(alarm ringing)
(blinds opening)
(door creaks open) (keys jingle)
(door creaks) (door slams)
- Hi, my name is Elena.
I am from Italy.
I am a senior at Pomona, and this is a week in my life.
It's Monday morning, and today I have Vertebrate Biology
for my EA Biology major.
And in the afternoon I have my English thesis class,
'cause I'm a double major at Pomona.
Majoring in Environmental Analysis
on the Biology track and English.
(upbeat music)
- Oh hello. - [Elena] Hello
- I'm Aditi, I'm a junior at Pomona college.
I'm one of your best friends.
- [Elena] Who are you?
- I'm getting made fun of for not knowing about vines.
- That's high-key deserved.
- I'm Melia.
I'm one of your best friends. - [Elena] Short for Amelia.
- I'm a junior majoring in molecular biology.
I'm from Chile. - [Elena] We're in STEM.
- And (laughs) I love Frary.
- [Elena] I also love Frary.
(upbeat music)
(student too far away from camera to be heard)
How was class?
- Just had my midterm.
Yikes.
- [Elena] What midterm?
- CS.
- I just finished my English thesis class.
- [Aditi] Oh.
- We were peer reviewing our draft.
My thesis is on extreme weather events in literature
but it's historical extreme weather events.
So right now I'm working on a chapter on Zora Neale Hurston,
"Their eyes were watching God" and I'm excited about it.
But it still needs a lot of work.
So they were giving me feedback
and now I need my vitamins.
And by vitamins I mean juice.
I think from the Cooks store.
- [Aditi] That's good.
- Yes. Let's wait for Melly.
- [Aditi] Yeah.
- And then get a juice.
- Hi. - [Elena] This is Melly.
- Hi. - Hi Melly.
- I'm a senior at Pomona.
I'm a math major.
- [Elena] And you're my best friend and suite mate.
- Yeah.
I Am.
- [Elena] You just had a thesis meeting?
- I did just have a thesis meeting,
I just got the comments
to my introductory chapter back to edit.
I have now two full, now two chapters on my system.
- [Elena] Wow.
(upbeat music)
This is Aditi. - Hello.
- [Elena] She's in our suite making Ramen.
Look at our beautiful (packet rustling)
coffee and tea station.
Here's Melly.
- [Aditi] And with the table.
- [Elena] And this is out balcony. And some plants.
- What are you doing?
(wind rumbles) (upbeat music)
- Whoa.
- If I play three, that's like the smallest and add,
so you can play four.
Elena can play six.
- Yeah.
- Then we can go like 9, 10
like you want to get rid of all your little cards.
- This is our favorite niche and micro celebrity.
- Okay. But what I actually wanted to say
is that we're going for dinner
and after that I have a class. (group laughing)
And it's my favorite class.
It's every Monday night (wind rustles)
and it's the West Africa Music Ensemble
and we're dancing two Guinean Dances.
Next week we have a performance, so be there.
(upbeat music)
(group chattering)
- Hello.
(group chattering)
- Hi.
(drum beating)
- Having fun. (drum beating)
- Hi. So come on Monday the 28th
at 8:00 PM in Lyman Hall to watch the performance
of our class. (drums beating)
The West African music and sound club.
- What's up? Its going to be fire.
- Fire!
(upbeat music)
- It's 5:00 PM I just finished studying
and I'm heading to Collins,
which is Claremont McKenna Dining Hall,
(helicopter flying overhead)
to have dinner with some friends.
(upbeat music)
(diners chattering) (upbeat music)
- We're here to watch "Warrior Nun."
(group chatters)
- This is Chris.
- This is a break,
before we watch the final episode of the show,
the plot is insane.
- My heart is genuinely like, my chest is in pain.
My chest is so tight, I'm so anxious.
My body is in pain. (group laughs)
- We're just leaving Seaver.
We just had our vertebrate biology class.
I'm with...
- Anisa.
- Phillip.
- I have a viral upper respiratory infection right now.
- We just had a paleontologist come into class today
and they talked to us about,
walruses...
- Rhino. - Rhinos,
- Rhinos.
- Giraffes. - Horses.
- And they had a lot of bones so that was really cool.
This is the best class to take at the five C's, so...
This is Jacob.
Did you like the lecture?
- Yeah we got to talk about fossils
and that was really cool.
- [Elena] Oh, and we're going to interview them
for our podcast.
- We are.
- [Elena] Podcast series.
- Ask a lot about fossils.
- So I'm going to Oldenburg,
which is the language speaking dining hall.
Because on Wednesdays they have the Italian table.
And since freshman year I've been going.
So if you've watched my freshman vlog, nothing changed.
You know, four years, nothing changed.
Aditi, are you going to a language table?
- Yes.
- [Elena] Which one?
- Probably German. (students chatter)
- [Elena] Bye friends.
- Bye friends. - Bye.
- [Elena] Bye enjoy, Frank.
Hello.
(diners chatter)
Ciao.
- Melly and I are at the ISMP lounge
and that's the International Student Mentorship Program.
And we are about to have our advocacy meeting.
- Well this is a check-in with ISMP on what we're up to
on our 15 year anniversary of the mentor program.
Woo! The things that we're working on
is creating a bunch of docs
with all the resources international students need to access
and know about for their four years of education here.
A lot of healthcare stuff, both physical and mental health
and then a lot of academic, sport and funding resources.
Now have our biweekly snacks.
- [Jasmine] Hello!
- Oh my god, it's our head mentor.
- [Elena] This is Jasmine.
- Hello
- [Elena] Head mentor.
- I brought treats to our meeting.
(group gasps)
- [Elena] Oh my god.
- As promised I brought a lemon meringue tart,
a fruit tart and a chocolate croissant.
(bag crinkles)
We've been working very hard so we deserve a treat.
(upbeat music)
- It's Thursday after lunch (wind rustles)
and I'm heading to Seaver, right there,
our biology building for my, one of my on-campus jobs.
I'm working with Professor Chang,
who is a professor of biology and environmental analysis
and I'm doing some research with her.
I did research with her over summer
through the SURB program.
Which is the summer undergraduate research project
at Pomona.
So I stayed on campus,
and we did bio acoustic monitoring research
and I was able to continue with her
throughout the semester thanks to a grant.
And so I work with her once a week
for a few hours and I'm heading there now.
That's my Thursday afternoon.
(upbeat music)
(door clunks)
So we're here at Marston Quad
with Professor Chang, my advisor
and we're going to set up this audio moth unit
on the street.
What this audio moth unit does
is it's going to record bird songs
and then through a software back in the lab
we can then analyze the audio
and understand which birds are here.
(upbeat music)
Hey we're back in the lab.
I'm here with Prof Chang.
- And with Elena's data that's been collected,
what we're now doing is we're running a model
from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology,
that's trained on data from 3 to 6,000
different bird species depending on the specific model.
Each one of these lines is one of the acoustic recordings
from an audio moth that Elena has programmed
where the data's come in.
And what you can see is the data being analyzed
from every acoustic file, every wave file.
Ultimately we get out are a set of tables
that tell us the different species
present in every recording.
(background chattering)
- [Elena] Found a friend and there's a farmer's market.
- We can do a haul later.
We got, actually we need to come way from here,
but we have a lot of stuff.
- [Elena] I think I'm going to take more mushrooms.
(upbeat music)
(footsteps on ground)
(upbeat music)
- It's Friday morning and with our vertebrate biology class,
we're going to go to the Lar Brea Tar Pits today
on a field trip.
And so we are preparing the sandwiches for our trips
because we're not going to have lunch on campus.
I'm doing a week in the life.
- Really? Okay.
Do you understand what that means to me?
I used to watch these when I was applying.
You were my idol.
(upbeat music)
(bus engine rumbles)
(students chattering)
- And this is actually probably how
some of the kind of crap part of this work,
and then animals think it's liquid water
and would come in to drink and get stuck so...
By salt sharpening basically
they're like little micro beads.
So they can have fairly sharp teeth
just by wearing through their (indistinct).
- [Student 1] It's really hard.
He makes a really hard one.
- [Student 2] Of course I did.
I could still do it.
- [Student 3] Oh gosh.
(students chattering)
- [Student 2] It's so hard dude.
(upbeat music)
- Me and Melly, it's a Friday night,
and me and Melly are in the Crook Shanghai Place.
- Party, Party.
- Drinking our little tea and working on our thesis.
It's okay.
Yeah, this is our little Friday night activity.
- Party guys.
- People are partying.
We're in the English department library
next to that very old book.
- [Melly] It's okay.
- What's it called? We're academic machines? No.
- [Melly] No, no.
We're not machines, we're people.
- We're academic people.
(speakers laugh)
(upbeat music)
(door slams)
- It's 8:30 AM Saturday and our friend Aditi is performing
(footsteps on stairs)
at a competition in Edmond's Ballroom
on campus just doing a ballroom dance competition.
So we're going to go see her.
- Do it for right now.
(friends laugh)
- [Elena] Any comment?
- I'm ready with my energy drink.
(upbeat music)
- [Host] There you are, thank you. 181.
(ballroom music)
(friends cheer)
(upbeat music)
- [Elena] We're at Harvey Mud.
It's Saturday evening.
How was your Saturday?
- It was very nice.
Started pretty early.
We went to see Aditi's Ballroom dance competition.
Then I had brunch, then I did homework
and then I had dance practice
and now we're here.
- It's Sunday morning. - Sunday.
- Yeah, we're going for brunch.
(upbeat music)
- It's Sunday afternoon.
This morning we had our weekly ISMP meeting.
We caught up about our mentees,
about the events that are coming up with ISMP.
And we usually do it over brunch.
Now it's 4:11 PM and I am doing some work.
So this is my overcrowded desk.
And I'm just in my room 'cause I'm doing laundry
and waiting for it to come out of the dryer.
And other than that, this evening,
I'll grab up dinner with friends
and then we'll probably watch a series
and do some more work.
It's 11:45 PM on Sunday night
and I'm going to head to bed soon.
And I just wanted to say thank you so much
for following along in my week
and I hope you enjoyed this little vlog.
Thank you so much for following me along.
(light switch clicks)