Airport Problems, Three Years Later by Janet G. '27

Good morning world! It is Sunday August 30, 4:48AM, which is morning enough. I landed from my United flight coming from San Francisco 5 hours ago. I am sitting on my mattress in Burton-Conner,⁠01 my dorm and my brain has no intention to sleep, which is how we’ve ended up here.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve ended up in a situation like this. In fact, it’s a very full circle moment for me: three years ago, I was also wide awake on my mattress in BC, fresh off a United flight from San Francisco, questioning all my life decisions that led me to this point of my life.

What happened the first time?

Okay quick speed recap. By one reason or another, my prefrosh self had comically terrible luck with flights: that summer I took ~10 flights, and all of them were either delayed, cancelled, or both. (It’s either that or U*ited is a terrible airline, but of course both can be true). I like to think that it was nominative determinism implicitive egotism (???) that they really said the Kiwi⁠02 new zealanders are called kiwis. kiwis are flightless birds. look it up on wikipedia if u want should NOT be permitted to fly in any form. or at least have a really hard time about it.

Anyway, this time it was no different. I was flying from my summer program to go to Boston to start school, and a picture is worth a thousand words, so you can just see for yourself:

*deep breath* allllllright. little did janet at the time know that this was only the beginning... she thought she'd paid her dues with one (1) big flight issue...

can we talk about how out of ALL of these flights. i get it burbank is some random place #sorrynotsorry. but WHY IS BOSTON ALSO CANCELLED???

oooooooookayyyy deep breath janet deep breath

*hyperventilates*

*hyperventilates harder* sorry my lungs are experiencing a technical issue

ah yes thank you u*ited for being factually accurate that you were in fact 10 minutes later than your LAST scheduled time

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As you can see, I landed bright and early into Boston at the prime time of 11:48pm this day. To add insult to injury, they lost my baggage and somehow it was on another flight, so I literally had nothing aside from my carry on and backpack, and given that you know, Boston is notorious for being a city that never sleeps, and everything was closed, I couldn’t even buy bedding. My international student mentors Pranjal ‘26 and Mohit ‘26 very kindly decided to come to the airport and emotionally support me anyway, which was necessary because I don’t think there was any other way in which I would have navigated the MBTA while being emotionally distraught. I also arrived earlier than basically everyone else on campus because I was an international, and so I genuinely just had nothing else to do and no one to crash with; so in typical frosh energy I asked the one Boston friend I knew whether he would drive around Boston with me and we would pull an all-nighter for funsies (because once again, no bed for rest anyway).

Anyway it was great. We got McDonalds, ate it by the water, drove around some more, came back, and then watched the sunrise over the bridge. I eventually got my luggage back and thus acquired my bedding two days later.

Ok so you’re like, what could have happened this time?

It’s literally all my fault. I forgot that I packed all my bedding into the storage pod that I’d rented out with a few friends for the summer, and I didn’t think about it until I like, landed in Boston at 11pm today. Also my luggage got delayed AGAIN (i swear, United, I swear) and so I once again left the airport around the beautiful prime time of 12:30pm. Except this time I took an uber because I am an #employedwoman with #disposableincome. I don’t even know what to say: I again actually originally booked a red eye so I would land in the city and you know, maybe had time to go to target to buy emergency supplies or something, but for some reason (I wanted to attend a friend’s masquerade gala, yes i know it’s literally all my fault) I rescheduled my flight to land at 11pm. BY MY OWN VOLITION. think about the consequences of your action before you change your flights kids

little did i know...

you know what. thanks united for being early for once. at least this helps make it clear that it was actually just 100% on me this time

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It’s chill though. I might be old but not too old to sit on a mattress all night. I ordered my favourite late night Chinese takeout this time instead and yapped with another friend since we are both back pretty early. At this point I’m on track to watching the sun rise over the bridge (again), and as a bonus I even have most of my luggage!

Ok so why am I talking about this?

I have nothing else to do, like what do you expect me to do, sleep on this plain mattress? Sorry my bones are old and I have been spoiled by Real Bed™ with Cotton Sheets and Real Pillows

So in a comical twist of fate, my old bones did in fact fall asleep because the only thing worse than not having Real Bed with my Real Bedding is not getting enough sleep after a few days running around packing and sorting everything out. No sunrise for me⁠03 which ended up being fine since the skies were mostly grey today anyway RIP

But jokes about being old aside, it did feel pretty uncanny to be reminded of how much time had passed between then and now. I was no longer surprised by the wall of humidity when I got off the plane. I ran into luggage issues again and knew that it would be okay because I was tracking the airtags on my luggage. I have the disposable income to call an uber without feeling bad about it. I’m a senior coming home, rather than an anxious freshman asking my mentors how they like the weather and what they’ve heard about BC floor culture.

I spent my entire summer working in San Francisco. People have been asking, how did you find it? and I’ve not been able to say anything more than it was a lot. I worked on things with millions of dollars involved, changed jobs halfway through summer, and used up seventy polaroids for all the friends who visited my loft. I worked the 996. I went to dinners and socials and networking events every single night for three weeks in a row. I saw what life could be like post MIT, and I saw all of my SF-based friends settled and growing in a way that I had never quite seen myself. I was a college senior, and they were all working adults, many of them my age or younger yet much more weathered in years of experience in the Real World. I felt young, fresh, and naive.

It was hard to leave; it was easy to get sucked into the rush of it all. Everyone was doing such important work that would change the world, that had millions of dollars attached to them and even more. The work I was doing was glamorous or at least attached to glamorous causes, and I’ll be damned if I don’t admit that I loved it because it was so grand, so sexy. San Francisco had causes worth believing in and I’d loved it.

And yet, and yet—

I’m back in Boston now. I’m here on campus in my floor shirt, greeting fresh faces, hugging old friends. I ran my gameshow REX event ⁠04 a gameshow with two parts: a spelling bee comedy show (which i riffed off one of my fav comedians), and something else called &quot;dormspam or the onion&quot; which goes into the insane and hilarious things that have happened on the mit undergrad mailing lists... and you guess whether a headline is based off that or the onion. i'll let your brain fill out the rest :P and was met with a lot of enthusiasm in all their ayes and nyes, unsuspecting frosh victims falling into all the right jokes as they spelt the wrong words, and roasts and impressive displays of knowledge that I didn’t even expect. ⁠05 genuinely how does someone know what an umlaut is and how to spell cote d'ivoire off the bat??? I walked to Next Dining with Conner 2⁠06 my amazing floor <3 and Luna and Katelyn got stuck in line at Hibachi as everyone who tries to get Hibachi at Next always do, because it’s just that good. I came back from dinner to take a nap on my Twin XL mattress with a sheet and pillow that I stole from Phoenix, which happened after an hour long yap session where I lounged in his hammock and we gossiped about classes. I hung around the B1ners at their wall event to snipe Veronica, but also to cheer on the frosh breaking the wall and to talk about which watermelons are the best watermelons. I feel old, a little tired, and all too familiar with this campus and its cobbled pieces of red brick, marbled columns, and brutalist concrete.

I love to linger. In San Francisco, everyone always has somewhere to be, and the only place that makes sense to linger at is work when you have a deadline to hit. Here in Boston, my life moves more slowly; none of us really have anywhere to be—at least not yet—and we all linger around, chatting about where we’re from, what we do, and the uncertainty of where we are going to next.

It’s good to be back. <3