A Week in the Life: Optimism Edition by Cristen C. '10

“I like how you say that with a smile on your face,” my hallmate Vinayak ’09 told me that Sunday night, genuinely pleased. “‘Oh I was just working in studio for five hours and I hate my life but it was awesome,'” he mimicked in a higher-pitched voice and some sort of everlasting smile.

It was past three in the morning and I’d just returned home from Studio 7, a land of glue, x-acto knives, mounds of paper, pencil and pens, printers, laser-cutters, and shiny Mac Pro computers. Monday afternoon would welcome my first final review in 4.112 (Integrated Architecture Studio). I’ll tell you more about studio later, but do know that finishing up sketches for that project made me a half hour late to 4.42J/2.66J/1.044J (Fundamentals of Energy in Buildings) that morning.

After the review I had but two hours break before meeting one of my partners for 4.411 (Building Technology Lab). We spent a few more hours building our model of a house in Gujarat, India. I’ll tell you more about this later, too.

I didn’t wake up on time Tuesday morning, so I can’t tell you about the tour of Boston my 11.001 class went on.

In lab, Arka ’10 and I had the only completed model, so we got to go outside and take measurements under cloudy skies. We realized just how dark a house without windows is under diffuse sunlight when we measured 12000+ lux outside and a grand 12 lux inside a room. Yeesh.

That night, I tried to work on a paper but couldn’t. I also didn’t win any art in the lottery.

I decided I didn’t know what I wanted out of a relationship so I tried to break up with my boyfriend. Perhaps knowing me better than I knew myself, he convinced me that we should take a break for a week to clear our heads. It was a really smart idea, so I agreed to this plan. The first night, I cried. Right now I feel okay. I’ve got all this… extra time now (as you may know, time at MIT is of utter importance). I’d always wondered whether being at MIT was really too stressful for nurturing a serious long-lasting relationship; perhaps one day soon I’ll find out.

Wednesday was a beautiful sunny day at Harvard University. Our studio class met at the T station to visit the site for our next project. Armed with sketchpads and pencils and charcoal, we journeyed to a small side street and spent the next three hours on sketching. It was amazing.

At night I went to a showing for 21F.063. We watched Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, a 1979 movie from Japan which is also Hayao Miyazaki’s first full-length film.

I’m still slightly sleep-deprived. Thanks to poor time management the previous days, I spent most of the rest of the night writing that paper.

Today is Thursday. Thursdays always make me really happy because I only have two classes, 11.001J/4.250J (Intro to Urban Design and Development) and 21F.063 (Anime: Transnational Media and Culture). I don’t really have class on Fridays this semester, which makes my weekends start super early at 2pm!

But I can’t stop now. Career Fairs happen every so often, including this day. In my past two years here I’ve never been able to drag myself to these things. Now I’ve decided to go there, shove resumes in people’s faces, and generally just do this summer job search thing right! But while the list of companies recruiting all majors is small, the list of companies recruiting Course 4 students is even smaller:

Cannon Design
CDM
China Vanke Co., Ltd.
Devex
Exponent, Inc.
Novartis

You can count six here. Six! They range from consulting to real estate to firms. Now I’m laying in bed sleepy and somewhat unmotivated. Career Fair lasts for three more hours — all I’d have to go is get my bum up and GO! There is only one company on this list that even interests me.

*sigh*

A smile on my face.

What am I trying to say here?

• Classes make me do lots of cool things besides sitting in a room and psetting.
• Career fairs are aimed at more popular majors.
• The homework isn’t the only thing that’s hard in college.
• Sleep-deprived doesn’t mean unhappy.

I look forward to telling you about more weeks at MIT… :) smile!