Rats ! by Shorna A. '25

I did… kind of poorly on an exam recently. This exam (which was for 6.s966, Symmetry for ML) means nothing, in the end. I’ve finished my major requirements; I’m taking classes for my MEng early, so, in theory, I could drop any one of my classes with practically no consequences for my long-term plan. I can drop 6.s966 and absolutely nothing bad will happen.

Despite that, I felt inconsolably bad about the exam for a few days. It’s been a long time since I’ve so thoroughly bungled a test. There are many reasons that this particular mistake happened, including the eclipse of numerous pre-Spring Break deadlines and exceedingly poor sleep, but I’m used to expecting a lot of myself, and I was a bit baffled when I just… couldn’t deliver. The day after the exam, I laid in my bed for a while, staring at the soft eggshell paint of my ceiling and pondering my exam performance.

When I closed that exam book, my exhaustion-addled brain couldn’t suppress the desire to go back just 48 hours, so I could’ve slept just a bit more the past two nights. I wished I could go back a week, so I could fix the bug in my 6.7930 (ML for Healthcare) PSET a bit faster. I wished I could’ve transported myself back to pre registration, to change my course selection. Frankly, any number of different actions at any number of junctures might have prevented this outcome, and, as unimportant as the exam was in the grand scheme, I felt guilty. If I had just had more foresight, known just a little more, I could’ve done something differently and avoided this. 

My mind drifted from the exam, eventually. How far would you go back, if you could? What would you do differently? 

I often wish I had more seriously considered being a course 7 or 20; I’ve loved every biology class I’ve taken at MIT, but I’m a 6-3, and the waning practicality of cramming a 7 double major into one or two more semesters isn’t lost on me. In the end, a biology major likely wouldn’t have changed much in terms of my trajectory — my credentials as a 6-3 with a 7 minor are not so different from those of a 6-3 and 7 double major. That given, I’m pretty certain I would’ve been happier if I had just taken more biology classes earlier. My motivations for initially forgoing a biology major were complex, but in the end, I think it was a mistake. 

I probably should’ve made small changes in my choice of classes, rearranging the order in which I took various courses or optimizing time commitments more effectively. 

There are some things I wish I had tried earlier. I started singing at the beginning of college, and I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it, but I regret not starting earlier. At the beginning of this semester, I tried out for three a cappella groups, and was lucky to get into two, but I ended up turning both down. I think if I had more seriously considered a cappella a year or two ago, I would’ve been ecstatic to join such a group. At this point, though, I am feeling pretty fundamentally tired, and realistically, I’m better served by putting my extra time into research.

I’ve included numerous “rationalizations” in the course of listing my mistakes, describing the ways in which they aren’t so bad. Most of these mistakes are, in fact, relatively small, but I’ve certainly made big ones in my time. 

Immediately after my botched exam, I took the red line to the Boston Common, where I wandered into a cafe and flipped open a book. After a few hours of reading, I stepped back into the street, greeted by the diffuse brightness of a cloudy sky and a soft, enlivening smattering of frigid mist on my face. I descended the steps to the subway and scanned the pearlescent red tiles that indicate the entrance to the red line. I thought of October of my freshman year, the first time I took the T to the Park Street station with an ex-friend. I was so much younger then, starry-eyed and pathologically prone to seeing too much good in people. I’ve been burned many times because I believed people were kinder than they were. I really regret the friends I chose as a freshman. 

I wish I had spent more of my time in Bangladesh talking to my grandfather before he died. I was lucky to spend many, many hours getting to know my maternal grandmother, but my grandfather died in his sleep when I was 10, back when I was barely able to hold a conversation in Bangla. I’ll never get to know him.

I periodically deeply regret not becoming a doctor. I regret how much time I spent feeling abjectly terrible about myself as a child. There was a boy I really wish I had admitted I loved.

All of this is a dangerous rabbit hole. For most of my life, I devoted myself to living without regrets. Having thoroughly demonstrated that I’m a deeply regretful person, this mostly manifested as being as diligent as possible. I didn’t regret exam scores in high school because I was neurotic in my endeavor to avoid such mistakes. This also manifested as a deep-seated phobia of oversights. I didn’t submit my MIT application during the early round, because I felt I hadn’t yet put enough time into the essays. I worried I was in for a lifetime of regret if I submitted early and got rejected. I’ve always spent the full time at every test, triple- and quadruple-checking for errors that I might’ve overlooked. I spent 15 minutes annoyed at myself for the tiny miscalculation I made on my last 7.03 (Genetics) PSET, wishing I had been more attentive. Apparently (according to my very-insistent friends), I am always visibly stressed while driving because I’m compulsively anxious about hitting someone.

The reality is that I’m defined by my mistakes as much as I am defined by my successes. People are like paper. One cannot make it through life without some crumpling. We learn from the ways we crease; the particular mistakes I must guard against are the ones that have, in the past, left the most indelible of marks. I have become infinitely less naive than I was as a freshman. That said, I worry about letting my creases become tears; constantly endeavoring to avoid regrets has (evidently) made me a more tired and stressed person, and my therapist has periodically pointed out my difficulty trusting people.

I’m spending the first half of Spring Break in New York with some friends; today, we visited Flushing. After indulging in some excellent seafood udon and poking around the neighborhood for 5 hours, we boarded the 7 train, which we rode back to Central Station in Manhattan. While the urban jungle of Queens flashed through the windows, I thought, again, about going back to my freshman fall. I would be a different person, now, in any number of ways, if I had to replay my life. More knowledgeable about biology (and probably less well-versed in operating systems). Probably better at singing. Less ridiculous in hindsight, perhaps. Less rough around the edges. 

But I wouldn’t be me, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to develop my friendships in the same ways. As I hefted the stoneware rat statue I had acquired at an antique shop (picture included below! The rats are very cute!), I giggled at a particularly absurd joke my friend had made. In another world, I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to enjoy this reality, which is undeniably pretty wonderful. It’s different from the one I planned, and sometimes different from the one I wish for, but wonderful nonetheless. I am crumpled, but still totally intact.

SUBWAY RATS