"Gosh, what a pain!" It was his back. As a matter of fact, you can't
sleep more than 4 hours on the table. He opened his eyes and looked at
the watch: 11.03. He closed the eyes again. Yeah, no more than four
hours. He straitened up on a chair and looked at the screensaver. It
was a second morning in a raw of waking up in the athena cluster in
Student Center. At least, he managed to finish 18.02 pset, but damn,
there is a 8.02 test tonight. DAMN.
He clicked the [enter] button and typed in the password. There was a
number of zephyr messeges from his friends in the top left corner of
the screen. Some messages made him smile and he typed "znol" in the
terminal window to find out, whether friends were still online. Noone
was, and he decided to check the email. "pine" and there you go,
several messages from several people: 5 messages from the dorm council informing him about some "important" dorm events, he
started to delete this kind of emails without reading back in the first month of the first
term. There was only one important message, from his UROP professor, asking him
to drop by his office to get the proposal. After finishing with the official one he opened the Mozzila
browser to check his other emails - gmail and yahoo mail. A minute
later he was again typing in the terminal window, "logout".
It was time for breakfast or whatever. He washed his face in the
bathroom of the fifth floor and bought a gum from a vending machine.
The breakfast or whatever was in the Lobdell, again. How quickly can a
person start to hate Chicken Teriaki? After a hundred of them?
Thousand? Or even a million? Anyway, he was eating it again. Then he
decided to go to the Hayden Library to read the texts for the writing
class. On the way to the library he dropped the pset into the box in
the first floor of building two and decided to use the athena cluster
on the second floor to print the practice exam for 8.02. After that it
was almost time for the 18.03 recitation. His instructor was an asian
grad student in math. She had to be in math, because she teached math
and she to be a grad student because... she was. Anyway, he liked this
recitation section, because he had some friends in it. And second order
differential equations were fun.
An hour later, there was a 18.02 lecture in the Green building. He
didn't like the class. The professor's voice always sounded soft and
drowsy and he always wondered how the other students were able to stand this torture.
He couldn't and fell asleep five minutes after the class started.
Gradients had to be very interesting, but he didn't manage to learn
much about them and finally woke up when students started to get up and wre already leaving
the class. Next was an hour break at which he had to read a story by some
writer very fast, because after the break he had this writing class.
The class was small - fifteen or sixteen people. He liked it a lot and
would love to spend much more time on it. However, Calculus,
Differential Equations and Physics wouldn't let. Psets, tests and
classes themselves. But now he was in the writing class and they were
discussing some story which was very interesting and it was interesting
to discuss it. His instructor was an interesting woman, too. She was a
science fiction writer, a woman, who knew the bussiness "from the
inside" and her classes were always fun and informative. An hour and a
half later he was walking in the corridor, inspired to write another
story, about a huge guy and a girl's death this time.
He was heading to
the library to prepare for the Physics test. Suddenly, he stopped and
remembered that he was supposed to pick up the proposal. Turned around
and rushed towards building 66. The professor was in his room and was
not alone, but he smiled at him and gave the proposal pointing out some
mistakes in it. He responded to the comments, said that everything will be fixed and walked out.
OK, now, study. He had less than 3 hours to
the test and he was unprepared.
Electromagnetism is a very interesting subject. And he was quiet
surprised to find out that most of his answers in the practice test
were correct. He studied a little more, tried to solve one
more practice test and memorize some problem solving strategies. At
exactly 7.00 PM he decided to check his email and went to the cluster
in building 4.
The test turned out to be held in a not very big room. He bought
himdelf a bottle of Coke, which he was holding and found himself a
seat. Room got packed pretty quickly and the test started at exactly
7.30. It wasn't hard. At least it didn't seem to be and he was solving
the problems. Got stuck a couple of times but generally thought that
did not extremely bad, considering that he prepared only 3 hours. Quite
happy with the test, he decided to have a dinner, met his roommate at
the student center and went to the dorm. It was going to be the night
of 18.03. The problem set was due the noon of the next day and he spent
the most of the night in his friend's room solving it. At 4.00 AM he
was happy to finish the problem set and was going to his room. It was a
surprise to find the roommate awake, but then he found out that he had
a test the next day. He decided to check the email again. There was a
letter from his mother asking him to write. He didn't contact the
parents for more then a week then and decided to call.
He didn't sleep. At about 9 AM he turned in the pset and had a hell a
lot of things to do. Get a UROP coordinator signature, drop the UROP
proposal, get an account refund and pay for the credit card, drop a
subject. Certainly, he did everything.