Take a break from Cambridge, and use funding from Harvard to take an exotic vacation during J term. It's okay. It furthers your education.

J-Term Plans

FM’s 15 recommended J-Term proposals.

By Charlotte H. Alter

It may only be October, but U-Hall is already e-mailing us about our J-Term plans. The UC will fund student-initiated events during J-Term’s last week, but they have to be on-campus. For those looking for a little more (Harvard-funded) excitement this winter break, here are FM’s 15 recommended J-Term proposals.

1. Get funding from the physics department to study gravity disparity between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres by skydiving in Peru and New Zealand. Galileo did his thing 400 years ago, somebody’s got to update that data.

2. Help the VES department stay up to date with their technology by analyzing the effectiveness of their cameras in dark nightclubs.

3. Go to Italy and flirt with Italians. It’s romance studies.

4. Get a grant from the classics department to buy enough popcorn to rewatch “Back to the Future,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and anything starring Molly Ringwald.

5. Apply to the Sanskrit and Indian studies department to fund your yoga classes, and the obligatory tikka masala you need to refuel your chakras.

6. Take a picture of yourself supporting the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Tell the history of art and architecture department that you’ve “situated yourself in dialogue with the work.”

7. Learn guitar.

8. Take your “Science and Cooking” research to the next level by comparing the chemical makeup of German beer with Japanese sake.

9. Analyze medieval dance culture by asking the medieval studies department to buy you a suit of armor. Then get jiggy with it.

10. Take the chemical half-life of the peanut butter sandwich you left in your fridge in October. Chemistry?

11. The School of Public Health will probably sponsor your trip to Laos if you promise to send home stool samples.

12. Make the astronomy department send you to Space Camp. Remind them that failure is not an option.

13. Ask the oceanography department to fund your scuba diving lessons in Lake Como.

14. Deconstruct your Hungarian bar receipt as a hist and lit text.

15. Travel around the country recording sordid tales from Harvard students’ sex lives. Send the bill to folk & myth.