Life in the Fast Lane by Allison E. '27

People at MIT walk fast. Maybe this is an east coast thing, maybe it’s a college student thing, maybe it’s just an “I grew up in laid-back Hawaii and anything would feel faster than home” thing, but it feels like undergrads walk faster here. The Infinite Corridor⁠01 the longest hallway at MIT, connecting the “main block” buildings on campus is a battleground of different speeds. The tourists walk at a lackadaisical pace, gazing around at the trappings of academia and stopping to take pictures in the lobbies. The grad students and “real adults” walk with quiet purpose–no backpack, just a laptop in hand and the confidence of having a paycheck. The undergrads? We walk like the loch ness monster has levitated out of its lake and is crawling its way down the hallway towards us. 

And maybe that’s because it feels like it is. The clock is ticking on our undergraduate careers. Graduation is chasing us. Everything at this institution feels like it has to be hyper-optimized for time, because at a place designed to provide us with as many resources as possible, time is the one thing it cannot help with. Time is our most valuable resource.

Of course, lots of people here just walk fast because they come from a bustling city, or a fast-walking family. But for me, that ticking clock echoes loudly in my brain. Every day my feet move quickly, and my ever-present routing algorithm moves faster, calculating the shortest route to my destination. Turn right five feet ahead instead of fifteen feet ahead–it’ll shave off three steps from the walk. Take the Outfinite instead of the Infinite–it’s rush hour, and you won’t be slowed down in a narrow corridor. Exit through this door, not that one–it leads to a five-second faster route, and requires 10 fewer stairs to climb. It’s a background process that’s running all the time in the back of my head.

Part of the relentless urge to optimize, optimize, optimize is that every two minutes matters. Every two minutes saved is an extra two minutes to finish that pset problem, to answer that email, to hang out with friends, or (perhaps most importantly) to sleep. Another part is the price tag that MIT puts on being a student here: $300 per day. (Big clarification–MIT offers one of the most robust financial aid programs in the country, and the median cost of attendance for a student receiving financial aid is about $10,000). But still, $300 per day is the sticker value that MIT places on a single day here. It adds a pressure to make the best use of every moment, because it’s not just opportunity cost we’re paying–it’s a massive daily price tag.

Everything is a bit better over summer. No psets, no 10:00 pm meetings, just a 9-5 job and the luxury of time. And yet, for some reason, I still walk fast. That sense of urgency never abates, and I’m not sure if I can turn it off. Walking at a leisurely pace and enjoying my surroundings? It feels foreign now. 

This is probably an unhealthy way to go about life. That’s what they say, isn’t it? “Stop and smell the roses.” I try to pause sometimes, when I’m passing by the Great Dome at night, and bask in the excitement of living my high school dreams. But then I start back up again at a brisk pace, because even though I’m fully aware that slowing down is important, it feels like the marginal benefit isn’t worth the extra time. I’m not entirely sure if that rationalization is correct, but I guess I’ll stick with it for now.

(Title credit to Ojas G. ‘27)