Gut Check: 20.109 Spring 2020

Gut Check: 20.109 Spring 2020 

Before the realities of a pandemic really set in, I had some questions. How are we expected to pack up our things and, for many of us, move across the country in less than 5 days time? How am I going to prepare myself for future classes? Why did MIT keep us at school after confirmed contact? What does this mean for my GPA? Why did MIT choose to send us home, possibly infecting our parents, grandparents, and loved ones?

Not going to lie, I spent a bit more time worrying about my personal academic endeavors than was necessary. But, I was nonetheless legitimately worried about infecting my family. I was coming home from a hotspot; I would be coming home to the most susceptible demographic, my grandparents and elderly neighbors. My gut was telling me to stay away.

I tried wrestling with the turbulent ethics of staying and going, before realizing I didn't have a choice. It all seemed hypothetical at first, after hearing the dining hall workers were laid off, after rumors of a secret FSILG meeting to decide our fate, and even after reading Reif's email telling us to be out in a week. There was no way that we were going to pack up and leave right then. How could we be facing a global health crisis when modern medicine is so good? Especially after felling as though science conquers life's mysteries at witnessing such so far at MIT, of course I couldn't image humanity challenged by a few strands of RNA. But as I prepared to go, I began to feel the weight of the impending circumstances. Newbury Street felt empty, everyone became quiet in Pavement, talk of COVID-19 seemed to follow me wherever I went, it all felt very delicate.  I felt order balance on an edge as fear and misinformation attempted to sway.

My thinking changed and I began to switch gears. Instead of dreading the inevitable, I began to think about what I did have control over. While I couldn't convince MIT to let us stay or protect my family from transmission, I still had some agency. One of the fellows in my UROP lab was virologist before joining the Brain and Cognitive Science Department, so she sent the most up to date preventative practices. I could at least share this with my family and encourage everyone to stay at home. Instead of worrying about online education effecting my preparation for future classes, I found the desire to focus on what lied ahead of me. 20.109 was my final gut check. I was presented with the option to check out, to drag my feet to the passing mark in the midst of PNR, and to dully accept the bleakness online class in quarantine or to seize opportunity. Many things changed but many things happened to  stay the same. Compassion among other things had not yet died. I remembered the acts of kindness extended by instructors not out of obligation but out of care; donation drives existed in the midst of panic and hoarding. I quickly realized that positivity and passion conferred solutions to my questions.

Of the things that didn't change, 20.109 is kind of one of them. Well, yes the material changed but the content is still more than thoroughly interesting. Many students still feel motivated and captivated by the many opportunities to learn presented through 20.109. Though, as with anything, it's not all rainbows and butterflies (Journal Club presentations are still stressful), we all have something to be exited about.

----- Kaden DiMarco

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections on 20.109

Today was the last lecture of 20.109, and as I signed off the Zoom call, I felt a little flutter of sadness. 20.109 presented a unique dynamic that I'd never had in a class before. I'd never had to spend 5 hours a day in class for a single course, or had to present my own novel ideas and be subjected to the interrogations of my classmates or instructors, or write my own research article draft. I learned a bunch of new skills in 20.109, but the following were the ones that will stick with me the most. 1. Schematics - I learned to LOVE making schematics. So much so, in fact, that I am strongly considering buying a BioRender subscription, which is something I usually avoid at all costs. There's something so satisfying about generating your own schematics for presentations and controlling every aspect of the story the image tells. I love coordinating the colors and paring the experimental details down to what is absolutely necessary to tell the story. 2. Effective prese...
Read more

A Message from the Peak of Everest

Hello world. As I stand here about twenty feet from the summit, a sense of accomplishment washes over me. It's an undertaking few have conquered. Still, at the same time I feel a sense of dread. I made it here, but what about the trip on the way down? Supplies are lower than expected, the crew is tired, and the nights have been getting longer and longer. There's a small chance we might not even have enough oxygen for the next two days, I haven't had the chance to do the math. Why are we even up here? What hubris drove us to try to conquer this majesty of nature? What were we looking for? Looking out across the broken and jagged Himalayas, I feel contemplative. It's about 6:34 am, and the darkness is starting to lift. Wind is strong, but no snowfall. We dug ourselves a little crevasse to shield ourselves from the wind, and we're on the east side of the mountain. 2 more minutes till sunrise. It was a difficult trip up. It was lonely and sad and cold and...
Read more
Jesus H Christ, I am so tired. Objectively, no human has ever been as tired as me. Not one. Not even Nancy from Nightmare on Elm Street when she's staying up for days to not get murdered by Freddy Krueger. Not even that other lady from Nightmare on Elm Street when she's staying up for days to not get murdered by Freddy Krueger. On the positive side, I am not staying up for days to not get murdered by Freddy Krueger. In fact, the lab report keeping me up is quite docile compared to him. Even quite docile compared to many of the assignments in 20.109. It's a summary of a semester's research that accomplished a little less than the whole of Mod1. So, if there's one thing I can be grateful for about 20.109, its that it makes other classes look easy.
Read more