MIT student blogger Alexa J. '20

Things by Alexa J. '20

A collective end-of-the-semester brain dump

Breathe in, breathe out. Wow. I’ve barely had time to breathe let alone blog. I wanted to do an end-of-the-year reflection but thought it would be better for other people to just write a blog for me (although some are also my own). I’ve collected here some of the responses from a very small sample of the MIT population, mostly just the people I interact with regularly, so this is really only a snapshot of the diverse thoughts and feelings that exist in the MIT bubble. It’s a little long but I wanted to show you it all: the silly, the poignant, the ones that I really connected with, and the ones I hope you will connect with.

Things that make me happy

  • When dining has my favorite muffins for breakfast
  • Waking up in time for breakfast
  • Naked brunch
  • Regular brunch
  • Sushi in Maseeh Dining
  • Yamatos – all you can eat sushi!!
  • Domino’s at 2AM
  • When it rains and I get to wear my rain boots
  • When it rains and I get to wear my waterproof flip flops
  • Warm weather
  • When I get to Mass Ave when the walking symbol is on
  • Resting heart rate decreasing
  • Puppies
  • trying new things! From rock climbing to coding
  • Killian court, even with the tourists
  • The sailing pavilion got a couch
  • Spontaneous picnics with the team
  • That new gorillaz album
  • Taking a 2 hour nap
  • Going to bed after a long and completely exhausting day, knowing i can get enough sleep that night
  • binge watching rom coms till my eyes literally cannot stay open
  • Running the Mass Ave-Museum of Science bridge loop
  • Junot Diaz teaching creative writing (he won a Pulitzer!)
  • realizing that grades aren’t the only thing that matter
  • eating my heart out after disastrous midterms
  • Late nights psetting and even later nights with my favorite people
  • Reading all day instead of doing urgent school work
  • Getting a bad grade, but still realizing how much I’ve learned to get to this point
  • the impending summer where i will explore more of boston and be more free
  • Having a killer final project
  • When my exam score is above the average
  • Planning out classes for next semester
  • Thoughts of going home
  • Walking through the infinite and talking on the phone with my parents
  • the friends i’ve made here
  • the things i’ve learned
  • the things in the future that are yet to come

Things that depress me

  • Psets
  • 5.12 (Organic Chemistry) psets
  • 5.12 exams
  • Anything related to 5.12
  • talking about grades
  • Resting heart rate increasing
  • The show I’m binge-watching is leaving Netflix on June 1 and I have finals :(
  • Sushi in maseeh dining
  • Cold weather
  • Boys
  • Girls
  • Losing friends :(
  • the work that layers on back to back to back to back and my life seems to go from pset to pset to paper to exam and before i know it the semester has gone by and i question whether i’ve cherished it
  • i fail a test I spent the last 30 hours studying for, what’s worse, my friend that studied a total of 2 hours gets 95%.
  • Feeling like I understand absolutely nothing and there is no amount of time/effort that could make sense of anything in my brain
  • Getting killed by your final projects
  • Getting fat
  • Getting sick and not being able to take time to deal with it bc of work
  • Wildly depressive mood swings :(
  • Parents/professors assuming that if I don’t do well it’s because I didn’t try
  • Professors that are bad at teaching
  • The MIT Administration
  • Having weird relationships with family or parents as you change and grow in college
  • Having weird relationships with family as they change and grow while you’re in college–remarriages, divorces, new births.
  • Anxiety
  • the uncertainty of the future, growing old, and growing apart from the ones closest to you
  • Insomnia
  • Being a $1000+ flight away from the people you love
  • Feeling lonely, because there aren’t the people that love you unconditionally here
  • Feeling like there’s no way you’ll be able to work hard enough to be adequate
  • Overwhelmed sometimes (all the time)
  • History classes
  • People bashing the humanities
  • people bashing other people
  • seeing people comparing themselves to others

Things Off the bucket list

  • Lasers/using lasers to slice through objects.
  • Became the president of a dorm
  • Built a CPU in 6.004
  • Learned how to CAD (computer aided design)
  • declared my major
  • Found a cool new UROP i love
  • Learned to program
  • started taking pictures again
  • Montreal road trip!
  • Skydiving
  • White water rafting
  • Made a bird costume out of paper
  • Got pretty fluent in Spanish
  • Met new awesome people and made some new friends
  • slept with a cat
  • Rode a bike in a suit in the rain
  • sang in an acapella group
  • Started feeling really sure of what I want to do after graduation
  • Realized how much i love my friends
  • cooked food with good friends
  • Discovered a new academic interest
  • Acted on a love interest
  • Challenged myself to love more, to let go, to live, to do more of what I am passionate about

Things to do for the future

  • get over imposter’s syndrome
  • Abandon STEM and become a super-hipster philosopher
  • discover my true passion and live every day to the fullest doing so
  • take a grad level class
  • cross-register at Harvard :)
  • fly somewhere exotic with friends over spring break
  • Take the time to smell the flowers
  • Explore more of Boston especially the food
  • Sleep before 2am
  • Take a nap on killian
  • Pass 8.02
  • Launch a startup
  • Go to medical school (possibly)
  • Get my brass rat
  • Get a boyfriend
  • Get a girlfriend
  • Get a friend
  • Learn to be more social
  • Stop being so stressed
  • Focus on the great things about MIT not just the sucky things
  • Get a job
  • Paint murals
  • Do an exercise
  • Decide my major and not switch lol
  • find myself a husband who can cook and jam out to music and laugh at my bad jokes
  • More road trips
  • the long, sleepless summer nights that are occupied by warm conversations instead of psets
  • read the books that have been collecting dust on my shelf all year, i just want to live in a library for a few months and read
  • finish the pirate’s license
  • learn more japanese
  • Graduate
  • Do an internship at a large company
  • Research in CSAIL
  • Travel the world
  • See and pet a sloth
  • Go to Cape Cod and relax on the beach
  • Mend my relationship w/ my parents
  • Laugh a lot
  • Make sure people know how important they are to me
  • Make a real impact in the world