Moving into the Fall

For me, the year waxes and wanes with the school year. Fall term begins as we enter into September. Classes begin tomorrow. So the year is just starting for me. Being on campus the past few days, I've seen the strange influx of students and enthusiasm. I've also just finished moving into a new apartment!

I know a lot of people find packing and unpacking to be stressful. My friends never seemed to stop complaining about it this summer. Most of them never really finished unpacking by the time they needed to prep for the fall move in. Frazzled, they live out of suitcases even as the unpacking is put off for another weekend. Then as the fall term approaches, the half opened boxes are rushed back to the new dorm room. Students have so much packing and unpacking to do each year! Yet each time is a struggle!

Personally, I find packing to be kind of refreshing. Packing is the only time we really engage with everything we own. It's when I'm packing that I recognize how much I hoard. I'm amazed by what I have squirreled away, not just physically but also the memories associated with bundled up scarves and the tactile experience of laying my hands through every book I own. Packing is when my body of possessions is fully in my body of knowledge. There's something very particular about the smell of packing; the old smell of forgotten belongings mixed with the clean smell of just having tidied up. Usually, it's an emotional feeling - of fullness, of being provided for, of remembering - that is reassuring. I am the whole house, floor to ceiling, as I fold myself up into boxes.

Packing is funny too because it changes the character of the space you live in. With all my things in boxes, the old apartment seemed bigger. Echoes bounced around the apartment without furniture or rugs. My cat started to sprint back and forth between the open rooms, her path unobstructed. Desolate rooms dedicated to stacks of boxes are abandoned. I bustle into my bedroom, the last bastion of unpacked comfort, to eat and relax.

During the process of packing, I started to think of the new place as home. After all, it was the focus of my thoughts so much of the time! Where will this go in the new place, I'd ask myself as I wrapped things in newspaper. What color bookshelves would open up the main room, I'd ponder over Ikea catalogues. I have so many plans and dreams for the new place: the dinner parties I'd host, the evenings curled in my new sofa, even the commute back was ruminated on.

Now that I have the key to the new place and have turned in the key for the old, I'm feeling all sorts of strange emotions. I'm excited and exhilarated. The weight of the old place is removed. I feel doubt, worrying whether I chose the right place (and price) to move into. I'm buoyed by the thought of decorating absolutely to my taste, of the new plush sofa and convenience of a dishwasher. This new move doesn't quite feel like home, even though I think of it that way. Lying out with my cat on the carpet, it still smells like the cleaning service and not like me. Not everything has settled into nooks and crannies of routine. I fiddle around with things, bustling the new fruit bowl from one side of the kitchen to the other, to see where it really fits. I've invested a lot in this move, not just financially but emotionally as well. I want this year to begin with momentum to keep going. Having a home to return to is really the key to that, I hope.

The year is beginning. It's a time for starting over, creating something new. 

How to Fit in

College Applications and Admissions: The harsh truth

This is some real talk!

MIT Culture: Critical and Personal Experience

This post isn't going to cover everything I have to say about MIT culture and it's not going to make everyone happy. To be quite clear, this is meant to be critical. If you don't want to read a criticism of some of the problems with MIT culture, please go no further. If you are looking for a careful analysis, I'm sorry but I'm not in the place to that; this is just a collection of my personal thoughts. While some of this is bitter, there are also good things about my school. I'm not bitter because I have bad grades or because of some other failing I've projected onto the school. (Even if I were bitter because of this, it wouldn't invalidate my criticism - Harvard is well known to grade inflate; MIT doesn't which puts students at a disadvantage.) I'm bitter because the school and culture I feel in love with over MITES and CPW is not the school that I'm attending.

I appreciate what MIT has given me in terms of advancing my career and solid financial support. A lot of what I talk about won't bother people but from where I come from and with the difficulties I tackle, some times these aspects of MIT culture seem like unnecessary and insurmountable obstacles.

If you want to know my experiences, as a college junior from a background that didn't give me a lot of support, then read on.

3 Ways: Balancing Time Through Scheduling

It is very important to figure out how to balance you time as you gain aspects to your life. During school, I have to balance my academic work, my dorm job, my social life, my personal time and my ability to keep a reasonable outlook on the future. This past summer, I was balancing an internship, tutoring, family time, and my own personal time while I tried to figure out where I want to go after graduating from MIT.

I will share a few tips for balancing your time.

Advice for Dorm Politics

College dorms are a bit like little countries. Each dorm has its own stereotype and its internal politics, not always related. Different floors in the same dorm have different cultures; some groups may be in tensions with one another. Dorms may have celebrities: the people the gossip is about or the people everyone knows. Maybe even the people everyone dislikes.

All of these tensions and quirks come to a head in dorm politics. When you get involved in dorm politics, you're stepping forward for responsibility and discussion.


Read more for advice on entering dorm politics.

Storing food and 3 Ways to Stop Pests

Air tight containers are a must for storing food in college kitchens and dorms. Without airtight containers, your food will let out odors, attracting pests for the whole floor. More than that if you have food in your room, there's no need for rodent room mates.



Air tight containers will also extend the shelf life of your food. Some containers are expensive, but they're worth the investment. More than that, losing all of my food to a moth infestation has given me great faith in air tight containers. Trust me, you know you're in college if tupperware for Christmas is the best gift.

Read more for advice on airtight containers!

Recharge and Refocus

I took a few days off of blogging to recharge. Life seems to get more and more daunting as I move forward. But there are also a few amazing changes that I want to share.

The first is that I think I'm going to move out of my dorm. While the people on my floor are lovely, I find the dorm culture to be a bit toxic and too transitory for my taste. This is something that I've been looking forward to as an abstract thought for a while, but it's much closer to becoming a reality than ever before.

The second is that I'm trying to make a monetary commitment to myself. I have enough things lying around, not all of them being used, that I don't need to buy anymore. I want to make sure that I'm financially stable as I move out and that I start saving money the way I really should be.

Finally, I want to do the things that I set out to do over the summer. I want to draw twice a week. I want to read all the books I've purchased. I want to go back to writing letter. I've been dealing with difficulty and stress. In general, I really just lost sight of what I'm doing and who I am because I was too caught up in the stress of the moment and the difficulty of the moment. I want to get back in touch with the ideal me that I was working to be, rather than the miasmic discouraged me.

Loving your dorm room

Make your room the way you want it to be. I often struggle to get everything together, cleaning painting and decorating and organizing. It sounds like so much to do! But here's a little motivation for us to love our rooms the way we want to.

Read more to get a pep talk for making your room the way you want.

College Dorm Advice Part 3: How to Make and Maintain Your Bed

You have your closet set up and you have all your furniture.

If you checked out part one, you have your supplies for your bed. If not, run out and get them. Here's your list; I'll be waiting. Chat with your roommate to pick out some colors, then find a nice Target and have fun shopping. Make sure to get a design that you like!

The Basic List

• Foam Mattress Pad
• Pillows
• Pillow Covers
• Fitted Twin Extra Long Sheets
• Bed Risers
• Bed Comforter

Check out my Etsy page!

Read more for more details and extra advice on what to buy from this list along with how to maintain your bed.

College Men's Common Criticisms of Feminism

It seems like if you get a group of college kids together, late at night when there's just enough trust to let conversations start flowing, it's inevitable that a guy will steer the conversation toward a critique of feminism.

Why do guys feel so much of a need to harp on feminism?
And if guys want to criticize feminism, why do they only want to criticize it when they feel that the criticism isn't going to leave a safe space?

Read more for the common criticisms and my run down on why this happens.

Moving Forward From Failure: Get Started!

I find failure to be the most difficult thing to overcome. Maybe it's the fact that failure had such a high cost in my youth. Maybe it's just that failure represents the effort put into the attempt not being quite enough.

via: Left handed toons People don't actually laugh at our failures

But here's what I do to get over my fear of failure and get started on a project.

10 Things You'll Love About Being Home on Break

Let's get back to the positive side after the post of 10 Things you'll miss about college on break!

Lesson: It's good to vent and verbalize the things that bother you, but refocus on the things that you enjoy. Figure out how to add more of the 10 things you love and remove the 10 things you don't.

Read more for the list of 10 things you'll love about being home!

10 Things About College You'll Miss on Break

There are a lot of great things about college - the level of independence that you get to experience - things that you lose when you go home for break. Sitting here in Virginia, I'm thinking about the things I miss about Boston and the MIT campus.

Read more for my list of 10 things about college you'll miss on break.

Motivate Yourself: What is Work?

I think we all have days where we just can't do any work.

But that doesn't mean that day is a loss. Sometimes you can trick yourself into getting "work" done. Other times you just need to realize how much work you're already doing.

I'll share a few tricks for getting yourself into getting stuff done when your body just won't cooperate.

Rousseau: Life to the Fullest

Understanding the education is preparation for life, we can now figure out how to embrace that life. Sometimes it can be very difficult to create an approach to life that allows you to embrace the moment. Hearing peers anxiously talk about grad school in their freshman years or professors drone on about the impenetrability of academia can make it seem like life takes place in stretches of decades rather than days. But your life is made of days!

Fortunately, there are great minds who have already written about the focus on the day to day life, and the benefits to embracing daily joy. Let's look at a quote from Rousseau, on of the great thinkers from the 18th century. His writings on education will help us to better understand what an effect positivity can have on us, as we approach our life and our education. 

Read more for wisdom on embracing your day!

How to Politely Skip Class

There are always going to be days where you don't want to go class. Sometimes it's that you're tired; other times the weather is bad. There are ways to keep skipping class from being a major hindrance. The most difficult thing is making sure that the professor doesn't mind. Most classes have clear policy on attendance. Of course in attendance based classes skipping will have an effect on your grade. Even if attendance isn't part of the grade, showing up to class is important. Carefully judge whether skipping class is worth it. To be fair, I skip a class about once a month. Usually, I take the time to catch up on sleep or studying.

In the cases that you decide skipping class is worth it, here's a good guide to politely skipping class.

Positivity: Education to the Fullest from Rousseau

Walking through the Infinite, I'm always amazed by the project posters and the chatter of discovery that surrounds MIT. I love the feeling of excited and frenzied exploration that permeates the people, the very buildings.

But there's something that makes me a little anxious: the concept of a technology education  Some of my peers see their time here as a way to gather up data points to store and recite for accolades. Others see technology as unequivocally good, unquestioning of the pursuit of knowledge and a fancy career. And there's always the disparaging of HASS, class that focus on the humanities. I can't count how many times have I been told that "readings for HASS classes are optional" or that "there's aren't any jobs in that; it's useless."

Something has changed about the way we approach education. We seem to see education as a decoration for our resume rather than a way to see the world.

(image via stephenhicks)

Read more for Rousseaus' vision of education as a way to impact individuals.

Classroom Etiquette

One of the most important things for college is the new code of etiquette for college lectures. It's very different from high school but still important for making sure that your professor has a good opinion of you.

Here's my guide to lectures and college classes, how you should behave in lecture. The advice will go through cellphones, bathroom breaks, sleeping and more.

Fresh Plants and Flowers

I love spring time. I love the way the weather warms up and then takes the time for little spring showers to cool down. We should all take the time to slow down. Going on long walks helps me to breath in that fresh air that gives so much life to everything. Keeping live plants at my desk really warms up my study space, but I sometimes want flowers along with my leafy green. I want to bring into my room more of the spring that is around me.

I've been getting cut flowers to keep in my room. Read more to see the flowers that I've been getting and hear about my experience.