Yesterday my 94 year old neighbor Beatrice Keyfitz fell. Her husband, who is 97, came knocking on my door to ask me to help her get up. When I went into their apartment she was on her back and so upset with herself. Luckily she was ok and I just sat their holding her up and trying not to move her until the EMTs came. After 3 firemen and two teams of EMTs came and looked her over they helped her up and decided that she might be a little bruised but that nothing was broken. Since she declined a trip to the hospital everyone left and all the commotion was over. I ended up staying with them all night because I was scared that Bea might have fallen because she was dizzy and something else would happen again.

Their set-up is really unique. They live in two apartments, one across the hall from the other, on my floor. I think they need two because they have so much crap! I mean combined they had a long time to accumulate stuff! They both use walkers and move slower than mud when they cross from one apartment to another. I've never seen them leave the building although they have friends visit fairly often and they use the elevator daily to get their newspapers. Mr Keyfitz orders at least 3 packages a week from amazon and he receives newsletters and books from all around the world. He was a professor of demography at Harvard and on the committee to select Nobel Prize winners. He could speak 6 languages once but he's forgetten 3 at this point. He still does Tai Chi and is trying to get me to join him "because it works miracles." He is also taking his first piano lesson ever next week. Mrs. Keyfitz is an amazing musician and a linguist herself. She has perfect pitch (or so she says) and can hear music when she looks at notes. She's more pensive than Mr. Keyfitz but she's really very kind. I sat with them for so long last night I know their entire history. All their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. The stories of how they got married and how their parents came to America. They are truly remarkable people.

After spending so much time with them I went to check-up on them today and asked them if I could look into Lifeline for them. It's this thing my grandmother has that you wear around your neck and if you fall or need assistance you press the little button and a central office is called. The person asks if you're ok over a loud speaker and then they call relatives or 911 if you need it. They gave me permission to find out about it when I gave them the info they thought it might be too expensive. It breaks my heart that people need to worry about money when it comes to their health and safety. Anyway, I called a couple places to see if I could apply for Medicaid for them because it covers Lifeline. We'll see what happens.

In the meantime, Mr Keyfitz came to me this afternoon and asked me to live with them! He was so sweet. He said I could have one of their apartments and eat all my meals with them (or without if I preferred) and I wouldn't have to pay anything. All they want is someone to do an hour or two of errands for them a day. I've been sick all day because I feel so sorry that I can't help them like that. I have a place to live...we bought a condo. Plus I couldn't take one of their apartments just for an hour of work. I told him I would be extremely appreciative if he'd let me come over and spend an hour with them most days eventhough I can't live with them. They are fascinating people and Beatrice is a bit depressed lately so I like cheering her up. He said he couldn't ask me to help them if they couldn't do something for me. Basically, I'll come no matter what after I move in a month. I think they'll be happy to see me even if they say they don't want to impose. My heart is just broken because I would love to be able to take care of them and give them the security and companionship of having someone around. Luckily, even after 70 years of marriage (!!) they still enjoy each other so much that they aren't lonely. I'm so fortunate to have met such extraordinary people and now that it's almost time to move out I feel so sad that I won't living next door to them anymore.

Last week, my friend Katie and I went to Newport, RI for the day to celebrate the end of the school year. I've never been to Rhode Island before but Katie's from a town really close to Newport so we went to her house for dinner. I loved walking around the town all day. We had beautiful weather (possibly the only day in weeks that it didn't rain even a little) and there were not many other tourists because it was a week day. Seeing all the mansions made me feel like I was walking around in an Edith Wharton book. Since she's basically my favorite author it was a dream come true. It's amazing that all of these huge houses were only summer homes for the rich.









On the weekend I went to Arnold Arboretum. As far as large areas filled with just trees go, it was a really fun place. The Arboretum was established when a whaling merchant named James Arnold died in 1872 and left a ton of money to Harvard to build a habitat that would house "as far as practicable, all the trees [and] shrubs . . . either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air." And although I'm not sure that Mr. Arnold's dream has been realized just yet, the arboretum is massive and uses a computerized tracking system to keep record of the name and origin of every plant on the 265 acres (there's something like 15,000 trees, shrubs, and vines!). Professors do research there all the time and we went on a (surprisingly) fun tour with one. After that we ate a really yummy dinner in Chinatown.



I'm glad that I'm finally doing some of the boston things that I haven't done over the past year. I've felt pretty ashamed of being here so long and only doing things when people came to visit. I plan to do a lot more (including the Duck Tour with or without you (e:Mike)) over the summer!!

Graduation is on Thursday and it is supposed to be 56 degrees with a 70% chance of rain. How unlucky!

Thursday was my graduation. My mom and Mary came all the way from Buffalo, just to suffer through 4 straight days of terrible rain to see me graduate. For the past couple weeks I kept telling my mom I didn't even want to go to the graduation because it's such an ordeal. Plus, I'm going to be here for at least another 4 years so I don't really feel like it's a legit ceremony for me. When you graduate it marks the end of your time someplace and then you leave, right? Well anyway, I hate admitting it when I'm wrong but that was definitely the case here. I am soooo glad I went and I kind of wish I had realized how nice it was going to be so that I could have had more people come. It doesn't really matter because having my mom, mary and jeremy there was really enough.

Anyway, the ceremony was the perfect mix of seriousness and humor. People cheered and laughed throughout the entire thing but it was hard to forget the deeper meaning of everything said. It really felt like a celebration all the way through. At the beginning all of the schools processed in separately, behind their banner. Each school carried their own little symbol that the graduates jumped up from their seats and waved in the air when the President announced their graduation or referenced their school. The law school had gavels, the public administration school had blow up globes, the dental school had blow up crest tubes. Everyone from my school brought a children's book and then we donated them to local schools.

The first thing that happened was a Latin oration by a student. It was at least 10 minutes long and he had it memorized. Only students spoke at the university ceremony, and the degrees were conferred by the president after being presented by the deans. It was a little tense at the beginning because Larry Summers resigned this year after making a speech last year in which he made a reference about women not being naturally as good at math and science. However, he made a couple jokes when students started chanting "Larry! Larry!" about how they didn't have their degrees yet. As stupid as it was, people laughed and there was no more tense for the whole ceremony. There was one student speech which really had an impact on me. Luckily I have a copy since the graduation was broadcast on cable and I taped it. The honorary degrees were my second favorite part. These were 9 of the most extraordinary people I can imagine .

Despite sitting in the rain for at least 3 hours I am sooo glad I went. After the university ceremony my grad school had its own ceremony where we each had our name called and we got our degrees. I think it was the perfect balance of feeling recognized as an individual and also feeling as if you are a part of something bigger.

All lined up


Family and friends lined up at 6:15am! It kind of felt like having paparazzi follow you for a second.


Before the ceremony started everyone tried to stay dry but soon we gave up and put the umbrellas down so that we could see.


This is a professor reading the paper while the ceremony was going on! so funny.


There were so many people it was really overwhelming.


Our little ceremony was under a tent thank goodness.


With mary after it was all over.


Anyway, I'm really thankful that my family knows more than I do and forced me to go-- even if it was freezing and poured the entire time.

I can't watch the Sabres tonight because I don't have OLN but I think that the National Spelling Bee Championship, which is happening at the same time, is probably just as exciting. I can't believe what these kids can do. I've only gotten three words right and there have been at least 20... not that I'm really surprised. I remember when we used to have spelling bees at Hoover. First we would compete in our class and then all the classes would come together in the Community Room and parents would be invited to watch the "championship." It wasn't really hard to get to the championship so my first year in Hoover (3rd grade when we moved to Kenmore) I got to the last round. Having to stand in front of all of the parents and all of the kids in my grade freaked me out so bad that I totally stopped breathing. From that point all the way through the spelling bees at Kenmore Middle, I would intentionally spell the first word wrong so that I could sit and not be nervous for the rest of the time. I give these kids so much credit for dealing with all the pressure of being on tv and put on the spot. I have literally been tearing up every time someone misses a word. They are so cute when they know they don't know the words. After asking all of the allowed questions (definition, origin, etc) one child even asked, "and how do you spell that?" He had a good sense of humor for someone who was out. Also, one tense moment was when the judges actually had a word spelled wrong and they rang their little bell to signify a girl was out. In reality, she spelled the word right and they had it wrong so she had to be "reinstated." How crazy! There are only 5 left right now. I will be watching until the end.

I'm feeling so awful today. First my roommate is coming back tomorrow after being gone for three glorious weeks. I knew it couldn't last forever but I have this feeling of dread. It's been so peaceful without her here. Now she's going to be around all the time because she dropped one of her summer classes (two classes was one too many apparently) so she'll be out of the apartment for a total of 4 hours a week. Thank God I have a job!

I also found out that I didn't do well on my applied linear regression final. It was a group project but my partner took the class for satisfactory credit so I ended up doing almost all of it. Still, I thought we were going to do okay. In the end we got a B/B+ (they only give grade ranges at my school) which is basically like a D/D-. Just to give some perspective, my partner would not have gotten credit for the class if we received half a grade lower. Anyway, the comments on the paper were the worst part. We had to include the program code for the data analysis but I didn't include all of the sub-programs (if that's even what they're called ) because they said they didn't want "the diary" of our analysis. Apparently they meant they didn't want that in the paper portion. So even though our model was okay, the grader assumed we didn't do all these extra steps. In the end his/her comments were so brutal because they were laced with sarcasm. I would never have written such means things to someone even if I thought they spent two minutes on their work. I mean it was a 25 page data analysis!

I've had this horrible sick feeling in my stomach all day because I feel like I've failed. This was a really important class and I've worked so hard this term to learn this stuff. I'm not smart enough to get it I guess. I'm just ashamed of my work and myself and I hate that feeling so much.