oh no the future by Anika H. '26

As I start writing this, I have a midterm in exactly 24 hours. I holed myself up in Radio Society to avoid getting distracted, and yet here I am writing, because the fear in my fingers will not allow me to draw another circuit. I know some day in the near future I will miss this.

This year, I am a senior. Most of the friends I first made here have all graduated and all those afterwards shall carry on Tetazoo’s legacy of fiery chaos when I graduate. Despite hanging out with my alumni friends a lot, I often joke about graduating being the equivalent of dying. It’s funny and dramatic because it’s nowhere close to true, but I am scared of graduation. The grubby larvae that I was when I first came to MIT must emerge from the chrysalis, and I don’t know if my wings will be ready.

It’s the end of October, and the semester is in full swing. I still have most of the year to finish all my technical classes and complete all my graduation requirements. I applied and got into MIT’s MEng (Masters of Engineering) program over the summer, and I haven’t found a lab or a source of funding yet. I know budget cuts have been happening everywhere, but I can never tell whether professors mean it when they say “we think you’re cool but we don’t have the money for another grad student,” or if they secretly think I don’t have the skills.

“What do you mean I need to rest? This can’t possibly be all I’m meant to achieve— they told me I had potential, mother. Was I lied to my entire life? You’re telling me I must sit here now and accept my fate of monotony? No! I may not see the finish line but I know I can still run.”

It’s the 23th day of the month, and I am scared of the future. With the current state of the world, I may have to work twice as hard as I did for the past three years in college because living costs don’t seem to be going down any time soon. I don’t know if I’m going to have the office job I’ve always dreaded, or if I’ll build something incredible and useful to the world, or if I decide against engineering entirely and start doing art out of my parents’ basement. It all seemed so far away just a year ago, and now it’s closer than I would like it to be.

objects in the mirror are closer than they appear

It’s 6:07 pm, and I just turned on the lights because I didn’t realize the sky got dark already. I was working hunched over like a little goblin in a cave with a cursed glowing object for the past hour. My laptop battery broke last week, so I have to keep it plugged in to work while I wait for the replacement. I kept the old battery as a souvenir of how much I’ve used it for learning, searching for textbooks from online libraries late at night and calculating equations I didn’t fully understand until a year later. I had terrible imposter syndrome coming into college and probably still do to some extent, but I know I have earned my privilege to come here and I have done the work to stay here. Eventually, my laptop’s planned obsolescence will catch up to it and I’ll have to get a new one. Maybe by then I will be writing something much more important like a thesis instead of a blog.

“I’m running out of steam, mother. I’m tired. I promise I tried, but I can never tell if I’m trying hard enough. There is still more to sacrifice, and there will always be. Am I to burn my clothes and then myself to keep moving?”

There are 1000 minutes left until my midterm, and I am scared of flunking it. Worst case scenario, I still have all 4 of my flex-PNRs (pass/no-record) left, but I don’t want to walk away from the class not having learned everything that I could. I want to be a competent electrical engineer. I want to finish a large project. I want to spin fire professionally. I want to make an art installation for a museum someday. I want to adopt a cat. I want to fix mechanical watches in my free time. I want to live with my friends after I graduate so I can go canyoning and sailing with them. And I want them to live out all their hopes and dreams as well. But realistically you can’t have everything right? An old Radio Society alum (class of 88’) just dropped by the station to look around and he looked happy things were going well. I hope he is as content with his life as he seems, and I hope I too will be satisfied if I get there.

In a few hours, I will have to sleep so I don’t wake up as a zombie tomorrow morning. I’ve gotten a lot less flexible with my sleeping hours than in freshman year. People say it’s a thing that comes with age, but I think it’s just me indulging myself because I can. Since my first two years at college, I’ve become a bit more disciplined with my emotions and coursework, because I can’t undo actions I took in the past. By the laws of entropy as well, it’s a lot harder to pack an explosion back into its shell than it is to set it off. Bridges are a lot harder to build than to burn, but some are better left burnt. Sometimes I fall asleep to the fantasy of changing the course of a past reckoning, but I’ve learned to leave it be by the time I wake up.

“I want it so badly. I want so many things that your blessings cannot cradle and my time cannot buy. I am a child throwing a fit at the consequences of actions I cannot control. Yet I have no one to blame but myself for ending up like this. I am angry, mother, and you cannot stop my tears.”

In a month and a half, I will be 21. I will legally be able to drown away the sorrows of adulthood with alcohol, but I still can’t imagine drinking something that smells like hand sanitizer. In this and many other ways, I can’t tell if I have grown since freshman year. This is the place I felt alive again, and where I’ve been dragged through the depths of hell. I still have the liveliness of an eternal sophomore, just a little more tired and angry with a few more skills to use and regrets to carry. Though I think it counts for something that I came to MIT with nothing to lose, and now I’m afraid of losing all that I’ve gained. It will be harder finding friends outside of MIT. Finding people who will eat a random red berry from a bush with you, pull stupid pranks like switching the hot and cold water under the sink, or greet you with unintelligible noises will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I’ve never been good at keeping in touch with people either, so I’m also scared I’ll lose the friends I made here. But for now, I will still be here with them wrestling in the lounge, hosing each other down with fire extinguishers, and cooking through the torment of tests and torrent of tasks.

“Mother tell me, are we there yet? How much longer do I have to walk to get where I want to be? My legs are tired and I want to sleep in your arms.”

Next year, I don’t know what I’ll be. Most likely a grad student, or maybe a productive member of society, or even a senior again if I flunk all the rest of my midterms and finals. Knowing myself, the future is likely going to be worse than I hoped for and better than I expected, so I really shouldn’t worry about it as much as I am. I’m running full speed ahead despite not knowing what’s ahead of me. Maybe I’ll run into a wall or fall off a cliff, but that’s a problem for future me to deal with.