The Masochist's Institute of Technologyanecdotes of an ambitious MIT student

I’m sitting here at 11pm on New Year’s Eve, filled once again with the inexplicable satisfaction of performing at First Night Austin 2010, finishing off another year, and releasing Sekai no Melody‘s fourth annual Christmas album without too many bumps in the road. This is always one of the best moments of the year for me, knowing that we’ve managed to survive another year and still come out strong enough to produce another gorgeous release or perform for hundreds. Just listening to the songs from our album fills my heart with joy and warmth, and hopefully you can feel the same. Give it a listen =)

Naturally, no blogpost made at the end of December should be made without proper reflection on the 12 months that have passed and the 12 months to come. Here then, is my lengthy end-of-year post. Enjoy!

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It’s 7am on December 17th, the day right before I depart on temporary leave from MIT to return home. I have not slept the entire night; instead, I’ve been scrambling to finish last-minute errands and tasks. This included everything from completing the latest set of data processing for Harvard Business School, doing laundry, cleaning my room, making shopping lists for Christmas presents, and much more.

In total, I gave away 24 candy canes, although I wish I had bought more…!

For the past 20 minutes or so, I’ve been walking all over Next House to deliver candygrams. I can’t remember the last time that I’ve actually seen Next House that quiet. Probably not since freshman fall, when we stayed up the entire night to complete 8.012 problem sets. In a way, I’ve kind of missed that feeling: knowing that you are one of the few souls awake in the entire dorm, and all for the sake of science and learning. Nowadays, I’m always cooped up in my room doing something or another; I’ve kind of lost touch with the rest of Next House and MIT, and that’s something I hope to improve in the upcoming semester.

Anyways, as I was walking through each of the hallways, I ended up admiring all the intricately decorated doors. Many sported large Greek letters; many had tacked up whiteboards, upon which there were cheerful scrawls from friends and hallmates alike; shoes littered the doorways; Christmas decorations and posters spilled over the doors onto the surrounding walls. It was really eye-opening to take a stroll through the dorm and acknowledge all of the interesting people who lived there, many who I still did not know.

The best part, though, was getting that delightful childish excitement back. As I prepared the candygrams, looked up where everyone lived, and snuck around the hallways taping gifts to people’s doors, I was reminded of the fun I used to have wrapping gifts for my family in my room at midnight. I remembered the electric thump-thump of my heart as I sneaked downstairs in the middle of the night to place my gifts under the tree, hoping no one would see; I remembered the jittery excitement as I crept downstairs around 6am to secretly shake the gifts Santa had brought.

There’s something really magical in the holiday season; something that I haven’t been able to experience that much since I entered high school and slowly grew up. I’m glad, though, that despite all the troubles of the semester and stress of final projects/papers/exams, I was finally able to find a bit of inner peace and Christmas spirit at last.

Happy holidays, everyone =)