Hobbies: The Big Four
Why many grad students at MIT gravitate towards these four hobbies
Imagine this: It’s evening at the Muddy (the on-campus pub known for its cheap beer) during orientation or a mixer. You’re chatting with people you’ve vaguely gotten familiar with, and your drink of choice has made the awkwardness of meeting people ever-so-slightly less so. The evening lights are dim, and there’s some bustle around you typical for a Thursday crowd.
“What course are you in?”
“Where are you from?”
“So Moungi Bawendi just won the Nobel this year…”
“What do you do in your spare time?”
I’ve always followed that last question up with: “Wait, let me guess–it’s one of these four.” Reader… I’ve haven’t been wrong even once.
***
They say most standardized tests are actually just a matter of pattern recognition and being trained on the patterns. The jury may remain out on that, but I will say that we at MIT may be analytical by nature, and I’ve noticed a few trends.
I’ve tested this hypothesis, like any good scientist, over drinks at the bar. And here are some findings:
Running.
The many running paths around Boston and Camberville—like the Charles Esplanade and the yearly Open Streets Boston–mean there are endless miles to explore. There are also several run clubs in the city of Boston, and famously, the Boston Marathon is what they call “A Big Deal.”
There’s something to be said about the soothing, rhythmic meditative process of one-foot-forward-one-foot-forward-one-foot-forward. The ability to run leisurely or competitively, the option to run dirt trails, side roads or even on a treadmill, along road, river, sea and forests, and the relative freedom to do it anywhere–maybe it makes sense why running is such a popular activity for grad students. It’s a great way to see parts of the city you otherwise might not visit on walks or on the T; you can modify your paths or run the same ones to race yourself.
Admittedly, I’m counting walking as a subcategory of this, with walking clubs popping up all over social media, especially during 2020 lockdowns and in response to run clubs. I’m a hot girl walkies girly myself, but that’s because my preferred of the four is…
Hiking.
While there’s no consensus about how science came to be, I think many of us agree that observations and appreciation of nature and natural phenomena plays a role to some extent. Indeed, the Work and Well-Being in Science survey found that 62% of survey respondents were motivated to pursue scientific careers because of the beauty they found in the phenomena they study. And to me, there’s no better way to appreciate nature than with hiking.
Whether going up an AllTrails “moderate” hike (which somehow had me on my hands and knees on the sheer side of a mountain) or getting worryingly lost in the woods (shout out to the GPS-impenetrable Monogonhela National Forest), I’ve almost never left a hike feeling unhappy. From the slow, assured steps over mud, to the rock scrambles that leave you satisfyingly sore for days after, hiking has always been joyful for me in how I can engage with nature and my body.
1 The view from the top of the Beehive Trail in Acadia National Park.
And to me, there’s no combination of nature and achievement like hiking. Other people have found more innovative ways to engage with all three dimensions of our physical world, namely in the form of…
Rock climbing.
Go to any of the nearby climbing gyms–Boston Bouldering Project, Central Rock Gym, Brooklyn Boulders (that isn’t even to mention the on-campus wall)—and I’d bet that any night of the week, you’ll find generous numbers of grad students and postdocs at various heights and courses on the walls.
Personally, I’m pretty happy with the amount of z-axis I can access on a day-to-day basis. Yes, birds unfairly get waaaay more of a z-axis than I do normally. This might change with location (if we assume sea level for a human’s z = 0), but for the most part, I’m only a few inches or feet up. I work in a basement, so I’m rarely going higher off the earth’s ground–and I’m pretty happy with that. Yet some of my fellow grad students crave the ability to go uppies.
I had the sense that the people who liked rock climbing at a gym didn’t seem to overlap all that much with people who were rock climbing, well, actual rocks. I couldn’t grasp it from that perspective; to me, activities like rock climbing seemed to me to be most useful in service of going outside (much like how some people I know run in order to be healthy for hiking).
So, I asked someone about this–why rock climbing?
“I dunno,” he responded, after a thoughtful sip of lager. “It was too cold outside to run or hike, so the next best thing for me was rock climbing at a gym.”
Board games.
“Hannah,” I pretend to hear you exclaim. “You’ve mentioned nothing but physical activities. Surely there must be some grad students who fit the conventional nerd stereotype of wanting to stay inside!”
First of all: Get with the times–the modern day nerd excels in many areas of their lives (even as we may feel like we excel in none). We can have many hobbies and personally, I find physical hobbies to be a nice solution to sitting in front of a computer all day.
Secondly, rest assured… board games and tabletop role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, are alive and well at MIT. From community board game nights at Pandemonium Books and Games in Central Square, to the MIT Strategic Games Society, I hear about this hobby from an array of people across campus.
Games are weather-proof (rain or shine, you’re able to pull out a board in a kitchen, a brewery, a conference room) and necessitate socialization, collaboration, and conversation.
2 The board game collection I’ve been attempting to curate.
While these individual hobbies may share similarities or differ by a lot, they speak to the desire to connect to a feeling, or to another person, or to an experience. Now, am I saying you must absolutely choose one of these four to succeed at MIT? Of course not; we’re human beings and exist outside of four simplified categories. From biking to sailing to archery to pottery-making to reading to curating an Instagram account of trains around the world, I’ve heard about many, many hobbies at MIT.
At the end of the day, our hobbies are another way for us to connect with another person, with a place, or to a desire for shared emotions. Whether it’s timing yourself against your past self in hiking the NH 48, or DMing your best coffee shop campaign yet, or participating in competitive juggling, it’s important to nurture that part of yourself. Personally, getting away from campus always reminded me of how grand and fascinating the world is. Hobbies help me recenter myself when experiments don’t go as expected and nature reminds me of why I started in science in the first place. Don’t forget—you are (or at least, should be) more than your research!
Share this post:
