picture the world by Boheng C. '28
my phone's storage space hates me
i have taken two thousand, four hundred and forty photos since i came to MIT. my photo album conveniently lists them in chronological order, one after the other, in perfect linear narrative since i first stepped on campus.
but i’ve found, increasingly, that memories don’t work that way. i’ve found that memories don’t often fall in orderly queues aligned with time; they meander and bifurcate and grow into each other. each place on campus and in boston — classrooms, dining halls, dorms, street intersections, parks — evoke moments in the past, or sometimes collections of moments spread over months at a time.
thankfully for us, google photos not only displays its standard chronological view, but also lets you see where you took your photos, in the form of a heat map:
each cluster on the map — bright red and orange — indicates a spot of high photo density and a clump of memories. here are some of the places that have the most memories:
1. massachusetts ave crossing outside lobby 7
like most students, i made the daily pilgrimage last year from my dorm in the west side of campus to my classes in the east side, and then back again in the afternoon. a pedestrian crossing across mass ave bridges the two sides — possibly the most iconic crossing on campus.
2. 6.2000 lab
the past semester, i took an intro lab in electrical engineering. sadly, i ditched most of the
lectures and recitations01
my bed was cozier
, but i did try to make it to each lab session every friday afternoon. for a class that delayed the start of my weekend by three hours, it was incredibly fun and gratifying! we made a piano of light:
a frequency-modulated laser morse code transmitter:
and, of course, two op-amps passionately in love:
3. back side of simmons
the front entrance of my dorm, simmons, faces vassar street. there isn’t much reason to go around the back side — it’s a thin sliver of lawn bordered by railroad tracks and populated by just a few lawn chairs.
one december night, though, it started snowing. i hadn’t seen snow in years as a native of los angeles; from my tenth-floor window i saw the parking lot outside blanketed in miraculous soft white. at that moment, i was drafting my final linguistics essay with my friends alice ’27 and sovannjet ’27; we rushed down the elevator and out the back door and our faces were met with a rush of snowflakes in the air:
my friends were sophomores then, so they had already experienced a boston winter and were well-acquainted with the sensation of ice on bare skin. but for me, it was tantalizingly novel; i gazed skyward and ran through the snow and gulped mouthfuls of ice from the air. i wanted to live this moment forever — forever and ever beneath windy sky and clouds and breaths of snow.
when we finally went back upstairs, my friends noticed that my hair was full of glistening ice.
4. fourth-floor stata balcony
last year, winterfest was held on december 10 in the stata center’s first-floor lobby. we lined up for hot chocolate and peppermint and gingerbread cookies. i got hot chocolate and waited for my friends to arrive so we could sit together. but after around fifteen minutes, they never came, so i searched for a place myself.
eventually, i went outside in the freezing cold and sat on a plastic table on the fourth-floor of balcony of the stata building. it was foggy and dark and murkily silent and i could only see the ghostly outline of building 56 across the sea of fog from where i was sitting. but it was calm, and i sat there underneath the balcony lights and wrapped warmly in a puffer jacket, sipping hot chocolate with molten marshmallows and staring into the distance and sipping hot chocolate and staring.
i sat there for ten minutes, then twenty, until my last few sips of hot chocolate were already cold. it was uncomfortably chilly but i didn’t want to ever leave.
i would come back to the balcony a few more times, once after i finished one of my fall finals and once during iap, but i never sat there for more than a few moments before i returned to the warmth inside.
5. charleston shipyard
i visited boston with my family around two years ago, before i had any suspicion that i would one day be accepted to MIT. one november day, we walked along the freedom trail02 a walking path that connects sixteen historical sites in boston and eventually ended up at charleston shipyard, near the end of the trail.
we stayed there and watched the moon ascend over the charles river. we were exhausted and our legs cramped but we stood there and listened to the background noise of boston — to water ripples and crickets and traffic and lazy trains traversing longfellow bridge.
almost exactly a year later, instead of doing a 5.1203 intro to organic chemistry pset, i decided to bike there and try to recreate that moment.
6. carson beach
last year, my high school friends wanted to meet up one last time before we parted off to college. we wanted to go to the beach some time in august, but our plans got postponed and then postponed again. when the rest of my friends finally managed to pick a date, it was september and half of us had already left.
not wanting to be left out, i decided to pack a towel in my backpack and also go to the beach, albeit a boston beach three thousand miles away from my other friends. i left an 8.02204 intro to electricity and magnetism lecture and hastily packed and hopped on a bluebike05 boston's bikeshare . it took me an hour to negotiate the mass ave traffic and navigate through the south boston streets, but after a few miles of narrow bike lanes and gridlock and questionable asphalt, i arrived at last.
i didn’t exactly have a plan of what i would do on the beach. since i didn’t bring my swimsuit, i just laid down on the sand and just began doing my 5.12 pset. i watched waves cascade and seagulls bicker; i watched the rush hour traffic along the beach and i watched the sunset sky turn orange and cyan.
for a moment, my friends and i were together, separated by an entire continent yet together on our own beaches, united by waves and ocean and sand.
- my bed was cozier back to text ↑
- a walking path that connects sixteen historical sites in boston back to text ↑
- intro to organic chemistry back to text ↑
- intro to electricity and magnetism back to text ↑
- boston's bikeshare back to text ↑