real things by Mel N. '24, MEng '25
on tangibility, mistakes, and community
i’ve started collecting cds. i think part of this has come from wanting to return to physical media, things i can hold in my hand and feel the weight of. there’s a distinct lack of permanence when it comes to accessing my favorite pieces of art in digital space.
i flirted with collecting vinyl for a while, but i’ve only ever bought one record. it was queen’s greatest hits and i think either the record was warped (15% likely) or the suitcase record player that daniel bought at a senior sale01 upperclassmen often sell their belongings for cheap on dormspam as they're moving out and graduate was messed up (85% likely) because when we played it, freddie mercury warbled out a drunken rendition of bohemian rhapsody.
after that, i lost interest in vinyls. not because of freddie mercury — they’re just really expensive now. cheapo records in central square has a few cases of $1 records at the entrance, but it’s rare to find any real gems there.
when i was a kid, i had a binder full of cds and dvds and a player that would strap to the passenger seat in our car. i would sit in the backseat and obsessively watch the bee movie (which i got for my birthday in first grade). i liked flipping through things, choosing something, feeding it into the player and watching it boot up on the screen. i liked how tangible it felt.
over winter break, we took a day trip to seattle. it’s about a 2.5 hour drive and we went to pike place market to meet my friend alex, who was there for the holidays, as well as some of chris’s friends.
that was a blast — one of my favorite memories from visiting seattle in summer 2022 was going to pike place and eating a really delicious pastry with marzipan in it. this time, i kept asking alex if we could go to the marzipan place and they had no idea what i was talking about, and i kept saying, “you know, the marzipan place,” and finally we figured out that it was piroshky piroshky.
we ended up in a record store and i was looking at the cd section. we were going on so many long drives over break that i thought it’d be good to listen to some cds instead of spotify — our spotify playlists had lost some of their appeal.
i bought madonna’s 1998 album ray of light, we said goodbye to our friends, and started the drive back. it was cool feeding the cd into the player and hearing the sound filter through the speakers and listening to the album in the order that it was meant to be listened to.
an hour into our drive, we suddenly got a tire pressure warning on the interface. it was dark, around 9 pm. we were in a very rural place in northern washington. and the soundtrack accompanying all this was a series of psychedelic, haunting ambient tracks — a drastic departure from madonna’s usual style.
UMMM…..
not ideal!!!!
after some floundering, we pulled over to a gas station and inflated all the tires to the recommended pressure and were almost ready to get back on the highway before chris noticed a hissing sound coming from the rear left tire. the pressure had gone down 5 psi in two minutes and upon further inspection, we saw a giant nail firmly embedded in it.
so now we were trapped at the gas station. our phone batteries were both under 20%, but we still needed to look up a youtube tutorial on how to change a spare tire.
winter in the pacific northwest is cold and very misty and very foggy. as we stood there, surrounded by tall, looming pine trees, listening to the tinny sound of the mechanic blaring out from my phone, i suddenly understood why people there believe in cryptids.
this is what it looked like in the rearview mirror as we were passing through bellingham. i was ready to see slenderman any second
we figured out how to access the spare tire and all the tools we would need, but neither of us had the strength to get the lugnuts off the tire.
at this point, a random man walked up to us with a donut and a coffee. he asked if we needed any help. we said, “yeah, can you get the lugnuts off this tire?”
so he set his coffee and donut down on the (wet) ground, took our wrench, and loosened the lugnuts for us.
“oh my god,” i said. “can we do anything for you? like buy you a coffee or something?”
he scratched his head. “ehhh, a few bucks would be nice.”
i pulled out my wallet and gave him the $10 i had in there. he accepted it, fetched his donut and coffee, took a bite, and wandered off into the mist.
this was not a very walkable area. it was close to the highway — just road and gas station, no sidewalks, and he just…ambled off. (an actual cryptid???)
after fumbling through the rest of the tutorial, we slowly pulled out of the gas station. madonna started playing again and i immediately hit pause. and because this was a spare tire, it couldn’t go above 50 miles an hour. which was a problem, because we still had about an hour on the highway to go, and we were crawling at a snail’s pace down the right lane as people beeped at us while they passed. we finally got to the border at 11:30 pm, right before it closed, and inched back home.
when we finally parked, i genuinely could not believe we had survived.
and then i went and bought more cds.
the first thing that krazy bob asked me when i walked into his music emporium: “what’s your elevation at sea level?”
bemused, i said, “0 feet?”
“CORRECT!” he gave me a playing card. “you’re the king of the day.”
the store was full of really crazy things, as the name might suggest. i found a lot of really great albums there: everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we? by the cranberries, pisces iscariot by the smashing pumpkins, blondie’s greatest hits, and when we answered a trivia question at the end after checking out, we were allowed to pick out a free gift from the front of the store. actually, we didn’t even answer the question correctly, but he asked a little girl if we should still get our gift and she decided to spare us. i picked out first band on the moon by the cardigans, which ended up being one of our favorite albums from our trip.
after getting back to boston, i started looking for more places to buy cds. in central square, boomerangs was a beloved thrift store that donated proceeds to hiv and aids resources. it shut down sometime last year and was reopened under a new parent company, more than words. i like their rotating selection of $1 cds to choose from, so i’ve been accumulating more, even though i don’t have a car here in boston or a cd player — though i hope to get the latter soon.
physicality has become a central value in my life. it’s part of why i love knitting and crocheting, because seeing what i make slowly come together with each stitch is immensely rewarding. i can stretch and manipulate the fabric i’ve created, and manifest almost anything i can imagine. it’s almost like 3D printing with yarn.
that same sense of valuing the realness and weight of things is what draws me to labwork. in my urop, it felt like something had perfectly clicked together: i was in the lab learning how to use a platereader, run fluorescent assays, and program a pipetting robot. it all felt so real and i felt right at home.
maybe it’s the fact that when i’m handling physical things like cds or yarn or things in the lab, it’s easier to notice mistakes. maybe i stitched too much when i should have only done one stitch or there’s a giant nail in my tire that i have to fix or my cells aren’t growing. the process of tackling these problems and fixing them feels so natural to me and i learn better from making these sorts of mistakes. with every row of knitting, i’m better at maintaining the tension that i hold the yarn with, and i’m better at keeping track of how many stitches i need to make with a certain color. once, i accidentally left a box of antibiotics out to thaw overnight and i had to remake all of it. that’s something i learned from pretty quickly. i’m a better scientist for it.
when i make bigger mistakes that seem like there’s no coming back from, making smaller ones has given me the resilience i need to get past them.
i recently started attending a weekly fiber arts circle to meet more people in the boston area. this is part of a conscious effort to take a bigger role in the communities i’m part of. instead of isolating myself, i can open myself up to new experiences and learn from others. it’s been really refreshing going to these sessions and having no idea what these people do for work, only knowing the current project they’re working on, which range from mittens and scarves to intricate sweaters and shawls.
and when i have questions about knitting or grad school or the biotech industry, i know people who i can ask for help. i might feel like things are hopeless sometimes, but there are people who continue to take chances on me and believe in me. that has been a lifeline.
this past year has been such a weird transition phase. i tried some things that didn’t end up being good fits, but through all of that i learned more about myself and my working style. i’ve got some new exciting opportunities in front of me that i look forward to exploring — this semester already feels worlds better than the last.
i don’t feel like a fully fledged adult yet, but if i take it one step at a time, and hold onto the tangible things around me for support, i think i can make it.
- upperclassmen often sell their belongings for cheap on dormspam as they're moving out and graduate back to text ↑