Friday was my first taste of living in a city where I could use public transit to get just about anywhere I wanted to be - I found it to be a little tiring since I wasn't always convinced that I was on the right bus/train but I did enjoy the convenience and it was nice to not have to search/pay for parking. I downed a few more cups of echinacea tea - this time mixed with a chai spice blend and some black tea - then said goodbye to everyone still in the kitchen/living room and walked to the subway. Boston has an impressively extensive system of subway lines and buses that run all over the city and outlying neighborhoods, which is extended by a commuter rail system that goes into the suburbs on the week days (the bus lines go pretty far out into the suburbs as well, for transit on the weekends when the rail isn't running). It's pretty affordable as well - a one day bus/subway ticket is $4.50 ($2.00/2.50 if you're just on one or the other), but a week pass that lets you use the bus/subway/commuter rail is $18. Admittedly very convenient!
Thanks to google maps on my much-smarter-than-me phone, I found the right connection from the subway to the bus to take me to Beth Israel to meet up with a whole group of friends for lunch. Luppy (we had multiple Caitlin's on the team so she went by her last name, Lupton) graduated the year ahead of me, and then went on to do a Fulbright Fellowship in Colombia, looking at ecotourism and indigenous communities, before getting her masters in England (at Kent?) and now she's here in Boston working in admin for a health nonprofit. Forge and Patches (again, lots of Emily's and Sarah's on the team so they also went by last name variations) graduated the year after me, and now work Beth Israel and Dana-Farber respectively, with plans to apply to grad programs soon. Deanna and Claire graduated just last year, Deanna's at Dana-Farber as well, and Claire is being sensible and chilling at home for a while to figure out what she'd like to do next. I can't believe so many of my friends have ended up not only in Boston, but also in health care and in such a concentrated area of the city. I had no idea so many huge medical institutions were so close together, it was fun to walk around and see the area a little bit.
After everyone had to go back to work, I got on another train and then a bus to get to Navy Yard, home of the Mass General Hospital Institute for Health Professions, where I'm applying to their NP program that starts next August. I've found that applying to grad school is nothing like applying to undergrad - there are no lists of median GRE scores or rankings of direct-entry NP programs by specialty, no hourly tours of the campus, but I like getting to visit and take a look around to get a sense of where I'm committing to spend the next 3 years. Plus I've found that if you can find student services, there's almost always someone who will answer questions and can give you an impression of what the school is looking for in it's applicants and what it's like to be a student there. So I chatted with the woman in the office for a half hour or so, then it was time to go home. Back to the bus!
It took a while but I finally managed to get back to Cambridge - I was certainly glad that I wasn't in a rush! I gave my parking pass back to the co-op, said goodbye to Brittany, and started a cross-town adventure during construction and rush hour to move over to West Roxbury to stay with my friend Kathryn - it only took about twice as long as Martha originally quoted me :p Kathryn and I also met at Mount Holyoke - she was my EMT TA when I was a first year, and was the director of our campus EMT squad until she graduated in 2008. We stayed up way too late happily nerding out on her job as an epidemiologist (it sounds so cool!), and catching up on our lives and those of mutual friends. She just got married in August to David, a wonderful guy who was out of town with family until Sunday, and they recently moved in to their new place - the top two floors of a converted house that has been beautifully re-done but does have amusingly quirky wiring (the laundry machine is controlled by a light switch that's in an entirely different room, for example). It was so nice of her to reach out to let me stay with them, and I enjoyed a few very comfy nights on their extra long couch.
Tragically, no photos were taken the entire day! I was using my phone so much for finding out where I was/where I was going that I completely killed the battery by the time I got home, and taking pictures just drains it faster unless it's in airplane mode (which makes using it as a map difficult :p) <- note to self, this is the problem with over-reliance on technology, consider buying a map next time?
Picture of the Boston Subway!
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