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The Firehose is Real

So far, the spring semester has been quite stressful. It is what I expected my spring semester to be. Some days, I feel like I am drowning under a sea of work. When I am bored in 6.0001 lecture (Intro to Computer Science), I sometimes think about the looming deadlines. Four problem sets will be due next week. Then two midterms back to back the following week. Then the whole weekend will be occupied with club commitments. You can see where this train of thought leads me at the end. Such thinking is not useful nor helpful and it only makes me want work to stop. Whenever I struggle with a problem set, I say IHTFP in my head many times. The worst days were when I wondered whether my life would be better in an alternate universe where I chose another college. But I don't like this mindset and I don't want to live like this for three more years. 

Last semester was on PNR (Pass No Record), but there were still regular problem sets and midterms. Despite these assignments and tests, I didn't find them to be annoying. I enjoyed going to lecture and learning new things every day, even for my GIR (General Institute Requirement) classes like 8.02 (Physics II) and 18.02 (Multivariable Calculus). 

Now, however, I don't really look forward to going to class. I dread going to the 2 90-minute long lectures for computer science from 3 to 4:30 in the afternoon. I daydream half of the time when I sit in 5.601 (Thermodynamics), gradually accepting the fact that I don't understand these theories about entropy. I let math equations and theorems enter one ear and come out of the other ear when I am in 18.03 (Differential Equations). I check my watch a bit more than I need to in 5.03 (Inorganic Chemistry). This sounds depressing, but the only class that I genuinely look forward to all the time is 21G.120 (Business Chinese). I love the class because most of the time the class involves having discussions about companies in China such as franchises or current events. I greatly appreciate how little outside work there is in the class. I wonder if my dissatisfaction comes from the classes I am taking or it has to do with other underlying reasons that I have yet to uncover. 

Today the weather was splendid and as I walked down the infinite lobby, I wondered how on Earth did MIT students have the time to play games out on Killian Court. What I saw felt too perfect as it reminded me of a scene from a Hollywood college movie. Didn't they have midterms or problem sets tomorrow or the day after? How could they enjoy life on a weekday? I know the questions I am asking sound very stupid as if college students can only relax on the weekends. Maybe they did have upcoming deadlines like writing lab reports or papers, but their approach towards life was different compared to mine. They valued allocating some time to have fun and relax, unlike me who didn't see the point of relaxing unless it was a Friday or Saturday night. The point I want to get at is that I may not have control over certain circumstances like when my problem sets are due or when my midterms are held, but I have control over how I react. This is somewhat related to attitude. I can choose to continue my high school mindset of wanting to get everything right, or I can choose to focus more on learning and be ok with getting a B in a class or two. If I care about what I learn, then good grades will follow through, right? 

I wonder if my stress over grades comes from my prospects of wanting to apply to graduate school in the future. If I didn't care about graduate school and planned to work right away, would I really worry about my GPA so much? Heck, I am not even pre-med. I keep reminding myself that for graduate admissions it isn't solely GPA since letters of recommendation and research are also very valuable. I reassure myself that there were a couple of MIT alums who didn't have the best GPA and still got into top graduate schools like Harvard, Berkeley, etc. In that case, why am I worrying so much? The better question to ask is why do I care so much about which graduate school I go to? Why does it matter if I don't get into a name-brand graduate school? Am I setting these expectations simply because I am attending MIT as an undergrad? 


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