Getting Home

Although I've only been here three weeks, I've collected an impressive number of disaster stories about returning home from the lab, usually happening late at night while I'm stumbling around braindead and sleepy.

1. can't find an open gate to exit harvard yard
2. waiting for a bus that isn't coming
3. arriving back to find my door's lock is stuck
4. forgetting my key in lab
5. missing my stop and having to walk
6. missing my stop and riding the shuttle all the way back to lab
7. getting off too early before the train stop
8. planning to get off at the right stop, but the driver doesn't open the door, and so i miss my stop
9. getting on a shuttle that is going back to base

Today, I decide that I should try a new route.. getting the free harvard safety shuttle service to drop me off at the furthest location, where I take a direct bus back (instead of my usual 40 minutes of subway and walking). It hasn't been a great day, and as I'm sitting at the stop by the street in a random part of town, I'm wondering what might happen today. I got back in record time, a total of 25 minutes, and I didn't have to walk a single step! haha, I bet you guys were expecting another disaster story. :P


In contrast to my moody ramblings just a week ago, I am feeling a lot more comfortable and balanced these days. It feels really good to be able to take the not-so-good things in stride. Experiments aren't always working out, but looking back on these few weeks, I see that I've definitely made significant progress, especially since I've had to learn all the techniques from scratch. People here work incredibly hard, but it's heartening to feel that it is part of the fabric of being here, and I feel like everyone is working by their own choice. There's none of the usual begrudging attitude that accompanies people working long hours. My rotation is a lot more serious than I had known rotations could be, yet I am happy that I am keeping up my goals of getting out to socialize. I'm beginning to really figure out this work hard play hard thing.

A typical ideal day? My loveliest day was Sunday. I got up at around 7 to head to lab. The sun rises so early in Boston, so the day was already bright and welcoming by then. In the afternoon, I left to join some friends at Walden Pond. Yes, the Walden pond where Thoreau lived. It was so picturesque, and was quite large so we could avoid the crowds. I sat on a rock with the sun overhead highlighting the ripples on the water and read some thoreau in his pond. From time to time, there would be an excerpt describing the area, and I would look around to see whether the description still held accurate now almost 2 centuries later. 6pm, I get back, cook myself dinner, then head back over to Cambridge. Actually had positive results to gather and set up for the next day's experiments. All totalled.. 10 hours work, 6 hours play, 7 hours sleep. I'll have to watch how this ratio changes throughout the year...