15 Puzzle

In the three weeks that I've been home, I've become a 15 puzzle, a game with sliding numbered tiles that the player must arrange in order to win. All of the pieces such as my laptop and lectures and assignments are still here, but they're now jumbled and strange. When I expect to wake up in my dorm room, I realize the bed is too firm and the ceiling is too smooth. Talking to my friends is marked with lag or poor internet connections. What was once an expansive view of the Charles River has become a birdbath frequented by a judgmental cardinal.

No, I don't have any birdseed. Sorry!


When I was working on my data summary, I felt the process to be very much like a 15 puzzle. It was easy to gather all of the figures and data generated through laboratory work. The challenge lay in organizing them. I got lost in all of the elements that enhanced figure readability: font size, figure colors, figure proportions. I became engrossed into how to organize experimental information and data into figures that conveyed a coherent story while still preserving detail. This blended into figuring out how to arrange text in a logical progression without being repetitive. While instructor feedback at steps ranging from the first gel figure to the completed data summary was very helpful, after having stared at it for hours, I still felt unsure if my final work was the "winning" solution.

Half of all possible starting 15 puzzle combinations are nonsolvable. I'd like to think that our combinations are in the half that have an end, and that they will come soon.

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