Embarrassing Mistakes I Have Made…So Far by Leya E. '30

It’s been about a month since the first day of classes. Isn’t it so funny how fast time passes?. No. No it’s not. Because even though it’s only been a month, I have had SO MUCH WORK. And also this week was lowkey hell week for all the frosh since all the GIRS apparently have to have their midterms at the same time.⁠01 Okay technically I am not entirely a part of this since my GIRS are in ESG and therefore my midterms were at different times but I still had too many tests this week. So it hasn’t been a good time for anyone. But you know what’s good about weeks? They end! And then it’s the weekend! Isn’t that so poetic?

Anyway yes, I have had a lot of work so far, and have subsequently already been learning a lot and doing a lot of new things! Both in class, and out of it. But when you do things that you’ve never done before, you’re pretty much bound to make mistakes. But that’s ok, because mistakes are how you learn! In the wise words of Ms. Frizzle: “Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!”⁠02 Side note I got sidetracked looking up what Ms. Frizzle's quote actually was and ended up going down a Magic School Bus wiki rabbit hole. Why is there so much Magic School Bus lore??? However, mistakes are often also incredibly embarrassing. So here is a list of mistakes I have made so far and how I have learned from them, ranging from slightly embarrassing to “I wanted to lock myself in my room and never come out” embarrassing.

Getting to Dunkin slightly too late in the morning.

My first class is at 9am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and because I am not a morning person I often like to stop at Dunkin before class for a nice little energy drink. The only problem is that apparently everyone else has the same idea and the place is often packed. But the first few times I went I did not know to expect this, so I ended up waiting forever for my drink and subsequently either had to run to class or just leave without getting it.

Lesson Learned: Order ahead like 20 minutes in advance if you want to guarantee getting your order in time. But also if you leave for an hour and come back it could still be there so don’t stress too much.

Getting sniped at this angle:

WHAT THE HELL CALEB

The bloggers have this slack channel where we take pictures of each other around campus like little creeps.⁠03 (affectionate)   Here is a post that can explain it much better than I can.

And unfortunately on this day I was a victim of this. It was also like one of the top ten worst days of my life so.

Lesson Learned: Be more aware of my surroundings i guess.

Leaving a Class Early To Walk Into The Wrong Class

This is the reason why the day I was sniped was the worst day of my life. On Mondays, I have a 1.5 hour lecture that starts at 9:30am. For some reason, at 10:30am I thought that the lecture started at 9 and was just going over time. This was not helped by the fact that people were just leaving the room for some reason. Usually, I check my calendar on my phone to ensure that I actually remember my schedule. For some reason, on this day my phone was dead. So I ended up leaving this lecture 30 minutes early, and then mistakenly believed that my 11am recitation started at 10:30, so I walked into the 10am recitation instead and only when I pulled out my tablet to look at my calendar did I realize my mistake. I tried to exit as nonchalantly as possible, but that was impossible because my entire backpack spilled on the floor by the doorway.

I don’t actually think I learned anything from this.

Waving at People Who I Actually Do Not Know

I don’t consider myself to be a terribly face blind person, but I dunno when you meet a lot of new people their faces seem to all blur together. So I may or may not have made the mistake of either waving at or smiling at people who look similar to someone I have met, like, once. It is embarrassing every time it happens.

Lesson Learned: Learn people’s faces….

Making a HackMIT project that doesn’t work

Yeahhhh. I only figured this out after the judging was over. I was slightly suspicious beforehand but I looked at the code and realized that we had made a mistake. Oopsies! It’s okay though. We were not exactly trying to win anything, and the judges seemed to be more concerned with projects that were actual, like, business ideas anyway. If you’re curious about where we messed up, the link to the github is in my last post :3.

Lesson Learned: Check to make sure your code works, and then check again, and then check a third time, and then you still probably haven’t checked enough.

Being bad at throwing paper airplanes

A couple weeks ago I played in an Assassin’s Guild game called Die Osingverlosung! It’s about a town in Germany that has a lottery to give land to people that they can use to farm on. It’s also about a weird stick, trains, and cake! I was the mayor, which meant my main job was to oversee contracts that people made to sell land. I also got to organize the lottery, and made the announcement at the end that I was retiring because I was, quote, “so fucking old”. I was very amused that my quote ended up making it into the wrapup packets that we got at the end of the game. I also had the goal to learn some slang(because I’m so old), and overused the phrase “no cap” a lot.  However, as the mayor I was also part of a group of religious people who needed vegetables to do a ritual. In order to get the vegetables, we had to do some sort of challenge, and once someone did a challenge no one else could do it. I tried to do a challenge early, but ended up failing it, and did not go back to complete one until the only feasible challenge left was making a paper airplane. The only issue is that I have never once in my life made a paper airplane that could fly, or thrown a paper airplane correctly. Multiple minutes were spent trying to teach me how to make a paper airplane, and those minutes were all in vain. It didn’t end up mattering since we ended up getting a vegetable another way, but it was still embarrassing.

Lesson Learned: Do not agree to make paper airplanes ever. And also sometimes mistakes can be both embarrassing and funny.

Auditioning for a bunch of acapellas and only getting a callback for one(that I did not accept)

Before classes started, all the acapellas on campus had their auditions! Creating a sight known as audition row. All the groups were lined up in one hallway with tables ready for walk-in or scheduled auditions. There are 11 acapella groups on campus,⁠04 excluding Next Sing I think? and I ended up auditioning for 6 of them. I only got a callback for one⁠05 which I will not be disclosing because they are a good group just not for me , and I realized that I didn’t actually want to join them, so I was 0 for 6 in audition row. It didn’t help that I also got sick the day before all the auditions started, had no water, and was also just generally nervous as hell. I think it ended up being a good thing though, because I realized that I probably wouldn’t have time for how long the rehearsals for some of the acapellas are.

Lesson Learned: Sometimes you try things and they don’t work out, but at least you tried! And maybe something better will come of it :)

Sitting in 6.1903 office hours waiting for a checkoff without realizing that my wifi was off and so the checkoff didn’t go through.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. I did get quite frustrated waiting there, without realizing that there was a very easy solution to my problem. Oopsies.

Lesson Learned: Try to exhaust all possible options for solutions before giving up.

Starting all my psets the day before they’re due.

Hey, so this one may or may not be a mistake that I keep making, but it’s okay because at least I know it’s a problem! The thing about psets is that they are very much not designed to be completed in one night and also usually very much not designed to be completed alone. But the problem with doing them last minute is that there’s really no time to ask other people for help and so I may or may not have yet to turn in a fully finished pset this semester. But it’s okay! Because at least I know I have a problem, and that’s the first step to solving a problem! And also it’s PNR so like at least I don’t have to worry too much about my actual grades on each pset. But um yes I would like to actually complete a pset this semester.

Lesson Learned: Don’t start things the day before they’re due! Spread out your work! And don’t work alone! :3

Double booking myself and then feeling bad about having to miss something but then no one cared

The aforementioned Assassin’s Guild game also happened to run at the same time as the first rehearsal for one of the acts I’m in for Next Sing, and I felt very bad about this. Ultimately, I decided to go to the game instead of the rehearsal because I also felt bad for already having to reschedule when I was going to be in the game, and I thought that maybe missing the first rehearsal wouldn’t be that bad. This line of thinking didn’t prevent me from feeling very bad about missing the rehearsal for the entire week, and thinking that something very bad was gonna happen. I then went to the second rehearsal, and nothing happened. Everything was fine. And then I felt embarrassed for worrying so much.

Lesson Learned: Try not to double book yourself, but when you do at least tell someone about it. You can’t control other people’s reactions to that information, but you don’t always have to assume the worst either.

Thinking that people like me less than they actually do

The funny thing about this mistake is that it’s one that I’ve actually been making for years! I have this weird little tendency to think that anyone who has expressed any interest in hanging out with me only wants to do it once and that any subsequent time I see them I should make no effort to talk to them at all.

And this is one mistake that I seem to never learn from.

I always believe that any positive social interaction I have is some kind of fluke, and that the second I leave everyone will have completely forgotten about me. But I feel like now, somehow, I’m finally starting to learn from this mistake.

I am often shocked by how many times I am waved at first. By how many times people I know excitedly come up to me to talk about something. By how many times people in a club make space for me to join their conversation.

One of the most embarrassing things in the world is when you try to join a conversation, or worse, make a joke related to the conversation, and then suddenly everyone just becomes silent and stares at you. And you know what? That hasn’t happened to me here. And even if it does, I don’t really think I’ll care.

I’ve found people who like hanging out with me, and it was much easier than I expected. The real embarrassing thing was how completely I was proven wrong.

Lesson Learned: There is always someone out there who will like you, but you’ll never meet them if you don’t put yourself out there and believe that you can be liked.

These are just some of the mistakes I’ve made so far, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty more in the future. But you know what, that just means more learning! Isn’t that so poetic?