for change in (expected + unexpected): by Allison E. '27

Before coming to MIT, I consumed a lot of Content™ about college. Probably too much content. Some of that was my own doing, whether it was YouTube advice videos or romanticized audiobooks or way too many of the MIT Admissions blogs (oops). But some of it was also partially unwilling, mainly via the endless stream of short-form videos spoonfed to me by various algorithms. Whether or not I consumed this content intentionally, though, it all added up to a lot of expectations—both conscious and subconscious—about what college would be like. Picnics on a sunny quad, aesthetic library study sessions, late night conversations… the list goes on.

But now I’ve been here for two years. At real college, not imaginary internet college! There’s been a lot of the ways my life has changed, both expected and unexpected, so I figured I should compile a (non-comprehensive) halfway-done list!

Expected — Weather

This is the one that everyone from [insert place without seasons] probably brings up way too much. I’m exceptionally guilty of this, because even though it’s completely expected, it’s still exciting and confusing and most definitely different. Most people who know I’m going to school in Boston remark on how cold it is, but the most jarring part isn’t actually the lower temperatures—it’s how abruptly the weather can change. At home, the closest I came to checking the weather was reading a school email once every month or two: “With the consideration of our current rainy conditions, I am letting you know that slippers are allowed for tomorrow”. Now, I have to check the weather every morning to decide how many layers to wear, whether to bring an umbrella, etc.

For reference, here’s some snapshots⁠01 even the weather app is like ‘‘it’s 75˚ and sunny, but this is Boston so we’re still making the background sad and dreary’’ of October weather in Cambridge vs. Honolulu:

this is how INCREDIBLY consistent the weather in Honolulu is

(this is just a standard week--there are crazier jumps)

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As you can see, I was incredibly weather-spoiled at home. So far, though, the radically different weather has been really fun! I like cold weather much better than hot, and it’s fun to put together outfits with layers or snuggle under heavy blankets at night. Also, I LOVE SNOW.

Expected — Sleep Schedule

In high school I went to sleep around 10:30 pm, and woke up at 5:30 am.⁠02 traffic :( When some of my friends started college on the east coast, sometimes I’d text them in the evening, eventually signing off with an “I should go to sleep…” And then they’d say “I should probably do that too.”

Hawaii Standard Time is six hours earlier EST…

Based on that alone, it was pretty evident that college was going to change my very respectable high school sleep schedule. And, as my roommates can attest, it most certainly has—my bedtime is now around 3:00 am, and I wake up around 10:00 am⁠03 ...usually 1:00 pm on weekends 🫣 . In general, I’m getting about the same amount of sleep as in high school, but the problem is that I’m more naturally an early bird. That’s generally a very lucky thing to be at any time except for college. I feel more tired than the number of hours say I should, and when the days get short I’m sometimes only awake for three or four hours of sunlight…

In my defence, I do have classes or club meetings til 8:30 pm several days a week, and since most of my friends do as well, we’re mainly able to hang out late at night. Thankfully, most days my classes also start around 11:00 am, so I’m able to sleep in much later. But yeah, these are largely excuses. I could go to sleep at normal hours, but I think I’ll just wait til I graduate 😆

Expected — Schoolwork Difficulty

Everyone says that MIT is hard. Everyone⁠04 using “everyone” here for dramatic effect; this is not ubiquitously true hears that MIT is hard, and everyone tries to prepare themselves for the fact that MIT is hard, and then everyone is sad when MIT is, in fact, hard. By everyone, I mean me. Freshman fall was great, because PNR⁠05 Where classes are graded as A/B/C = Pass no matter what, and anything else = No Record–basically meaning grades don’t matter as long as you’re passing! made the transition much less stressful, and last semester I tried my best (and I think succeeded at) renormalizing my expectations of grades away from the obsessive straight A’s. But that doesn’t mean MIT still isn’t hard 😭. I think the biggest challenge so far for me has been that PSet problems require much more creativity than I’m used to. A lot of them feel more akin (in spirit) to problems I’ve seen in math competitions like the AMC–except that for those tests, a score of 70% (on a multiple choice) might put you in the top 5% of competitors, so the pressure of solving any given problem isn’t as intense. PSets are often collaborative efforts, which definitely helps, but it’s still been something to adjust to. (It’s been two years). (I am not adjusted). (Send help).

Expected — Food

As hard as the folks over at Soylent are working to eliminate humanity’s constant need for food (I firmly disbelieve that Soylent belongs to this category), my body needs food. Several times a day. In reasonably large quantity. How to food?

As I’d heard before arriving, MIT’s dining halls⁠06 other bloggers have spoken much more extensively on this topic are decent, but tiring if repeated. I knew I’d want to start cooking relatively often, and cook I have! It’s been really fun playing with new recipes, cooking with friends, or trying to replicate foods from home (Hawaii has the BEST food and I will fight you on that). I’ve also re-confirmed my conviction that the best way to make friends is freshly baked cookies :)

Unexpected — Roommates

Dorm rooms! Roommates! Shared bathrooms! Oh my! This is probably the most archetypal aspect of the American college experience, and consequently the one for which I’ve been force-fed the most misleading content. After a thousand different TV shows and YouTube videos, I was under the impression that my college roommate, especially my freshman year roommate, would either become my best friend or my worst enemy. That they’d shape my college experience, the other friends I’d make, and the kind of person that I’d grow into. It felt like a lot of pressure for someone randomly chosen out of a hat⁠07 if you know someone going in, you can often choose to room with them, but this is how it worked for me , and I was worried that if I didn’t become best friends with my roommate, I’d be missing out on a core part of the college experience.

These are all lies. LIES, I TELL YOU! 

Ok, maybe not lies. There are definitely people who become incredibly close with their roommates, and people who have absolutely terrible experiences. It’s 100% worth the effort to try to get to know your roommate(s). But my freshman year roommates are not my best friends in the whole world. They’re amazing people, and were absolutely awesome to live with. But we weren’t attached at the hip like people are in the movies. And more importantly, I didn’t miss out on a core part of the college experience because of it. I made the most incredible friends outside of my dorm, and we had all those special moments without being roommates–4 am conversations in study rooms, giggling on couches in lounges, and cooking up monstrosities in dorm kitchens. And in a stroke of great luck, this past year I even got to move in with my bestest of friends, Miranda :D

Unexpected — Sleep Ability??

I’ve always had trouble falling asleep—nothing debilitating, but it always takes me a while. Because of this I was a little worried about falling asleep with roommates, especially since I was sleeping on the earlier side⁠08 earlier side being like… 1:30 am… for the first few months. Turns out, however, that I’m constantly just TOO TIRED for it to matter. I can now fall asleep in ten minutes with the lights on, people talking, and the window wide open, and I’ve even slept through an air mattress being blown up! I know that this doesn’t work out so nicely for everyone, so I’m really grateful that sleep is coming so easily to me now, but I guess occasionally our bodies are more adaptable than we think?

Unexpected — Confidence

I have never felt as confident and comfortable in my own skin as I do now. I think this is partly a function of being more social, and partly a function of being a nerd at a nerd school surrounded by nerds who think being a nerd is cool, but whatever the cause is, it’s great. I can make phone calls without needing a 20 minute cool-down period afterwards. I can strike up conversations with new people without running out of things to say three sentences in. I don’t think about laughing too loud with my friends, and if I feel like skip-run-dancing down dorm row, I’ll do it (…if it’s 4 am and the street is mostly empty). It’s an improvement from a very low baseline, but it’s still a step up that I didn’t expect. 

Unexpected — Social Needs & Energy

I’ve always considered myself an introvert, sticking to the corners of rooms or outskirts of social circles, and generally feeling self-conscious. Over the last two years of high school, I definitely became more social, and a lot more comfortable with putting myself out there, but it always felt like I was just getting better at cosplaying extroversion, or just learning more social skills. 

After my first couple months at MIT, though, I started to wonder if I wasn’t an introvert after all, but rather a very shy extrovert⁠09 I subscribe to the school of thought that introversion vs. extroversion is a function of whether socializing takes energy from you or gives energy to you that was finding their people and slowly coming out of their shell. Freshman fall was an avalanche of social situations, and somehow I was coming out of them with more energy than I went in with. It was just… so much fun. When I did start feeling tired, I tried my usual self-care method–staying in and relaxing–but it didn’t seem to do much. Instead, every outing with friends left me feeling refreshed and re-energized. More importantly, when I didn’t have time for those hang outs, I could feel the loneliness getting to me. A lot.

The tail end of freshman spring was rough. I was busy, my friends were busy, and the chasms of time between being together were widening, widening, widening. I could feel my mental health falling into those gaps, and it was scary to realize that I was relying on other people for my happiness. How does one deal with that? Well, I guess by coming up with a weird personal pseudoscience to explain it:

The reason I think this change wasn’t an intrinsic, introvert -> extrovert change, but rather environmental factors bringing out dormant extroversion is that I’m now looking back at high school with slightly different eyes. I did get energy from some social situations, I just didn’t have the chance to hang out with those people often enough to notice. I’ve also realized that just ‘being around’ my friends–studying in the same room, sometimes silent, sometimes with some background chatter–is just as beneficial for me as going out on an excursion. I think the reason I never noticed my ambient social time needs is that in high school, I always had it. My friends had a specific table in the courtyard where we sat every day. Before school, between classes, during lunch, and oftentimes after school til 6:30 pm, many of us would be there working, or chatting, or relaxing. Last summer, as well, I was working in an office with two other interns, and there was the same ambient social energy to existing and working in the same space as other people. 

In the year since I figured this out, keeping an eye on my social needs has helped a lot with mental health, and having my best friend as my roommate this year also doesn’t hurt :D. All this to say, I maybe should’ve been more flexible about my identity as a supposed “introvert” and paid attention sooner to what my body/mind were actually telling me about my needs.

Unexpected — Drive and Ambition

Sometimes, I feel like I used up my whole gas tank in high school, and for the last two years I’ve been coasting on fumes and inertia. I don’t think this is unusual, but it’s not something that I fully expected, and not to this degree⁠10 ok, when I imply that this is a precipitous drop in drive or ambition, I mean relative to high school and to other MIT students. . I think some of it comes from MIT being such an intense place. I end up using most of my drive just to get through classes, and when everyone around you is doing absolutely insane things–things you know you literally aren’t capable of–it sometimes feels like it’s not worth striving at all.

That sounds terrible. And from many perspectives, it is terrible. But I’m not entirely unhappy with my “lack of drive.” Sometimes I think of it as an issue of diminishing marginal returns. If I put in the effort to do well in my classes, find decent-but-not-prestigious work opportunities, and generally develop useful skills, that’s plenty enough to set up a future. For every extra hour of grinding, the additional reward diminishes exponentially, and the total amount of time I’d have to spend turning myself into the model MIT intellectual is simply enormous. I’d get so much more utility out of that time if I spent it supporting my friends, or making music, or helping run a high school science tournament. More importantly, in the words of Hank Green, “your own joy can be something you produce.”⁠11 This has been my favorite quote ever for years!! I would like to note that I wrote this into the blog a day before his commencement speech, and when I heard him mention it in the speech I think I jumped around and ran a lap around my kitchen 😆 Sometimes, I just want to produce joy for myself and my friends, and I’m ok with that. Because it brings another change:

Unexpected — Happiness

https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/cant-stop-smiling/