Apr 09, 2008

Great Expectations, or Why You Should Enjoy your Spring Break

Seeing as I am now in 18^th grade, I had hoped I would have learned the ropes by now. Evidently not so. Learn from my mistakes. Here’s the deal: take some time off during spring break, I say. The reason is as follows: you are not going to get all that work done that you thought you would by staying stationary at your post in lab. You will enter the week full of great expectations, sure that you will catch up on everything – research, classwork … right, that’s everything. But it doesn’t work that way. This wave of procrastination will come out of nowhere. You’ll get an e-mail from a friend who beat it to Las Vegas for a weekend of debauchery and, worse yet, unproductiveness. Your friends on campus, who have all had a similar e-mail experience, will then invite you to one soccer game, and then another; you’ll take extra-long lunches and dinners; you’ll start browsing Wikipedia; and before you know it, it’s Thursday, and you haven’t even started that killer homework assignment yet, and you’ve got to cram for the next week and a half (just like your buddy who went to Vegas). So if you’re not going to be productive, anyway, might as well do it in style. Be unproductive elsewhere, maybe, just to change things up. Or stay on campus, but with the knowledge that you are “on vacation”. No need to spend a lot of cash – just give yourself some time, or, more to the point, accept that you are going to take some time for yourself, whether you like it or not. I won’t prescribe an optimal number of days off; just long enough ‘till the guilt is unbearable such that you become ready for work again (what some people call the state of being “refreshed”). Just don’t feel too guilty – it’s inevitable, after all, this rest.

You can extend this principle for non-spring-break situations. For example, when you’re fed up because your lab mate makes funny noises, and so does the heating system, and you have to sit through it for hours, plus Windows, just do what I do: go on strike for fifteen minutes for “better working conditions”. Make your own picket line by the water cooler, harass the strike breakers by engaging them in conversation to prevent them from working, too. Drink an antioxidant-filled beverage. Have some antioxidant-filled extra-dark chocolate. Share. Everyone will be much healthier for it.

On a sadder note, I just want to acknowledge the passing of an iconic figure at MIT, Professor Jin Au Kong (1942-2008). A researcher, educator, and historian of electromagnetics, witty and humorous and enthusiastic and kind, beloved by students and faculty, alike (no comparison intended), and one of my favorite people at MIT. His presence will be missed.

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