CALENDAR
Week of Wednesday, September 1st
(All times are in ET)
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Wednesday, September 2
- Harvard classes begin (and will follow a Monday schedule this day)
Thursday, September 3
- Lowell Tea, 5pm [zoom link, password: 647937]
Monday, September 7: Labor Day (university offices closed)
Tuesday, September 8
Wednesday, September 9
- Last day upon which undergraduates may check-in/register late for the Fall term in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
- Last day upon which undergraduates may cancel their check-in/registration for the Fall term without payment of tuition.
- Plans of Study/Declaration of Concentration due for transfer students who entered in Fall 2019 with second-semester Sophomore or Junior class standing.
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Thursday, September 10
- Lowell Tea, 5pm [zoom link, password: 647937]
Friday, September 11
- HoCo: The Everything Game Show: Andrew Strikes Back, 9 pm [zoom link]
Monday, September 14
Makeup Examinations for 2019-2020 begin.
- Last day upon which undergraduates may drop or add any Fall Session 1 course without a fee.
- HoCo Meeting, 10pm [zoom link]
Tuesday, September 15
- Special Poemicals: Double Reading with Daniel Mason & Joseph Fasano [zoom link]
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 Dear Lowell,
Welcome back and sophomores, welcome to your new home! Well. I’m not really sure what to say about the last few months. We are in a remarkable world historical moment right now and to be honest, no one really wants to live through a remarkable historical moment. This is a moment that seems to never stop demanding from us. We have to be flexible, patient, accepting, persistent, passionate, brave, organized, inspiring, forgiving, generous, committed, and on and on and frankly, it is exhausting. Remember when Australia was on fire and we thought, oh no, the KOALAS! It feels like yesterday and a different lifetime. The fact that Australia basically burned for months and that it is a story we can barely remember feels astonishing. In the interim months, we have witnessed the explosion of this pandemic abroad and its absolute ravaging of the US, the abrupt ending of your school year and evisceration of many of your summer plans, racist state violence at its most blatant on a national stage, a political system that is so divisive and toxic, it feels like political discourse might be gone, and now, the perennial fall monsters of hurricanes and wildfires. But, we have also witnessed incredible acts of human kindness and the power of people coming together. We are having conversations that are decades and centuries overdue. We are accounting for our past while attending to our future. We are discovering how to crinkle our eyes just right behind our masks so that other people know we are smiling at them. We are adapting and surviving and we are, hopefully, using this moment to reject what is poisonous for our society in order to replace it with something productive.
Personally, I have spent the last few months bouncing around a deserted Lowell and tethered to my zoom. Hello to all of you who have tolerated my children breaking in! I’m writing this from my apartment and I can hear such a magical sound. People are laughing in the courtyard! I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to have life back in this space, even if it is only a small percentage of you. Lowellians afar, we haven’t forgotten about you. We are doing so much planning to figure out how best to support you and what kind of events you want to be a part of. If you have an idea, let me or the programming committee or HoCo know. Check the calendar and participate!Come to talks, play games, join panels. The HoCo’s game show for sophomore orientation was a masterpiece of insanity and eye-searing gifs and so much fun. You have a virtual entryway and a tutor who is always there to help you, sophomores have sophomore advisors, and I am, of course, always here for you for any concerns. I’m grateful for our zoom meetings and I’m always happier to have a day filled with a lot of meetings with you rather than a day filled with….basically any other work-related things. This year, my schedule is always going to be here. I’m going to update times regularly depending on what you guys need.
Academically, you should be in courses now. I know some of you kind of missed the boat that shopping period and early registration were a thing, Way to disconnect over the summer! But also, now you have to scramble a little – get in touch with faculty right away and get access to Canvas sites and all that other good stuff. Add classes! It sounds more annoying than it really is. Though shopping and classes are starting earlier than ever, the add/drop period is still good through October 5. You have 5 weeks, like normal. The other thing you might have noticed about classes is that you were allowed to enroll in two courses that meet at the same time. Normally, this requires an ad board petition but this year, we are just kind of letting it happen. This means that it is on you to work out with your faculty how to make this work. Just because you technically can sim enroll, doesn’t mean that you necessarily should. There are a lot of reasons why simultaneous enrollment might be a bad idea. Be reasonable. Think about what you want to get out of your semester and what you might be sacrificing if you enroll in a course that you never attend (hint: your education?). If this year follows the normal pattern, midterms should start like tomorrow so I look forward to talking with you all about those shortly.
Welcome to 2020-2021, team. I’m going to start just calling this 2021 now because I am done with 2020. I’ve missed you.
With LowelLove,
Caitlin
Caitlin Casey, Allston Burr Dean of Lowell House
lo-abrd@fas.harvard.edu
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 Nothing, not even a global pandemic, can stop the great tradition of Lowell tea. While we may not be able to serve baked brie, brownies, or tea just the way you like it, we will still be serving up fun conversations all semester long.
Join us this week for a chat with Ross Simmons, a Lowell senior! This is a casual and brief event that gives you a chance to get some face time with other Lowellians. We’d love to see you there!
Nina Zipser and David Laibson
fdlowell@g.harvard.edu
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ASK BETH, YOUR HOUSE ADMINISTRATOR
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 Dear Beth,
What is happening to this place?! Online classes and community contracts -- where's my Harvard gone?
Signed, Anguished in Atlanta
Dear Anguished,
My.harvard is alive and well and sitting in the cloud. Are you not in the cloud with it?
But I know, I know. I feel your pandemic pain. We've screeched from swing housing into a new building and to a full stop in what seems like 30 seconds (in professor years). My head is still somewhere in March, my laundry in April, and my laptop is on life-support.
Yet we will soldier on this fall-- all of us together-- in a new, virtual universe where no one really knows where we are headed. We'll be huddled together like a crowd in a spaceship (implicitly), exploring strange new worlds like Shindig. We'll seek new life, new iterations, and boldly go where no Harvard student has gone before. And your captains on this enterprise mission will be Nina and David, ably assisted by the rest of us on deck in our (imagined) spandex onesies. Caitlin gets to be Spock.
Beth Terry
eterry@fas.harvard.edu
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What is the Lowell House Committee? It's a group of Junior Common Room members (undergraduates) who plan and fund events to build House Spirit! We just finished all of our planned events for Sophomore Orientation, and we're beginning to plan what events we're going to have for the rest of the semester.
Bring your ideas! Bring your House Spirit! We are open to any and all suggestions! We have money and we need your help spending it!
Friday Night HoCo will be kicking off the semester with a fun and wacky gameshow! Don't tell Caitlin Cassey, the chair of the honor council, but it's high-key a knock off of all the game shows we could think of. We didn't cite our source. OOPS...
Our inaugural gameshow was hosted as part of Sophomore Orientation. It was a blast but a certain team captain is upset about his team's performance. He tied with Ross Simmons and that is just...
Come play alongside the rest of the house. If you're lucky you will be sorted into Team Andrew!
Did I mention that Andrew writes the questions????? See you there!
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Join us for a Special Double Poetry Reading on September 15th featuring alumni DANIEL MASON and JOSEPH FASANO, 6-7pm [zoom link]
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FROM THE FELLOWSHIPS TUTORS
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Lowell House Fellowships website
The Fellowships section of the Lowell House website features an annotated list of common fellowships designed to make it easy to find fellowships that will fund whatever it is that you're hoping to do. Check it out at http://lowell.harvard.edu/fellowships
Lowell Fellowships mailing list
Want to know what fellowships are out there? Want to know about them before the deadlines appear in the newsletter? Want more information on the fellowships listed below? Subscribe to the fellowships mailing list to get notices about once every week or two of upcoming deadlines and things to think about (relevant for sophomores, juniors, and seniors). To subscribe, go to http://lists.hcs.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/lowell-fellowships.
Hannah Shaffer, Meghan Blumstein, Georgia Stirtz, and Fanele Mashwama
lohofell@fas.harvard.edu
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FROM THE PRE-CAREERS COMMITTEE
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The Pre-Careers Committee tutors are available for one-on-one meetings with students during office hours listed below.
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Isaac Hung
Areas: Management Consulting, Pre-Med
isaach0927@gmail.com
Book here: [calendly link]
Arjumand Masood
Areas: Management Consulting, Data Science, Machine Learning
arjumand.masood@gmail.com
Book here: [calendly link]
Amelia Muller
Areas: Non-Profits, Political Campaigns, Local Government, Applying for Summer Funding
mameliamuller@gmail.com
Email to set up meeting
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Eshwan Ramudu
Areas: Data Science, Software Engineering, Biotech
eshwan_ramudu@g.harvard.edu
Book here: [calendly link]
Julie Salzinger
Areas: Management Consulting, Fellowships, Non-Profits
juliesalzi@gmail.com
Book here: [calendly link]
Suproteem Sarkar
Areas: Tech, International Development, Research, Graduate School Applications
suproteemsarkar@g.harvard.edu
Email to set up meeting
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Not brewed, just spilled.
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Lowell House Dining Hall Re-Opens with More than Two Dozen Rotating Menu Items
Students still overwhelmingly pick chicken parm sandwiches.
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On-campus residents begin thrice weekly testing
Living in isolation on campus reveals darker truths: "I don't even brush my teeth that often." - Anonymous
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Send a fun picture of yourself to lohonews@fas.harvard.edu from wherever you are and you may be featured in the next issue of The Lowell Bell!
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