feeling old by Gosha G. '24

I spent the last two weeks of IAP abroad. I had thought about applying for GTL,⁠01 global teaching labs, a MISTI program that places students in schools abroad to teach short courses like so many of my friends had, but my desire to spend time working on my UROP research ultimately won out. Still, I felt like I needed a break, a change of scenery, so I semi-spontaneously planned a trip to Europe with Kano⁠02 blogger crossover!! and another of my friends. That’s not what this blog is about, though we will certainly write a blog about the trip in the near future. This blog is about feeling old, and about coming home.

I flew back from Europe on February 3rd, which coincided with a record-breaking cold wave in Boston. As I waited for my Lyft in the frigid parking lot of Boston Logan airport, my friend, K., texted me asking what was taking me so long to get back, since it had already been a couple of hours since landing. I said I was on my way. She told me to hurry up. When I walked into my room twenty minutes later, I found her and two more of my friends in there, hanging out, waiting for me to get back.

Over the course of the last semester, my room has become a lounge of sorts, a gathering place for people on the floor.⁠03 when I say the floor, I mean Burton 1, my living group It makes me ridiculously happy – I’m glad that people find my space welcoming and comfortable. It feels like coming home. This past week, ever since I got back, I keep noticing just how much B1 feels like home. I’ll go to class, but at the end of the day I just want to go home, back to BC. I’ll check to see who’s around, hang out for a bit. I’ll make tea and go do work in my room, and someone might come in and join me. In the evenings we’ll stop working and just sit around, talking about everything and nothing. It’s beautiful and simple and easy and I can’t believe it has taken me so long to find this.

K. and T. on my bed

You see, I’ve been feeling old lately. I watch K. and the other freshmen run around B1 and think about how I used to be where they are now:⁠04 except not really, because fuck the pandemic younger, more confused, full of some sort of giddy, unstoppable energy. I’ll be honest: I’m jealous of them, that energy, the fact that they’ll get to have four years on this floor that I love so much when I only get two.⁠05 due to both the pandemic and the renovation of Burton Conner

Because where am I? I’m starting my junior spring, which means I have just three semesters left at this school. I’ve been here long enough that when my younger friends ask me for advice, I’m able to give it. I barely go out anymore; I usually go to bed at the oh-so-early hour of 1 AM. I’ve quit so many of the clubs that once meant a lot to me. I blog less.⁠06 though I am trying to be better about this one I haven’t really been meeting new people, and I spend most of the time that I’m not in class just hanging out with the people I live with. When I consider all this, compared to everything I did last year, I feel boring. Shouldn’t I want more? Logically, maybe, but all I feel is content. I’m more focused on a smaller number of things, and it feels good. I feel calm. I’ve had time to figure enough things out. For once, I feel more stable than not.

When I was in elementary school,  a teacher once told me that she thought I would make a better adult than I did a child. Setting aside the ethics of saying that to a child, I was glad to hear it at the time. I think she understood the vague unease I felt as kid: always a little weird, often quiet, and generally unsure of how to approach other people. As I grew up, that unease slowly melted away, both thanks to experience and deliberate efforts on my part.

This is to say that I’ve never really been sad about getting older. I’ve always felt ready for the future, excited even, because I knew it would be more comfortable than the present. With age came more opportunities, more freedom, more confidence. Although I didn’t have an awful time in high school, I remember it feeling like a precursor to college, when my real life would begin. I couldn’t tell you why, exactly, but I must have felt constricted. Socially, I never felt like I completely fit in, and I decided to just wait it out⁠07 I distinctly remember thinking, it must get better, right? and it does. that's what this post is about. until I got to college. Plus, I was so focused on actually getting in to college that I didn’t have a lot of time or energy to focus on my happiness.

So, coming to MIT felt revolutionary, because it was. Since coming here, I have had the chance to live many lives, to embody several different versions of myself. I’ve gone through many social circles. Every year, I’ve lived in a new dorm. I’ve taken classes in many different fields. I’ve reshuffled my priorities like a deck of cards.

Now, though, I think I’m done with the drastic changes. I’m sitting in my dorm room in BC and I feel content in a way I haven’t before at MIT. I’m ridiculously happy with my living situation: B1 feels like home in a way that I didn’t really believe I would find in college. I’ve sorted out my academic priorities, and I see a clear path forward into my future. I’m working on research that I’m passionate about and feel agency over. I’ve decided that I want to take a gap year, but also that I want to apply to grad schools in the fall. I have a general sense of what work interests me, and what I want out of my career.

I finally have a direction to move in, but for once in my life I’m not in a rush to get to the destination. It’s not even that I’ve never before focused on the present. For a long time after first getting to MIT, I couldn’t really think about the future because I had no idea what it would look like. It felt like standing at the edge a cliff, looking down into the abyss, scared to take the plunge. That was a sort of present-mindedness, but it was forced. I had to focus on my present because the future was so uncertain. The contentedness I feel now is completely different. I could race into the future, I could keep looking ahead. I just don’t want to. I know it will come, and I’m not in a hurry.

I feel old, and it’s weird and bittersweet. I’m glad I have had enough time here to find myself and some degree of serenity. As much as I’m jealous of the energy and innocence of the freshmen, I don’t actually want it. I’m sad only because there isn’t that much left, now. This semester will pass, and then another, and then I’ll be staring straight down the road to graduation. Where did the time go?

For the first time in maybe ever, I don’t want any of this to end. I know that I’ll be ready when it inevitably does, and I know that I will grow so much more in the time that I have left here. And yet it doesn’t feel so pressing, not anymore. I’m not in a rush. I’ll finish writing this blog, and then I’ll close this tab. I’ll walk out into the kitchen, where E. is making lemon bars⁠08 shout out to Paolo, actually, for the recipe. in a quirk of fate, Paolo is the B1 GRA and is very good at providing food and baked goods when it is most needed while we wait for K. to get back. Tonight, we’ll probably sit in my room again and talk about nothing. I won’t think about passage of time, so that I can savor it more deeply.