Becoming a Priority

What determines whether something becomes a priority or just an option?

People are faced with a lot of choices in life and a lot of things competing for their attention. So how do you become a priority? What guides that decision for people?

It doesn't matter whether it's a product, a service, or our selves. We're always competing for the limited attention people are willing and able to give to the world. With the newest, tech-obsessed generation, attention spans are shorter than ever. But it's by necessity: in order to filter out all of the noise of social media and constant information, attention spans have been reduced to an astonishingly short 7 seconds. So how do you distinguish yourself and rise above the noise?

This is a question I tackle in nearly everything I do: Design for America is about getting design its due consideration at a tech-focused school, FingerReader was about making accessible technology that blind people would actually want to use, getting someone's time of day is about competing for the few hours they have remaining between work and sleep. And at the core of all of these challenges is understanding people. It's about finding what makes people excited and what makes them tick. However, there's a few things that more universally encompass what motivates people. This falls into the realm of psychology, but I'll see what my non-expert perspective can offer:

1) Humans are social creatures, and that means we're driven by communities. A group becomes a community when you start feeling comfortable around them. There's no emotional fatigue of putting up facades and no struggle to understand group norms. Once we're part of an in crowd, we become devoted to our new second family. We attend all our sport practices because we don't want to disappoint the teammates we care deeply about; we stay up until 4AM to comfort our best friends because we know they would do the same. We're motivated by our bonds with others, and that's an idea we can use in becoming a priority. Build communities of supporters and users around your products so they feel connected; be genuine in forming relationships so people know you care. But most importantly, prioritize people above all else. This is something I still struggle with, but it's a time-worn truth that will continue to ring true, even if I need reminders.

2) People dig challenges, and that's not just my inner nerd speaking. Goal-setting theory states that one of the most compelling human motivators is having challenging, specific goals to pursue. There's a beautiful truth to that: humans are innately curious, growth-minded beings, and that's super cool. Offer people a chance to grow and they'll come flocking.

3) Give people a good reason to expect high return on their investment of their most valuable resource: time. Despite being social beings, humans are also selfish. They want to maximize benefit: an urge rooted in survival of the fittest. So make yourself a pleasure to be around, make the interactions of your app delightful for the user, and help them feel valued for being the special butterflies they are.

But what other rules can we apply to becoming a priority? It's hard to say when people are all influenced by their unique perceptual worlds, which changes exactly how they're motivated and what they're motivated by. And depending on ever-changing environmental factors - rain, stress, sleepiness - even those supposedly stable motivators can change. 

So it's something of an art. Deciphering each person's unique set of quirks is comparable to deciphering the meaning of art or literature. Design is considered a art for good reason...but not necessarily for the right reasons. Design is usually thought of in the context of aesthetic design: what something looks like, how something fits into your hand, what color something is. These factors were all determined by the careful eye of a designer. But on a broader level, design is about finding patterns among people and their motivations to make some product or service a priority. And of course that would involve the seemingly trivial details typically thought of as design, such as color, font, or form. Humans are nuanced so we need to pay attention to nuances. Sure we have our base set of human motivators, but after that, it's all a finely tuned dance of navigating human complexity one small insight at a time. Guess it's time to learn to dance.

10 Tips for the Travel Newbie

Everyone has a first time sometime.

And what's not to like about a little advice to start you off? As a newbie Euro-traveler myself until recently, I'm glad to share a few things I wish I had known (and learned along the way). 

1) Find out about all of the common scams

For example, there's a lot of pickpocketing in Barcelona, people giving out flowers in Italy, and men tying wristbands on tourists in Paris. Avoid them so you don't get tied up in any scam shenanigans!

2) Get cash before you leave

You can get the best exchange rates by submitting a cash order to your bank instead of withdrawing from ATMs abroad or exchanging US dollars at the airport. However, make sure to take precautions to keep your cash safe while traveling. A money belt is a good investment to keep both your extra cash and your passport close to you. They might look tacky, but you'll have a better peace of mind!

3) Pre-search, but don't overplan

Don't pigeonhole yourself into specific plans or attractions: checklist traveling is one of the easiest ways to make a trip a bore. That means skip the bus tours and public transit and walk! Get lost in the streets of [insert awesome city] and be delighted by what you find :)

4) Pack light

Try to stick with only one pair of jeans and a single coat for layering. For girls, bring a few pairs of tights that can be worn underneath jeans on cold days and alone on warmer days. I opted to travel with my laptop, but with smartphones these days, you can go without it. Bring mini shower necessities and lots of socks and underwear so you don't have to skip out on doing fun things just to deal with laundry. Skip the towel: they're too bulky and you can usually rent them at hostels.

5) Find exciting hostels in a central location

Look for hostels with a fun, energetic vibe. If they have some mention of a large lobby bar, music, or student-targeted events (such as bar crawls, tours, etc) in the hostel description, that's a good sign.  It'll greatly facilitate meeting new people, especially if you're traveling alone, and provide a nice hang out spot if you're traveling with friends. Also, make sure it's in the city center! It'll allow you stay out later, give you a place to retreat midday if you need a break, and give you more of a chance to explore to your heart's desire.

6) Especially if you haven't traveled for a while, be careful of tap water

Although it may be certified as safe, your body might not be used to certain minerals or things in the water that natives would naturally be immune to. Go the safe route and stick with bottled water instead, unless you're traveling for longer than a month. In this case, you might just want to bear through the sickness once so you're safe for the rest of your trip and beyond. However, bottled water is a guaranteed way to avoid water poisoning, and it'll make your travels happier times.

7) Stay healthy!

Forreals doh! With all of the excitement of new sights to see and foods to taste, it's easy to forget about eating your fruit and veggies, drinking enough water, and taking breaks. But believe me, you'll burn out quickly if you're not health conscious: the easiest way to ensure healthy habits is to start out each day with a fruit and something energy boosting. Then you can indulge in all of the deliciousness you want throughout the day! And pace yourself. Don't use all your energy in the first few days or hours. Traveling with friends naturally gets you to travel at a good pace, but if you're by yourself or with one other, you need to be more aware of building breaks into your schedule because the lack of human inertia means you might end up traveling at a burnout pace.

8) Preload maps

GPS still works without wifi, so preload a map to your phone and off you go. Google Maps also has a nifty feature called Offline Maps that allows you to save maps and zoom in and out on the streets to get a bearing of where you are.

9) Try traveling alone

It's lonely at first no doubt, but it'll put you outside of your comfort zone and that's when you grow most. It'll also make you appreciate your friends, family, and privileges all the more. Of course, take precautions to stay safe. Don't stay out too far past sundown, consult others about which cities are safest to visit alone, etc. But also have fun! Don't be so concerned that you miss out on a good time abroad :)

10) Make new friends

Traveling and especially living in hostels is the best way to meet people who you normally wouldn't interact with. Talk to them, learn about their lives, and share your own stories with them. It's basically learning about many corners of the world for the price of one! Hostel boarders often come from all nationalities and backgrounds, but often all speak English together since it's the one language most young people have at least a working knowledge of.

So that's it! :) Now go crazy and explore!

Eurotrip (Part 3: The Self)

If you want to learn more about my Eurotrip, check out Part 1 of this series. These posts are all focused on the lessons I learned and adventures I had during my travels. This leg of the trip reflected my solo travel experience.

The Self

After a whirlwind of upset stomachs, exotic foods, and vaulted ceilings, I arrived in Berlin for the last leg of my journey: the self. My plans were to explore Berlin and Amsterdam after a few friends recommended that these are safe places to travel alone as a very obviously, non-native female.

So off a went to Berlin. And almost instantly upon arrival I was hit with an unfamiliar feeling: a helpless loneliness. I just wanted to curl up in bed and not think about how far away I was from everything familiar to me. It wasn't like I hadn't traveled before: I'd been to Singapore, I'd visited Thailand, I'd traveled solo in the US. But this felt entirely different. Without the security of familiar faces or even a purpose for being there, I was crippled with a case of the loneliness.

But this triggered my instincts to seek out company, so I started striking up conversations with strangers. One thing led to another, and I ended up spending a whole day with a new Italian friend and another day sharing stories with a girl from Argentina. And through these new friends, I was able to learn about the world, different cultures, and new perspectives. They shared stories of their pasts and dreams for their futures and I did the same. It was a practice of trust and vulnerability that helped me adopt a new humility. I learned about Let's love for her hometown of Buenos Aires and Cecco's conflict between his Italian roots and his love for the progressiveness of other parts of the world. But despite our disparities, our laughter was universal. No matter our disparate paths that brought us to Berlin, we could still share laughs about terrible Lego constructions and the craziness of German weather. We had our differences, but could all appreciate the beauty of the city around us.

After a delayed flight and the previous three weeks of travel, I arrived in Amsterdam excited, but ready for a break. However, plans dictated otherwise. Luckily, the freedom of solo traveling allowed me to spend the next few days on my own to experience the other side of traveling alone (besides meeting new people): meeting myself. I'm already quite big on self-reflection, so being with just my thoughts was nothing novel. However, in the past it was always for a few hours, not a few days. Which inevitably led to me getting bored with my own company and resorting to people watching, self-reflecting, and thinking about tremor pen (intellectual thinking is not my natural state).

There is definitely a lot of merit to traveling alone and I would recommend it to everyone, but perhaps only as a one time thing. Of course everyone gets something different out of solo travel, and it really depends on your mindset and starting state. No matter what though, it takes you outside of your comfort zone and that's a learning experience just waiting to happen. However, the way I see it, a lot of the benefits to solo traveling can be gained through other means. Learning from people, self-reflecting, and being inspired by new experiences can all be done by just making a more conscious effort to connect with yourself and the people and places surrounding you on a more regular basis. Appreciating the privileges you have or adopting an understanding of the sameness among humanity are all lessons learned from the first time around. I see a diminishing return to the benefits of traveling alone, but then again I may be a special case. I love exploring the world, but I love sharing those experiences with others even more. I feel like travel is inherently an experience to be shared. It's not about the city, but exploring together, laughing together, making memories, and so much more. Traveling is about new experiences, and those are best shared with others. 

I went back and reread all the Quora posts that had raved about the benefits of solo travel and inspired me to go on this adventure in the first place. I now read these with a much better understanding of what they mean. When they mention that you will be very lonely or when they rave about the insane amount you will learn, I see my own experiences. One Quoran wrote: "a smile goes a long way anywhere in the world." And it's so true. Through my travels, I've discovered how sporting a friendly face is all that is necessary to open up the doors of conversation with that group of girls from Ecuador working in UK nurseries or the fun Italian man who loves to laugh and studies Mandarin.

My encounters with these new friends and my travels overall have made me more grateful than ever: for being English speaking, for having a friendly face, for having the chutzpah to take off and travel alone and learn so much. I also have a new appreciation for my friends and family for being the stability I need in my life and the people I can forever share my experiences and memories with. So it's with a new humility and openness to experiences that I sign off on this Eurotrip. Arrivederci, au revoire, adios, and until next time :)

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I'm so grateful that I got this opportunity to travel and discover the world. I just turned 20 right after this Eurotrip, and with that comes the realization that I will never be this young again. Hell, I'm already getting tired a week or two into traveling; imagine the exhaustion I will feel from traveling a few decades from now! I'll be limited in the places I can see as my muscles weaken and I have more responsibilities to my name. The upcoming 5 or so years are the best years for me to hike the mountains of Peru or explore the streets of Vietnam. Despite this Eurotrip, there's still so much (if not more) that I want to see. However, it's nice that this trip has taught me so much about my traveling preferences. Through travel, I want to learn how people live so I can better empathize with others and expand my mental schema to understand the world. It'll be a long term goal, but I'm excited to see where my future travels will take me and what new lessons I will learn.

Eurotrip (Part 2: The Group)

If you want to learn more about my Eurotrip, check out Part 1 of this series. These posts are all focused on the lessons I learned and adventures I had during my travels. This one is on the second week, which was mostly spent with MIT friends. I hadn't seen many of them in months, so this served as a wonderful Italian reunion :)

The Group

Traveling in a group of five, Ruth, Priya, Virup, Jin, and I took on Italy. I took the train from Rome to meet up with them in Florence, and of course, ended up jumping on the wrong train and making a 1 hour journey into a 4 hour one. Luckily, I was able to get in contact with them thanks to our universal wifi savior: Mcdonalds. You can always count on Mcdonalds, no matter what country you're in!

Florence was one of my favorite cities with all of its quaint village charm. I was glad I got to share my time in Florence with such great friends as we ran from market to Duomo, leaving raucous American laughter in our wake.

Cinque Terre was also one of the best hiking experiences I've ever had, especially in the company of avid hikers. The initial day of rain didn't dampen our spirits as we prepared for an early start the next day over thick hot chocolate and tiramisu. The villages all sported infinite winding alleyways that allowed for easy exploring for our energetic selves. We spoke with shop owners, marveled at the simple yet charming lives of the residents, and enjoyed our youth over the views of teal blue water.

Traveling in a group definitely contrasts with both traveling alone and with one. With a group, it's easy to feed off the energy and adrenaline of everyone, so 7AM wake up times and late night drinking are no thang. However, with more people comes more inertia. Moving from place to place takes longer and there was a lot of splitting up that led to some panic attacks, but mostly "searches" that ended in carousel rides and running through shops. It's also nice because you have built-in breaks. You linger over meals, spend more time deciding where to go and how to get there, and generally spend time enjoying each others' company. Solving problems with a group is also inherently less stressful than doing it by yourself. The whole bag storage fiasco ended in more laughter than anxiety, although I know I would have been stressed out had I been on my own. I also developed a deeper appreciation for hiking. In no other context would I have woken up at 7AM to catch the sun shining through the clouds from the top of a cliff. And without my friends dragging my ass out of bed, I would have missed a beautiful view of the world.

Traveling in a group of good friends is no doubt the easiest guarantee of a good time. It's easy, it's fun, and you have people you love to share the experience with. It's definitely my preferred mode of travel, but that's not to detract from the unique benefits of traveling alone or with others. More thoughts on that in the next post! :)

Eurotrip (Part 1: The Boyfriend)

In classic Connie fashion, I'm making this trip a learning experience.

My travels took place in three parts: with Mike, with friends, and with myself. Each leg of the journey lasted about one week, and I'm writing a post about the unique experiences and lessons from each. The location was much less important than the people I was with; I would have had very different experiences in each place had the people been different. It just makes me all the more grateful for the wonderful people with whom I get to share being alive. So without further ado, I present Part 1: The Boyfriend!

The Boyfriend

We started off in Paris. Both carrying only a backpack for the next three weeks, our mobility was streamlined, meaning one less worry for the trip. Our time in Paris was largely characterized by pastry consumption and lots of walking. I'm interested in understanding the cultures of the places I travel, so I strongly prefer walking over taking public transportation so I get a chance to see more of the city. It's crazy to see people casually go on a daily run by the Louvre or observe the friendly interactions among the people of Florence, moments that I would miss if I didn't see them in passing. I enjoy wandering with loose plans that give me a chance to serendipitously discover the pulse of a place.

I don't mind tourist traps with a great view though. Anything that involves a bit of a hike and a satisfying overlook of the city is worth it to me. On that first night, the overlook of Paris from Montmarte was magical. The twinkling lights of the city with people from around the world singing Beatles songs was surreal.

Next stop: Barcelona. This was definitely a favorite: the beaches, the local flair, the bustling markets, the great food, and the hipster fashion was everything I wanted and more. It was such a casual place with men running out into the streets at 2PM for a game of soccer and people lounging by the water with a pint of beer, soaking in the afternoon rays. We also participated in an eatwith, which was a great chance to share a meal with some wonderful strangers. If you haven't participated in an eatwith before, I strongly recommend it. Much like how airbnb gives anyone a chance to run their own bed and breakfast, eatwith gives home chefs an opportunity to run their own pop-up restaurant. It's especially great while traveling because you get the chance to meet people familiar with the area and enjoy a meal of local cuisine. Our new friends recommended we try calcots, large green onions grilled to a charred black, and then served with a tomato sauce. They are the Barcelona equivalent to the food served at US barbeques. So the next day,we set off to feast on calcots, and ended up at a rustic restaurant with the friendliest waiter. He spoke to us in Chinese, laughed with us, and served us post-lunch shots, saying that they were the Spanish equivalent to a very strong Chinese alcohol. Without a doubt, the people we met largely defined my experience and are what I will remember most about the city.

Rome was a bit of a disappointment. It was overrun with tourists and seemed more of a historical site made into an amusement park than a city of unique individuals. Maybe it's because we didn't get the chance to meet many people, but Rome wasn't very satisfying. The water poisoning and subsequent nights of vomiting were also a fun curveball. The sights from the Orangerie gardens and the Knights of Malta Keyhole were memorable, but other than that, not much happened besides food and history.

And with that, we closed our adventures. These travels taught me quite a bit about myself, Mike, and our relationship. I learned how weak my stomach is, a good thing to know for future travels. I also learned how tiring it can be to travel with only one other. The increased mobility is a blessing and a curse: you can see everything, but moving around all the time is the best way to burn out. However, it can also be quite relaxing not having to balance the needs of a whole group. Mike and I are luckily compatible travelers: we both get tired at around the same rate and are interested in similar things. However, being in close quarters 24/7 was a new experience. Traveling is unlike the working/student life when you mostly see each other in the evenings and your day is interspersed with interactions with others. It's just two people. These unique circumstances helped me appreciate a lot of things about Mike: his leniency, his focus on enjoyment rather than frugality, his ability to balance work and play. You discover a lot about a person by traveling with them, and I'm grateful for this opportunity to discover not only new places but also new appreciations with Mike.

How Travel is Making Me a Better Designer

Design and travel don't seem to have much in common.

However, there's a lot of merit in traveling to become a better designer. Design today is often driven by user-centered research: a focus on personal stories to influence design direction (Julie Zhou wrote a great article about user-centered vs. data-driven design). One key component to effective user-centered design is empathy. User-centered design is dependent on understanding a wide spectrum of users, making it crucial for designers to have a good conception of people unlike themselves.

And what better way to find those disparate people than through travel? This semester abroad has pushed me to understand people in a way exactly parallel to what a designer needs. Travel elicits an empathy and understanding of cultural perspectives that fosters open-mindedness.

There's a popular theory that there is no such thing as a "real world". Instead, each person has a unique perceived world that is influenced by their past, their present, their personality, their culture, and everything else related to the individual. Thus, each person experiences a unique world, a pretty crazy concept when you consider that billions of people living on the same Earth are actually living in different worlds crafted by their own perceived constructs. (whoa .-.)

Empathy is then just a practice of being open-minded to other people's worlds. And being a designer gives you the master key to access all of those worlds and understand the nuances among them. From my completely unbiased view, I'd say that's pretty exciting. However, the role also holds its own challenges:

• You must be vulnerable: to learn about others' worlds, you have to share a little, or a lot, about your own. It's not a time to hold back from telling your story.
• It's time-consuming: if you want to learn about others, really learn about others, be ready to make the time investment to do so. This isn't a few weeks' process. Building strong relationships and laying the foundations of trust isn't a process you can speed along. It's no wonder that designers invest so much into flying to the far corners of the world just to talk to target users: establishing a personal connection is a crucial part of the design process. 
• You have to be willing to take risks: you're going to end up leaving your comfort zone, and quite often. The only way to expose yourself to new people is to try new things. Go to a swing social, attend a street art festival, make time for a raunchy comedy show. Be the type of person you normally aren't to meet the people you normally wouldn't.

My last few weeks in Cambridge have taught me a lot about building relationships with people who think, react, and experience differently from me. It's coming up on exactly a month in Cambridge, and I have finally started to feel assimilated into the university. I've developed a better sense of self here, and I think that has made me even more resolved that ultimately, I want to spend my life inspiring people to be their best selves. That means seeing the similarities between me and very different people with very different goals, and having the empathy to relate to their situation so I can help the best way I can.

Empowering people is my design challenge, and I thrive to tackle it with the empathy and understanding of a user-centered designer.

Goal 4 (Part 2)

Traveling is not the same as vacationing.

Or thoughts from talking to others, pondering to myself, and reading medium articles like this one.

If you read my last post, you know about "the checklist personality": the urge to do the easy tasks for that instant checklist gratification. It's pretty common in this generation, and it's not surprising given all of the life hackers, overachievers, and yuppies of today (me included). And when I say it's a personality, it really does define how you approach more than just the tasks you write down. It becomes the way you accomplish goals, build relationships, and most notably, travel.

Because when you go somewhere new, there's a difference between traveling and vacationing. Traveling is when your destination is the purpose. You've made it there and you're keen on fully immersing yourself in the culture, learning from the people, noticing the nuances, and embracing the differences, even if they make you uncomfortable. Vacationing treats the destination as the final goal. There's no personal journey: the focus is on instagramming the coolest sites, attending the hottest events, and coming out of the experience with stories to impress your friends back home. But most notably, there's always the us and them. Your identity is always tied to home.

And that's the danger of a checklist experience: all of the changes happening are in your external environment, not internal. There's no chance to change and grow. I'm still not quite there: I don't yet embrace all of the differences, I retreat back to the comfort of familiarity quite often, and I'm still distinctly American. There's a lot of cultural changes that I'm reluctant to embrace: I miss American openness and I crave the order of MIT's consistent scheduling. But just because I'm uncomfortable with some of the changes doesn't mean I don't appreciate the nuances; it'll just take a little longer to get used to.

So noticeable differences between traveling and vacationing?

There's a lot less of an urge to take pictures of everything. I've taken maybe 8 pictures so far, and 5 of those have been of the adorable stray cat that I adopted for a few hours one night.

I'm living like a real person instead of as a perpetual tourist. That means making a healthy lunch every morning (and I've lost 10 pounds! Shout out to Goal 3 ;)), going grocery shopping, and making time for myself. I know I'm in it for the long haul and that means I don't need every hour to be exciting and I need to make time to vegetate.

I'm focusing on the nuanced differences. I'm living with these people for the next 6 months, and I want to know what subtleties I appreciate and what things I miss that I didn't even realize were important to me. For one, I miss the outward friendliness, personal sharing, and obnoxious laughter that now seems so uniquely American.

I spend as much time as possible with people as different from me as possible. My goal is to learn how to perceive the world differently and see how culture can shape how people think. There's a lot of cool studies on this, but on the personal level, I just want to be exposed to new views to help me be a more open-minded, empathetic human being.


Studying abroad can be much more than being a long-term tourist. It can be about the relationships made and the deeply personal conversations shared and the things about yourself that change that you can't even put words to. It can be about struggling through the differences, adapting to them, and creating bonds that teach you new ways of seeing the world. And that experience is not tweetable, it can't be checked off a list. Perhaps the value of an experience is inversely proportionable to its check-offability. Ironically, the things worth accomplishing are never the ones you can check as accomplished. Visiting sites, taking pictures: those are checkboxes. Throwing yourself into an effort with no definition of success at the end, that has nothing checkbox about it, but everything opportunity-wise that I value. This doesn't call for a complete lifestyle redesign, but I wouldn't have realized the incompatibility of my checklist goals and traveling values without having tried to embrace both.

I love vacationing just as much as the next person and there's definitely a time for it, but that's not now. Now, I'm traveling.

Goal 4

I'm one who really likes checklists.

It's so satisfying to get that wave of accomplishment from a finished task. Check check check. But building relationships is far from the ease of a checkbox. There's a lot more time, care, and attention that goes into it and you're never really done, there's no end point where you think "Oh, we're friends now!" It's not so clean cut and defined; you just have to let it sweep you off and enjoy the ride of an undetermined destination.

And there's some relationships (the best ones) where that's exactly how it plays out. Girl meets other human. Conversation ensues. Girl laughs, other human laughs, they share all of their similarities, matching humor quirks, and life goals & experiences. Soon enough, time has flown by and you don't even know where you are anymore, but it doesn't matter because hey, you had a good time.

Then there's the forced journeys, the ones that seem to drag on like a bad family road trip. Each statement is slightly off mark, a tad misinterpreted. The conversational dance is just barely out of sync and neither of you knows who is on the right beat anymore. To avoid ensuing awkwardness, both of you devolve into the boring small talk that has little chance of going wrong, and pretend you're enjoying knowing what classes they're taking and where they attended high school.

And because of my checklist personality, I get impatient with these lulls, these less than optimal interactions. I want to click with everyone instantly. I want 100 best friends in the same number of seconds. I want to skip the small talk and just be my real self for others and have them do the same. I want to know what makes people tick and what their dreams are and who they want to be ten years from now. 

The older I get, the less tolerant I think I am of superficial friendships. Freshman Connie was the social butterfly with hundreds of friends, and then some. Jaded Junior Connie is a different story. I'm a lot more selective with who I spend my time with and I've gotten too used to being surrounded by best friends who have already gone through the awkward early stages of friendship with me. For the past two years, I've become accustomed to the easy conversations and judgment free interactions that characterize long time friendships. So now, it's kind of like learning how to ride a bike again and retraining the long out-of-use small-talking, friend-making muscles to do what they once did so effortlessly. And if everything plays out, those muscles won't have to be in use for long, and I'll return to the comfort of lazy conversations of dreams and futures.

So here's to this adventure of unwritten checklists and exercising both body and mind.

Goal 5

It's strange how such a new experience can feel so familiar.

The uneasy faces of confidence and the nervous checks on my habits echo my experiences in freshman year. I'm the new kid and it's the first day of school when there's too much new sensory input to not feel self conscious. Am I laughing too much? What do they think of me? These sound like silly insecurities, but they've definitely crossed my mind. But these are the opportunities that brought me to Cambridge in the first place; another chance to be the new kid, another round of experiences to grow from.

And if I've learned anything, putting myself in uncomfortable situations is the best way for me to grow. It's so easy to retreat back to the people, the places, and the mannerisms that I'm used to. Although I'm in a different Cambridge, there's still many other MIT and US exchange students who I could go to as we all try to find our niche in this new habitat. But I came here to experience something new so I'm throwing myself into that mindset. Instead of easing in to it, I'm jumping headfirst into the things that I'm afraid of because why not. It's kind of like entering really cold water: it's easier to jump in and withstand the shock than to take it slow because you'll get used to it faster. So say hello to the new ballroom dancing, lone traveling, strangely un-athletic athlete who is now Connie :)

This past week has brought a lot of new adventures. There were salsa and waltz classes (I prefer salsa) that pushed my bodily coordination to its limits, but were fun nonetheless. I met many similarly clumsy and nervous individuals, and we laughed with each other and at each other as we tried to improve our barely there skills. There was also the badminton practice that helped reaffirm my goal to become more fit as my supportive teammates met my weak playing with only encouragement and helpful tips. Frisbee was also an option until I realized that the cold, rain, and muddied shoes would probably prevent me from going at all. But ballroom dancing and badminton are a start!

There's been a lot of changes and I'm optimistic that each new experiment will push me closer to Goal 6: finding future Connie. Existentialist? Maybe, but that's not a bad thing is it?