Things by Alexa J. '20

Breathe in, breathe out. Wow. I’ve barely had time to breathe let alone blog. I wanted to do an end-of-the-year reflection but thought it would be better for other people to just write a blog for me (although some are also my own). I’ve collected here some of the responses from a very small sample of the MIT population, mostly just the people I interact with regularly, so this is really only a snapshot of the diverse thoughts and feelings that exist in the MIT bubble. It’s a little long but I wanted to show you it all: the silly, the poignant, the ones that I really connected with, and the ones I hope you will connect with.

Things that make me happy

• When dining has my favorite muffins for breakfast
• Waking up in time for breakfast
• Naked brunch
• Regular brunch
• Sushi in Maseeh Dining
• Yamatos – all you can eat sushi!!
• Domino’s at 2AM
• When it rains and I get to wear my rain boots
• When it rains and I get to wear my waterproof flip flops
• Warm weather
• When I get to Mass Ave when the walking symbol is on
• Resting heart rate decreasing
• Puppies
• trying new things! From rock climbing to coding
• Killian court, even with the tourists
• The sailing pavilion got a couch
• Spontaneous picnics with the team
• That new gorillaz album
• Taking a 2 hour nap
• Going to bed after a long and completely exhausting day, knowing i can get enough sleep that night
• binge watching rom coms till my eyes literally cannot stay open
• Running the Mass Ave-Museum of Science bridge loop
• Junot Diaz teaching creative writing (he won a Pulitzer!)
• realizing that grades aren’t the only thing that matter
• eating my heart out after disastrous midterms
• Late nights psetting and even later nights with my favorite people
• Reading all day instead of doing urgent school work
• Getting a bad grade, but still realizing how much I’ve learned to get to this point
• the impending summer where i will explore more of boston and be more free
• Having a killer final project
• When my exam score is above the average
• Planning out classes for next semester
• Thoughts of going home
• Walking through the infinite and talking on the phone with my parents
• the friends i’ve made here
• the things i’ve learned
• the things in the future that are yet to come

Things that depress me

• Psets
• 5.12 (Organic Chemistry) psets
• 5.12 exams
• Anything related to 5.12
• talking about grades
• Resting heart rate increasing
• The show I’m binge-watching is leaving Netflix on June 1 and I have finals :(
• Sushi in maseeh dining
• Cold weather
• Boys
• Girls
• Losing friends :(
• the work that layers on back to back to back to back and my life seems to go from pset to pset to paper to exam and before i know it the semester has gone by and i question whether i’ve cherished it
• i fail a test I spent the last 30 hours studying for, what’s worse, my friend that studied a total of 2 hours gets 95%.
• Feeling like I understand absolutely nothing and there is no amount of time/effort that could make sense of anything in my brain
• Getting killed by your final projects
• Getting fat
• Getting sick and not being able to take time to deal with it bc of work
• Wildly depressive mood swings :(
• Parents/professors assuming that if I don’t do well it’s because I didn’t try
• Professors that are bad at teaching
• The MIT Administration
• Having weird relationships with family or parents as you change and grow in college
• Having weird relationships with family as they change and grow while you’re in college–remarriages, divorces, new births.
• Anxiety
• the uncertainty of the future, growing old, and growing apart from the ones closest to you
• Insomnia
• Being a $1000+ flight away from the people you love
• Feeling lonely, because there aren’t the people that love you unconditionally here
• Feeling like there’s no way you’ll be able to work hard enough to be adequate
• Overwhelmed sometimes (all the time)
• History classes
• People bashing the humanities
• people bashing other people
• seeing people comparing themselves to others

Things Off the bucket list

• Lasers/using lasers to slice through objects.
• Became the president of a dorm
• Built a CPU in 6.004
• Learned how to CAD (computer aided design)
• declared my major
• Found a cool new UROP i love
• Learned to program
• started taking pictures again
• Montreal road trip!
• Skydiving
• White water rafting
• Made a bird costume out of paper
• Got pretty fluent in Spanish
• Met new awesome people and made some new friends
• slept with a cat
• Rode a bike in a suit in the rain
• sang in an acapella group
• Started feeling really sure of what I want to do after graduation
• Realized how much i love my friends
• cooked food with good friends
• Discovered a new academic interest
• Acted on a love interest
• Challenged myself to love more, to let go, to live, to do more of what I am passionate about

Things to do for the future

• get over imposter’s syndrome
• Abandon STEM and become a super-hipster philosopher
• discover my true passion and live every day to the fullest doing so
• take a grad level class
• cross-register at Harvard :)
• fly somewhere exotic with friends over spring break
• Take the time to smell the flowers
• Explore more of Boston especially the food
• Sleep before 2am
• Take a nap on killian
• Pass 8.02
• Launch a startup
• Go to medical school (possibly)
• Get my brass rat
• Get a boyfriend
• Get a girlfriend
• Get a friend
• Learn to be more social
• Stop being so stressed
• Focus on the great things about MIT not just the sucky things
• Get a job
• Paint murals
• Do an exercise
• Decide my major and not switch lol
• find myself a husband who can cook and jam out to music and laugh at my bad jokes
• More road trips
• the long, sleepless summer nights that are occupied by warm conversations instead of psets
• read the books that have been collecting dust on my shelf all year, i just want to live in a library for a few months and read
• finish the pirate’s license
• learn more japanese
• Graduate
• Do an internship at a large company
• Research in CSAIL
• Travel the world
• See and pet a sloth
• Go to Cape Cod and relax on the beach
• Mend my relationship w/ my parents
• Laugh a lot
• Make sure people know how important they are to me
• Make a real impact in the world