Living to Create by Richard O. '28

These past two years, I’ve unfortunately made a grave and dire mistake…I’ve forgotten why I love to create.

Making things has always been my outlet for sharing my experiences and ideas with the world. I love to build. I love to design. And I love to organize. There is so much opportunity to appreciate the things that go unseen or unnoticed when you create something. A graphic poster can turn a flower on the street or a random traffic sign into the focal point of a masterpiece with a few Photoshop clicks. A set of scrap wood can become an automated plant grow box with a few wires and screws. Photos and words placed meaningfully on a digital page can make a beautiful yearbook spread that will be looked at for decades to come. And it’s this power to turn things that are seemingly boring or unused into the center of people’s attention that makes me love creating. 

But since coming to MIT, I’ve forgotten that part of myself. I’ve spent so much time trying to optimize my life for some things I’m not so passionate about to the point where creating has become an afterthought. And now, anytime I find myself editing something or sketching the idea for a project, it feels more like a chore that takes time away from things that are more “academic” or “professional” that I could be doing. 

But the thing is, I don’t live for things like my psets or midterms. I don’t live for extracurricular-maxxing and Google Calendar optimization. I don’t even live for the definitions of success that are painted on every wall around me. While all of these things have so much value in helping me get further in life, I’ve realized that I have placed too much attention on them than I should have. Because, above all these things, I live to create. And creating, for me, isn’t something that can be right or wrong, good or bad. It simply is creating. It is taking things around me and putting them together in a way that I love, and then giving them to the world when I feel like it. It is bringing my own taste, perspective, and ideas, and throwing them into a soup of editing apps and makerspaces until they come out like Michelin-star platters. It is breaking, cutting, gluing, printing, arranging, rearranging, and then arranging again until I have something that I would happily share with others. And it is something that will always be a constant in my life.

So starting this summer, I really want to spend the second half of my MIT experience remembering that I came here because I love to create. I want to build and design things with other people who love to build and design things. And I’m excited for all the things that my little computer and I come up with moving forward.