On vacations
When I went back home for a mid-summer visit, I was excited to have some time off, to truly, completely relax, possibly for the first time since coming to MIT.
My little sister had gotten free rainbow leis and towels from the local Pride parade and had used them to construct a fort in her room, which made me quite happy – she also claims to be a furry and insists on writing “uwu” and “owo” on her cheeks in sharpie, which made me, well, not unhappy, but definitely curious.
I took a couple of boxing classes. As someone who’s never thrown a punch in their life, this was an interesting introduction to the sport. I accidentally signed up for the intermediate instead of the beginner class, so had to spend my first class throwing uppercuts and jabs violently to a punching bag despite completely not knowing what I was doing.
I also read several books (wow!) over the break, including Quiet, a book on introversion, Orange is the New Black, the original memoir that sparked the Netflix series, and David and Goliath, a classic Malcolm Gladwell psychology book. It wasn’t the first time I had read David and Goliath – I first got the book in high school, in one of those phases where I decided I would get good enough at psychology to be able to read minds.
I still can’t quite read minds, but I did learn a little while reading the book. For one, Gladwell argues that the classic story of the shepherd boy and the giant, which was supposed to represent weak triumphing over the strong in a glorious victory, was actually misrepresented.
The real Goliath was visually impaired, and the real David was a person standing far away from his enemy with a powerful projectile, indicating that David was the one who actually had the upper hand in the first place. Hm.
It was great seeing my family as well, especially as I hadn’t seen them since winter. I helped my dad for a bit, preparing the old house to rent out for a new family, which included scraping the ugly, British carriage-covered wallpaper from the walls, painting over imperfections in the off-white paint, and choosing new floor tiling.
I got to see old friends as well as people I had met over the course of freshman year at MIT. Seeing incoming freshmen from my school who had been admitted was a plus – before me, there hadn’t been anyone admitted in six years, so seeing them was a great surprise. Finally I had people to commiserate over the difficulty of the math classes and the relative absurdity of some of the science departments.
When I was younger, I saw no purpose to vacations at all. This was probably largely due to my ideas that I needed to Get into College and Do Great Things, and any time spent laying around was time wasted. And while I still get that urge sometimes and was glad when the break came to a close, I’m glad to have taken the time to stop and think for a while.