t seem to excite as many people as Bill Clinton’s personage did last year, as an aspiring female journalist myself, I was anxious to hear what she had to say. Her speech was insightful, funny, informative, and above all, engaging. She is one of the few speakers I’ve heard at Rochester who actually took the time to tailor the relevance of her words to college students, assuring us that it’s okay not to know what we want to do right now and to take this time to fill ourselves with knowledge and passion for something, anything. The rest will figure itself out. I was also struck by the serendipity of her own life path, which Walters exposed to the audience, and it reassured me that even some of the news’ great reporters couldn’t plan out every second of their rise to success.

This was a theme that actually seemed to follow me around this past weekend.

Barbara Walters being interviewed by President Joel Seligman at the end of her keynote speech.

Barbara Walters being interviewed by President Joel Seligman at the end of her keynote speech. 

I attended a panel of graduates of Rochester’s Brain and Cognitive Science (BCS) program, and although only two of the five panelists had gone on to have jobs that were obviously related to BCS, all described their daily work routines to be intricately related to skills they learned while at Rochester. This, like Walter’s speech, reassured me greatly. I sometimes feel guilty that I’m taking up space in the BCS major while knowing fully that I have no intention of going into a research field or of becoming a straight up scientist. So to hear graduates of the program who are in marketing, public health, and internet careers say that the critical way they were taught to think in the BCS department has benefited them in their disparate occupations was the best thing I could have possibly heard. I want to be a science journalist, so there is obviously a tie back to BCS, but it’s not as obvious of a connection as some of my peers who want to have more conventional science careers, thus the panelist’s assurance was welcomed.

It also didn’t hurt that the event was catered by Thali of India, Rochester’s best and my favorite Indian restaurant, so, after a positive panel experience, my family and I got to fill up on aloo gobi, paneer, chicken tikka masala, naan, basmati rice, and vegetable samosas. We had made a dinner reservation for a tapas place in the East End, but promptly cancelled that.

Even Craig Ferguson’s unconventional path to success shone through the veil of his hilariously rancid comedy. In between well-played jokes about various topics, he assured us that, “If they put someone like me on television, then anyone can do anything.”

Craig Ferguson donning Yellowjacket apparel for what he kept referring to as "Bee Weekend."

Craig Ferguson donning Yellowjacket apparel for what he kept referring to as “Bee Weekend.”

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