Sometimes you just gotta relax by Danny and Allan G. '20

(putting this out there as a message for ourselves as much as for anyone else)

October 22, 2017

The week of Monday, 10/2 – Friday, 10/6 was very, very difficult. We were both sick, had a super long and challenging 6.00 pset (literally stayed in office hours for 15 hours), a 6.042 pset (wouldn’t have been able to do it had our freaking amazing friend not helped us from 11pm – 2am the night before it was due), Danny had a CMS.100 essay, Allan had a Ring Comm Study Break to help plan, and we were assigned 8 – we repeat E I G H T – animation assignments. So the long weekend Saturday, 10/7 – Tuesday, 10/10, could not have come at a better time!

While the weekend was FAR better than the week (just by the fact that it was a weekend, and we actually could sleep in… sleep is wonderful), we were still very, very busy. Here’s why (sidenote: left out boring basic human functions like eating, but those did happen, don’t worry!) (sidenote 2: the numbers in parenthesis correspond to notes at the end of the post) :

Saturday
10:30am – Borderline Exec meeting to plan for our first general body meeting of the semester! (1)
11:30am – Had to skip art club because our wonderful grandparents were visiting from New York. They knew we had a bad week so they drove up to help us clean our room (a dumpster at the time), and to bring us homemade soup (we have the best grandparents in the world tbh). Also here is a picture of us and our grandma doing our massive amount of laundry.

4:00pm – Allan went to take a picture of the statue in front of the green building to make a test for Borderline while Danny did treasury stuff for clubs (2)
7:00pm – Allan prepared Unity files for Borderline (a general one, just to refresh on how unity works, and then one for the statue test) (3)
2:00am – glorious sleep

Sunday
11:40ish am – Woke up
1:00pm – Tested Unity files irl to see if they worked (they did!) (4)
2:00pm – Did animation homework
9:00pm – Emails
12am – Started studying for our 6.042 exam
2:00am – Glorious sleep

Monday
10:30ish am – Woke up
11:30am – Continued studying for 6.042 and started 6.00 pset
3:30am – Meeting
5:00pm – 6.042 in our room
6:00pm – 6.042 in office hours
7:00pm – 6.042 on campus
10:00pm – Danny meets with someone for an event-planning thing, while Allan continues 6.042 studying
12:00am – Get back to Next House
1:00am – Decide we have to give up our spots for apple picking the next day because we still have to study for 6.042
2:00am – Somewhat sad sleep (cause we really wanted to go apple picking ☹)

Tuesday
10:30isham – Woke up
11:30isham – Studied more for 6.042
4:00pm – Went to take a better quality video showing the successful Unity test, but it didn’t work because of weird lighting from the sun at that time. (5)
5:00pm – Dinner with friend
6:00pm – Reshot video when the lighting wasn’t wierd anymore! It worked this time! (6)
7:00pm – After a super busy weekend, we finally wound down by relaxing with friends and roasting marshmallows! (we really wanted to take a picture of this, but we forgot. That’s probably a good sign because that means we genuinely experienced a social interaction in the present moment, while not thinking about any work i.e. blog documentation)
9:00pm – 6.042 Office hours
11:00pm – Recorded footage for a hype video for the Borderline that was shown at our general body meeting!
12:00am – Edited video (7)
1:00am – Glorious sleep

So it may seem like this blog was super random. It probably is. But we just really wanted to get the message across that even if you are really busy, sometimes you really do just have to relax. We were pretty bummed that we didn’t get to go apple picking on Tuesday, because it was going to be scheduled relaxation time. But we still made s’mores with friends on Tuesday night, and that was honestly a highlight of the weekend!
There is a high likelihood that you are a high school senior applying to colleges right now, and we know the deadline for early action is approaching. We just want to let you know that it’s okay to R E L A X.

Notes

(1) Bordeline is a mural project started last semester. It was created to make the MIT Tunnels more aesthetically pleasing, and to also make them a destination rather than a way to get from A to B. The team also made augmented reality animations and an app. We both painted murals, and made animations. This year, since most of the founding team is busy (or graduated), we joined the exec team (Allan as Animation/AR Chiar, and Danny as Treasurer (but Danny also helps with Animation stuff)). This semester the goal is to add more murals so the tunnel is COMPLETELY filled (no wall space showing), and to add more animations. Borderline is also expanding this semester to out of the tunnels. One of the projects is to make AR animations on MIT landmarks! (this new project is still in super early development, but we will post updates as they come!)

(2) The picture Allan took of the Sail Statue to use for the target image of the Unity File