Thinking Positive by Rachel D. '16

This school year was pretty terrible.  I don’t think there is an easier way to put that.

I wrote about my first semester in my post called Sophomore Slump. My second semester was a little better.  I took classes that allowed me to stay calm, I started seeking help to manage my stress, and I became more involved in promoting mental health and general health on campus.  But I still found myself overwhelmed a lot of times. If I didn’t have anything to do, I felt guilty – like I should be doing work or something else with my time. Many times, I felt like I didn’t belong.

College can be fun, but it is hard to find a way to balance everything. The good, and the bad.  I want to focus on the happy things.

Here are the happy things.

I Became an EMT

And I absolutely love it. I am helping my community stay healthy, and even though I feel overwhelmed at times, I really love working with this group of people.

LOOK HOW PRETTY WE ARE!

I Learned to Love Poetry

This semester, I took 21W.762 – poetry workshop – with the incredible Professor Bill Corbett.  It was one of the last classes he taught before retiring, and I learned so much. Most of all, I learned to love poetry. I love reading it, writing it, learning about it, and I even got to read some of my own work on my friend Valentina C. ’16’s radio show, poeddictions, on WMBR.

This class also helped me clarify something about my path at MIT – I now know what I am concentrating in for my HASS concentration! I will concentrate in writing and reading poetry. I should probably fill out a form about that….

We Still Have Cats

I like cats. Here are some cat pictures. They’re basically therapy dogs, but they get really annoyed when you touch them and they are really squishy.

I’m going to be on Medlinks Exec!

I was selected as the training coordinator for Medlinks for the upcoming year! I am so excited to teach the incoming Medlinks class about how to Medlink and share my horror stories.

I got my Brass Rat!

I wrote about it here. Ring Delivery was a ton of fun, and I am so happy that I have my beautiful brass rat!

The Year of the Bro Tanks

So many bros.

Minimizing Finals

I’ve started changing my class schedules to minimize finals. Finals are terrible. I only have one this semester, though, and next semester, I’ll have none!

Pretty Room Next Year

I got the room I wanted! It is pretty and large and all mine.

I have an Awesome Summer Job (thanks to UPOP!)

This summer I’ll be working on corrosion resistant piping for oil and gas at TMK IPSCO in Houston, Texas! I am so excited! The company has been sending me care packages and I can’t wait to work there! I leave right after finals week, so it’ll be a rush to pack up, but I can’t wait! I think it’ll also be nice to get a break from the institute for a little while.

I Wrote a lot of Blog Posts

Many of them were just picture posts, but I really enjoy taking pictures and I hope you enjoyed looking at them :)

I got a Pretty Camera

I’M SO HAPPY!

I finally saved up enough to buy the camera of my dreams, and I am so happy with the results :) Smile!

Photo Credit: Eurah K. ’16

Acapella Concerts!

I love acapella concerts! I was able to attend two acapella concerts at MIT this semester – The MIT-Wellesley Toons and The MIT Logarithms! They were both fantastic. Here are some pictures/video I took of them!

The MIT-Wellesley Toons

The MIT Logs

The Logs had some special guests – The Backlogs!

I live in an Awesome Place

East Campus was excited about the end of the semester and marked our excitement by creating a new dorm for bexiles (people who were removed from Bexley) in our courtyard:

Unfortunately, our fantastic housemasters, Kate and Tom Delaney, are leaving us and retiring to Hawaii this summer.  East Campus made them a scrap book and gave them t-shirts from each hall, as well as threw them a going away barbecue with the Delaney’s favorite foods!!

This Place is Beautiful

The peaceful walks along the river remind me that Boston and Cambridge are home, and many times I don’t want to be anywhere else. I do belong here, after all.

Those are some of the happy things, and there will be more happy things to come in the near future. IHTFP – sometimes I feel like I hate this place, but I’ve also truly found paradise.