So much lemonade

Hello everyone!

This is going to have to be a short one, because this and last week have been hectic. The thing is: my backpack got stolen from my room on Thursday. I’m staying in an M.I.T dorm, where security is such that everyone is checked when he/she comes in and everyone has to present an M.I.T. ID. I thus felt justified in leaving my room unlocked: bad idea. The thief came into my room and snagged my backpack while I was working out… which means I’m short a laptop, a smart phone, a camera, two IDs- a pencil case- a sweater- a CharlieCard with money loaded on it- you name it. And since my passwords were on my computer, I’ve frozen my bank accounts and am operating purely in cash. Yup. I’ve been busy.

There’s a surprisingly large amount of things you need to do when you’re stolen from. You have to talk to the police, you have to talk to the banks, you have to replace all the stuff (and that takes a long time, not even considering the cost), you have to get around without those things, you have to change your habits to match the new environment, you have to make a lot of calls for help to friends/family…. And you have to continue going to work and doing all that you were already doing with barely any time to spare. That includes all of the fun things, of course! Still, I feel like I’m at school-year level of busy-ness, which doesn’t usually materialize during the summer.

My brain’s abuzz with all of the things I have to do. Lists upon lists: research stuff I wanted to do last week, stuff I need to buy, companies and banks I need to contact, the research presentation tomorrow at Wellesley I need to prepare for, notes from two lectures I was supposed to condense, so many configurations that need to be redone on my computer, GRE studying (it’s so soon. SO SO SO soon!). It’s both similar and different to how wired I am during the school year. At school, everything’s really facilitated for you. You have a lot to do, but it’s mostly on campus, or there are buses to get you to where you need to go. Here, I also have to take care of things like buying food from four different stores (because it’s cheaper), cooking food (a not unsubstantial time commitment), walking places, and having fun. Because that’s the kicker about summer—there’s a lot more time, and plenty of opportunities, so a major part of my summer is planned for having fun :).

For example, this weekend! My program (it’s just “my program” now. MSRP-Bio/ CBMM etc. The one I’m enrolled in this summer at M.I.T.) went to Martha’s Vineyard this Saturday. For anyone who’s not from the East Coast, Martha’s Vineyard is an island famous for its summer vacationers and affluence. Yesterday, everyone in our group got up at 5:30am, took a bus and a ferry over to the island, and came back to MIT at 9:30pm. It was so much fun.

Though there are about 40 of us in my program, we eventually broke up into smaller groups. Some people rented a Mini Cooper convertible, others mopeds, the majority bicycles. After a bunch of us accidentally convened at the same place for lunch, a bunch headed for the beach, while my group (Li, Matt, Conan, and me) set off on a massive bike adventure. We managed to circumnavigate a good portion of the island, biking 35 miles in around six hours with hardly any injuries to show for it! I’ve never biked that much before, and I have to say I loved it. There was a beautiful bike path that ran between the ocean and the marshes, flat as could be, sunny with wind on your face. Perfect temperature, body moving—I just kept on smiling, occasionally whooping, as I rode.

Everyone seemed to have a great time, no matter what they did—and despite several farmers’ tans, one bike fall, and one stationary-car impact, we returned remarkably intact. Set a group of 17-35 year-olds loose on an island with nothing but instructions to get back to the ferry by 6pm, and everyone ends up having a good time :).

Research has been good this week too. We ran into a very frustrating time with color calibration this Friday… but after some Frisbee on the Harvard Medical School campus lawn, our lab manager providing us with amazing muffins, and some determined thwapping at the keyboard, we hopefully managed to succeed. The computer wasn’t done yet with its automated program when I left, so I can’t tell you for sure if we succeeded, but it was a fine effort if nothing else, and everyone left satisfied :).

There has also been remarkable kindness this week, and things that have gone well. I was bewildered when my room was robbed, but the woman at the dorm’s front desk took care of everything for me—calling the police, getting the manager, talking to the security guard, calling my mom. The building manager let me kidnap his air-conditioned office for a full two hours, without any prior warning: I banged around on his phone and his computer sorting everything of urgency out with the banks and internet password protections. And when I finally left his office, I headed over to the MIT library, where I asked for a phone and a computer and was provided with both. The police station gave me no trouble in printing out a police report. I got my Harvard ID reprinted almost immediately. Everyone in my program has been so sympathetic, and three people offered me their computers for the evenings.

Their outrage on my behalf has also been gratifying, as has everyone I’ve talked to’s sympathies– people just came up to me to tell me how sorry they were. It’s such a beautiful thing that I have rarely had that experience, and even this could have been so much worse. My data is backed up, and when I bought my new computer today (MacBook Air, baby. Remember that post two weeks ago when I told people if I could do it again I’d get a MacBook Air? I’m snorting as I think of it.) (ps, it took four hours. I always run into problems at the Apple Store, but everyone there is so friendly. It seems like such a good place to work :). Nick was my savior this time, and I’m ever grateful to Phil, who salvaged my computer from my doomed laptop-partitioning effort in the fall.) I started re-setting my computer up immediately, because this is the third time I’ve had to wipe my hard drive (refer to the Phil episode) so I’m familiar with the process :). And my experience at the Apple Store was once again wonderful, I’d had dimsum with friends that morning (both Wellesley friends and my program friends), I ended up buying and cooking all of my food for the week, and I still ended up chatting with my program people for a substantial amount of time :).

(I also got asked out. This happened last year too, when I was crossing the bridge between Cambridge and Boston—this guy (an undergrad at Northeastern, I learned) hopped off a bicycle and asked me to dinner. This time a guy (an undergrad at U.C. Berkeley) asked me while I was on the bus from Harvard Med School. But I’m too busy, people! I feel bad, but my lissttttsss… )

Another piece of wonderful, happy news: I talked to Prof. Conway about staying on in his lab as a lab manager after I graduate from undergrad, and he responded positively! So I possibly have a great job for after graduation, something I am so thankful for :). I’m so lucky to be surrounded by as many caring people as I am. So lucky.

And the one time this week when I actually got angry at the theft, just mad, my friend Tiffany came and fixed it. I do my best not to become angry at all, but there was just something about when I realized that all of my colored pens were gone. I love my colored pens. I guard them jealously during the year, trying to use them down to when the ink is all gone, switching off between colors I don’t like and colors I do so that the ink decreases in all of the pens uniformly. For something that’s $ 6.36 on Amazon, I devote quite a bit of attention to these pens. These are also Tiffany’s favorite pens, and when I let her know what had happened, and asked her mom for a cash advance, she pulled out her backup pens and drove out to Boston to give them to me that night. The people I’m surrounded with, readers. I can’t believe them.

This has been startlingly calming—remembering everything that has happened, reflecting just a bit before I hit the “go” switch again. There have been some bad moments and many inconveniences that will continue, but this week has actually been a very good one in my life. Two days after the theft I finally wrote an email to a Wellesley alum that I had been planning to write to for months, figuring that rejection couldn’t really be worse than what I was dealing with right now. This week I had a fantastic time at Martha’s Vineyard and with everyone in my program, and there have been so many kindnesses from the surrounding community and my friends and family. I have a job after graduation. Egg tarts are still as delicious as the first time I tried them. …Life is good :).

Questions and comments are welcome, and wishing you the best in your new week!

Monica