Study Break! by Laura N. '09

MIT is hard. Seriously. That’s why we have study breaks.

I know that sounds weird. Trust me, I remember coming to campus for CPW and taking tours of all the different dorms and being so confused about this study break thing. All of the dorms were like “oh we go on these awesome trips and get money for all these cool projects and we have a study break every Thursday.” And I’m like…ok…that’s nowhere near as cool as everything else guys. I wondered why everyone was so proud of their study breaking abilities.

But now I know. =)

I first learned to appreciate the value of the study break a couple of weeks ago when I was working on this pset all by myself. Doing psets alone is torture. For me, anyway. I know some people who hate doing the work in groups, which is fine for them. But I have no idea how they do it. Anyway, I had just reached the insanity point.

I worked out one problem as best as I could and decided to move on to the next. I took one look at the question and just burst out into hysterical laughter. I couldn’t stop. I just sat there at the table in the suite lounge, laughing uncontrollably at my pset. The concept that my 18.01 professor actually expected me to solve this particular problem was just absolutely hilarious to me at that point in time. Luckily, Zach ’08 chose that exact moment to come into the suite to annouce that week’s study break.

Study breaks are pretty low-key. Bascally, either our GRTs or the members of a particular suite are given $15 to prepare some tasty snack for everyone on the floor. We meet in the floor lounge and just hang out eating food. And that’s it.

This week was my suite’s turn to prepare food. We decided to go with the Hallooween theme and make caramel apples. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures this time. It was pretty easy, too- we just had a couple of people cutting the apples into slices. I wasa in charge of mixing the caramel mix on the stove. Then we carted it all out to the floor lounge, where lots of people gathered to sit around and eat.

And that’s it.

I know, it sounds lame. But just you wait. You’ll understand some day…