The title of this blog is an oxymoron: there is no typical day at Yale. Sometimes afternoons are spent dashing from Morgan Freeman’s talk to an exhibition; other evenings are spent on late night runs to Froyoworld with my roommates. But there are certain events which typify my days during school; I’ve chosen to describe a Wednesday and a Saturday from my second semester of freshman year to give you a taste of what life is like at Yale.

Wednesday:

9am: Wake up, check emails and read BBC news, as well as The Age.

9.30am: Head to Commons – an enormous, wooden panelled dining hall – to eat a hot breakfast with my friends. My favourite breakfast items at Commons are eggwhite omelettes with mushrooms and peppers, maple-flavoured oatmeal with slivered almonds, and waffles topped with strawberries. I also love the chocolate chip pancakes, but these are only available on Fridays!

10.30am: Go to linear algebra. The class is taught by a professor in his nineties – he’s been doing maths for a long time!

11.30am: Go to introduction to programming. This class is particularly intense: one of our weekly assignments was to program a simple version of guitar hero!

12.30pm: Have lunch in my residential college’s dining hall. My residential college is called Jonathan Edwards, and is the reigning champion for Yale’s intramural sports competition. 

1.30pm-4.30pm: Go to my part time job in the Yale Art Gallery. I work in the Coins and Medals department, and my work entails sorting through coins and paper money. I found some round Australian 50 cent coins once, which was exciting – it’s nice to see something from home while on the other side of the world!

4.30-5.30pm: Relax, nap, or listen to music.

5.30pm: Meet up with friends for dinner. Dinner is a great time to catch up with people who you haven’t seen in a while, although Yalies probably say that they’ll catch someone for a meal far more often than they intend on doing so!

7pm: Meet with my programming partner to work on the weekly assignment. This can take any amount of time – we’ve left the programming office after midnight a few times. 

10.30pm - late: Meet with my economics class to work on the weekly economics assignment. If all goes well with programming, I head over to the library to meet with most of my economics class  - our class has nine students in total. 

Saturday:

10.30am: Wake up! If I’ve had a late night on Friday, sometimes I’ll sleep in a little later.

11.30: Head to brunch in my residential college. Brunch is the best meal of the week, and on Sundays, the Jewish centre often has bagel brunch, with smoked salmon, cream cheese and New York Cheesecake.

2pm: Meeting for the cultural council of the International Students Organization. These meetings take place in the cultural chair’s common room, and we organize events such as an international food night, a cultural show, trivia nights, speakers on intercultural relationships, and a lunch tag to match international students with other international students for meals. 

3pm-5.30pm: Rehearsal for the Jonathan Edwards College Philharmonic. This orchestra is a lot of fun- the current social chair loves to bake us cakes for our snack break!

6pm: Dinner in my residential college.

7pm: Freedom! On a Saturday evening, I usually go to Global Grounds, which is a late night coffee/games room. It opens at 10pm, and closes at 2am, and if I need to write an English paper, I often head there for the source of free brownies and caffeine. If I’m writing a paper, I usually keep on writing after it closes, and go to sleep at 4. It’s very easy to get distracted at Global Grounds – last time I went, I got into a conversation about engagement with religion without believing in God – and the person talking to me about this was a very orthodox Jew! Every fortnight or so, I go out on the weekends. My favourite parties are the ones organized by the International Students Organization, as my friends generally go as a large group. 

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Maddy is a current Yale undergrad and one of Connect Education’s VCE Physics lecturers. Physics enthusiast, lover of economics. Attended the announcement of the Higgs boson while hyped up on chocolate. Loves Tim Tams and Milo too much for her own good.