So the first week of the new school year has passed, and while I do not have anywhere near the amount of work I will end up having when the semester really begins to pick up (thank you, studio) it seems like the rush and stress is already coming back.

A briefing of what I'm doing this semester: 4 classes, one of which is a 24 unit studio (the unit system at MIT indicates how many hours you should be spending on each class per week although most of the time it is a lie: most classes are 12 units standardly), one 10-hour UROP under Meejin, the professor I worked under for the summer, one tutoring gig from 5-9 pm every few Thursdays, producing the Fall One Acts for Dramashop and being the publicity director, and Asian Dance Team. I'm still not quite sure how many dances I want to commit to for the last one.

While most of my classes seem very interesting (the project for studio looks awesome and the DLab I'm doing combines education systems and architecture, both of which I'm very interested in, although I can already tell 4.603, my Analysis of Architecture class, is going to be a bore) I'm already worried about how I'll manage to complete all my work with a 24 unit studio on my plate and with my extracurriculars. It's funny how I always seem to want to overcommit to projects outside of classes - maybe I'm subconsciously attempting to compete with all the other students at MIT who seem to be doing so much more than myself - even though I know, after 3 semesters of studios, that studio will inevitably end up sucking away all my free time and everything else will become somewhat neglected (sorry, UROP that I did last spring).

At the same time, though, I'm kind of glad that there is so much on my plate. Especially now that I've moved off campus (post about that will be coming soon!), all of this gives me an excuse to stay on campus - counterintuitive, I know, but I've realized that living with only 2 girls instead of the 30+ people that I'm used to (I did go to boarding school for 4 years prior to college) is incredibly lonely and I've already started to miss my other friends even though logically I know that they're just a 15 minute walk away (well. some of them are more like 30 minutes - thanks, MacGregor, for being so far away from the rest of everything else). On the other hand, being able to come home to a place off-campus is also a nice breath of fresh air.