168 Hours by Shorna A. '25

A/N: This post is coming out weeks after I intended for it to; please forgive me! If it makes it any better, this is a very long and fairly thorough post and also writing it required grappling with my existential dread about the passing of time and a lurking fear that I am wasting my life. So, there.

I’m a big fan of Saturdays. I often have a PSET due Friday nights, so Saturdays are my ‘off’ days; I get up around 9, waste a lot of time eating brunch in Next dining, and proceed to mess around in some 3E lounge or other for the rest of the day. Sometimes, I go to the gym in the morning, and affectionately listen to Alison bemoan bicep curls and incline sit ups. A few weekends ago, at 1PM on a Saturday (most holy of days), Leo and Athena were sitting in ML. I don’t remember all that much except a certain feeling of lightness; my next assignment wasn’t due for 2 whole days (!!), so I was in no particular rush to finish anything. The sunlight felt almost generous as it streamed through the large, Charles-facing windows of the lounge. I sidled up to Athena, hoping to engage in some dumbasseryTM, but I soon realized with chagrin that Athena had a spreadsheet open, and was doing something horrifying with Leo. 

‘We’re adding up our hours.’

Needless to say, I walked away with some haste. Leo enjoys being helpful, and sometimes he assists people by having them do an exercise. The instructions are simple: split up all 168 hours of the week based on how you plan to spend them. Athena and Leo have been doing this since our freshman year. It’s a smart idea; the goal is to, very objectively, determine whether or not you’re overcommitted. It’s a responsible idea. 

It also makes my skin crawl. 

There are a few reasons for this. For one, at this point in the semester, I had a growing suspicion that I was chronically overcommitted and needed to do something about it, but I had no particular intention to. I’d picked up a series of extracurriculars in the last semester, and I was slightly annoyed at myself for continuously accepting increasing quantities of responsibility with blatant disregard for myself and my time. I wanted to do all of it, though, so I kept going, continuously pushing down my uneasiness that the barely-afloat ship was going to go down in flames in a depressing way, rather than a spectacular one. Secondly, I strongly dislike the oh-so-prevalent commodification of time at the institute. As a student, time is wealth, time is precious, time is scarce. There’s a constant ticking in the back of my head, a timer until the next deadline. You can never truly let go during the semester. Portioning out exactly 2 hours a day for calorie consumption feels like a willing acceptance of time as an ever-present, prohibitive girdle on my existence. 

Despite everything, though, I realized after some reflection that I was, in fact, fairly curious as to how I actually spend my time, and how that measures up to my expectations. Even though I was worried about being overcommitted, things seemed to be going fairly smoothly, so I wanted to know exactly what was going on. And so, I tracked everything I did for an entire week, blocked into 15 minute intervals. The intention was for it to be an accurate reflection of how I actually spend my time, but I suspect that I was probably more productive this week than normal, because I knew everything I did would be recorded. There’s a spreadsheet linked below with the breakdown!

First, though, it would probably be helpful if I did a quick rundown of everything I’m doing this semester. Like most people, I am taking classes! I’m in 5 this semester; 6.046, 6.033, 18.413, 7.05, and 21M.301. I have things to say about all of them!

6.046: Design and Analysis of Algorithms – I like this class a lot. 6.006 (Introduction to Algorithms) was a bit of a nightmare for me, so I anticipated dreading this experience; shockingly, though, I think I have realized that 6.006 sucked because life generally sucked freshman spring, not because I actually dislike theoretical computer science. The lectures are very engaging, and the process of solving the PSETs is really enjoyable; I appreciate the elegance of algorithmic solutions a lot. 046 making the endorphins go whoosh. 

6.033: Computer Systems Engineering – I strongly dislike this class. It’s just… I spend much more time either baffled or aggressively annoyed in this class than I would like to. When Mihir warned me that the Design Project expectations were unclear, the papers were difficult to wade through, and the 25% participation grade was atrocious, I rolled my eyes, thinking it was a him thing. It was not a him thing. 033 is a CS major requirement, and I am convinced that if I actually were more sincere about it I would care more about computer systems, but oh my GOD this class is annoying.

7.05: General Biochemistry – This is the first biology class I’m taking at MIT! I promised myself I would take it as a treat, and I’ve been having a lot of fun. The first few weeks were a bit slow, but Yaffe is a very adept lecturer, and I think the class will get a lot harder. I will, however, complain about the 1.5 hour lectures at 9:30 every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the paper PSETs that must be turned in on Monday mornings. Not cool. 

18.413: Basic Bioinformatic Algorithms – Another algorithms class! This has been… interesting. It’s a new class, so it’s kind of disorganized, but I’ve generally found the textbook and PSET content fairly interesting, plus it’s super relevant to my research interests. I really like algorithms… never thought I’d live to hear the day. 

21M.301: Harmony and Counterpoint I – absolutely baller HASS. This class is a surprising amount of work; we have composition assignments that have been taking me upwards of 5 hours a week (L+Ratio), as well as music theory exercises. Nonetheless, lectures are good, and I feel more musical than I have in a while. I’m back at the piano, and my atrophying pinkies have recovered after a few good weeks of practice. I plan on concentrating in music, and this class has done nothing to dissuade me from it.

I occasionally do other things! Here’s a list of my other commitments:

Next Exec: I’m Vice President of Relations this semester; this is my first time being on Next Exec, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I ran for this position. Perhaps the biggest change is the deluge of email I now deal with. I have a problem with notifications; I physically cannot have unread/unresponded to messages in my texts or email inbox, so the amount of time that I now have to spend making sure things aren’t exploding when I open my gmail is a little embarrassing. We also occasionally meet with the House Team and Heads of House, and we have weekly Next Exec Meetings.

UROP: I have a UROP in the Computational Biology Lab at CSAIL this semester. I’ve been working with a Cornell student who’s in the area for the semester, and I’ve been having a lot of fun! We do the codey-code and actually (?!) enjoy the codey-code. 

Blogging: This is a job! That I have! And I don’t write enough for! Feel free to shame me. I swear I’m trying to do better – I have so many half-written blogs but they’re all cringe and angsty and I’m annoyed. I will drop more posts more often I SWEAR.

Medlinking: idk man people just ask me for bandaids

Next Sing: My dorm’s casual acapella group! I’m leading 2 acts (songs) this semester and singing in 3, but rehearsals hadn’t yet started during this week, so you won’t see much for it on the spreadsheet other than arrangement polishing.

RPM: I’m a Resident Peer Mentor, which means that I generally attempt to be helpful to the freshmen in my wing. I’m supposed to be a go-to for academic, emotional, and social issues and also emergency situations. If this sounds stressful, it kind of is! RPM-ing is really meaningful to me; I hope that I have in some capacity made my freshmen’s experience easier. It’s also kind of hard to balance with the rest of my life, and can sometimes render me very emotionally burnt out.

Some time must also be spent on generally attempting not to die – 2000 calories and 8 hours of sleep? ezmoney (this is a lie this has never been ezmoney). Also I occasionally exercise, or something?

Socializing: I must socialize for extended periods of time (without simultaneously working) at least 2-3 times a week if I want to maintain my sanity. If you notice huge chunks of time labelled ‘fuck around’ time, it just means that on Tuesday night I was so fed up with work that I went down to 2W and did nothing useful until 3 in the morning. 

Therapy: golden hour babieeeee. I love therapy; it’s the one hour in my week I leave free for emotional processing. I’m not sure if I should be like, you know, processing things for at least a few of the 167 hours in between, but emotional compartmentalization is my best friend, until my therapist points out the very obvious reasons I have been feeling like shit and then I feel mildly stupid. :thumbsup:

Now that I have spent far too long explaining everything that I am doing this semester, here is the spreadsheet describing exactly how I spent every day for one week. Here are a few takeaways:

1. I do more work than I thought I did. To be quite frank, I was under the impression that I was a bit of a potato who shirked all of her responsibilities. I mean that (mostly) in jest, but I did have the impression that I was a little bit less studious than I actually am. Including lecture time, I did somewhere between 55-60 of work for the week (depending on what counts), which I think is about as much as I can reasonably expect of myself. 
2. I like, have to lay in bed for some amount of time after classes or I cannot survive. I didn’t realize that this needed to happen for 30-45 minutes every day. 
3. I should stop skipping lectures. I missed two this week despite normally good attendance and I was so disoriented afterwards. Playing catch-up is never very fun.
4. Learning the worm is the best way to spend 1.5 hours ever.
5. I’m probably not overcommitted! Things seem fairly okay, and I feel fine. I also feel a lot more secure in getting my stuff done now that I know I have enough time to do it.

And lastly, that my life is insane. I think, in the process of nicely formatting this spreadsheet, I realized how absolutely surreal my existence is. Baseball by Hippo Campus is one of my favorite songs; I play it often during my walk to class. There’s something very apt about walking across Briggs Field under a bright blue sky as the lyrics “There’s something fiction about the way that reality is going.” blast in your ears.  I go to MIT and I get to do things I love and find meaning in all day long. 

Most people here, I think, live with the ever-present fear that there’s simply not enough time. Getting an education feels like a desperate attempt to outrun the decay of your brain, constantly fleeing the moment at which you lose the ability to see the connections, find the patterns, solve the problems. There’s so little time, so much to know and learn. Time used to be so leaden, with the brutal impassivity of cold marble. It’s so easy to spend everyday working when that’s how you parse things. Do something great, or else your existence will have been futile. Time is the only thing worth anything, in that paradigm. 

My understanding of life has changed; time has unfurled in the wind. I’m trying to spend my time doing the things I love with the people I care about.