There was a time when our floors were newly swept.  The clutter on our desks, if present, consisted mostly of last night’s homework, a few half-read magazines and some blank CDs.  Our beds were made and our sheets were clean.  For a shining golden age, a duration of eighteen years, we were not our own caretakers, and regardless of our self-discipline, an outside influence made sure we slept, ate and played well with others.  Studying rarely lasted past midnight.  Romantic relationships were juvenile and generally pretty friendly.  We had disposable incomes and time to pursue our special interests.  We were not yet students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
            M.I.T. sends out a large packet full of fliers, folders and pamphlets when an admitted student chooses to accept the Institute’s offer of admission.  This packet should contain some kind of warning, some kind of waiver: “I understand that by enrolling in this University, all the good habits I’ve developed throughout my life will probably be broken.”
            Perhaps we should expect the pain.  Books like Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons and films like Good Will Hunting show sleepless students growing accustomed to a poor quality of life.  But here we draw the line between understanding and experiencing.  One could easily read a novel or watch a movie about training for and running a marathon.  Give that same someone a pair of running shoes and fire the starting gun without giving them any experience at tackling 26 miles - well, you see how well they perform.
            Before coming here, my room was impeccably organized.  My CD’s were in alphabetical order, I had developed the world’s most perfect method of folding and putting away tee-shirts, and any food that found its way up to my room would be disposed of efficiently.  Dirty dishes went in the sink.  At M.I.T., that level of cleanliness is impossible to attain.  Even though I am an inhabitant of a pretty sizable double, my living environment is in a constant state of disarray.  Discarded candy wrappers litter the floor.  Sweaters and school supplies are crumpled in the corner.  I haven’t changed my sheets, nor attempted to do laundry, in at least a month.  I am not alone.  My roommate’s half-eaten apple from a few days ago lies less than an inch from the trash bin.  Neither of us has bothered to pick it up, just as neither of us has slept more than six hours a night for the past few weeks.  How have we wound up such a mess?  How can one account for the decline of a student’s well-being over the course of a first semester away from home?
            An examination of the daily Institute routine: rise at 8:45 for 9 o’clock class.  Run, M.I.T. frosh, run, for should you miss a minute of lecture, you might miss a tidbit of information that could help you pass the next test by two points.  After enduring five or so hours of class with possible room for a heart-healthy burrito, the student returns woefully to his or her dormitory and dutifully plunges into problem sets.    Hours escape our academic hero; nighttime club meetings call and the pangs of hunger induce a premature halt to the work ethic.  Before the student knows it, 5:00 AM has come and a problem set due the next morning is not completed.  Student’s hair is disheveled, teeth unbrushed, gut protruding from undigested snack food, eyes weary with lust for sleep.  Does this really happen to everyone?
            My roommate Tina is a soft-spoken Korean-American from a suburb outside of Detroit.  When she took her flight to Cambridge, she brought a wardrobe full of fun and matching outfits.  She was ready to begin what she thought would be a quasi-romantic life as an intellectual college student.  She expected to see art openings on weekends and talk about plays with her peers.  She expected to do these things in coordinated outfits like the ones she brought.
            Instead, Tina is wearing a grey athletic sweatshirt and a pair of boxers - the outfit she’s worn while studying physics each night this week.  “I don’t even brush my hair anymore,” Tina chuckles across the room.  “Personal hygiene is no longer a priority.”  It’s not only Tina.  Sometimes I wonder whether my dorm’s dress code is strictly sweatpants and hooded sweatshirt; perhaps someone forgot to forward the e-mail in my direction.  We’ve all signed on to membership in an army of sleepless, poorly-dressed teenagers.
            And speaking of sleep - when was the last time I saw Tina sleep?  When was the last time she saw me sleep?  When was the last time we heard anyone brag about their great sleeping habits?  I have a more active night life in Cambridge than I imagined, except it mostly occurs on school-nights, and it’s centered on scrambling to integrate that last calculus equation.  Weekends are devoted to catching up on R.E.M.  Some students are known to spend their few non-waking hours quietly crouched over a desk in the student center Athena cluster.  With sleep habits this poor, it’s easy to see why simple acts like taking out the trash and putting away clothes have simply lost their place in the hierarchy of day-to-day importance for an M.I.T. student.
            When sleeping habits were put to rest, eating habits followed suit.    With university life came the advent of the second dinner and the death of exercising, which has resulted in an unfortunate loss of physical fitness.  “Stop eating your emotions!” Tina yells at me as I devour my tenth macaroon halfway into a calculus problem set.  She has launched a campaign to ward off the infamous and dastardly freshman fifteen by taping the word “DIET!” in various places around the room.  Like many M.I.T. students, Tina and I were both mildly accomplished high school athletes, which kept us in decent shape.  Our extracurricular activities kept us so busy we rarely had time to sit.  At M.I.T., the hours that were once dedicated to sleeping have become time to sit; time to sit is time to do problem sets.  Time to do problem sets is time to snack; it keeps up motivation and distracts from the laborious homework that needs completion.  This time just does not leave room for a scheduled room-cleaning.
            An upperclassman at M.I.T., who shall remain anonymous, told me that fraternity brothers look for dateable female freshmen in the first two weeks of school.  These new girls aren’t sleep deprived, and they have yet to gain the weight typical of their year.  By the time the first month is up, however, they’ve “let themselves go” completely; they are no longer attractive in the eyes of the upperclassmen. Lack of free time, however, makes dating nearly impossible even if the fraternity brothers still found freshmen girls attractive.  There’s another lost hobby - dating!  The college student’s empty pocket, no longer lined with the occasional buck from mom and dad, simply cannot afford chivalry.  The college student’s schedule, constantly lined with recitations and office hours and tutoring and group meetings and study breaks, leaves little room for getting to know a person seriously.  With no time to appreciate someone romantically, we leave no time to be appreciated romantically.  Why keep my room clean if no one of interest will visit it?  These rationalizations support the layman’s laws of entropy; if the freshman lifestyle acts as the system, disorder will continue.
            Then why are we here?  Why do we deprive ourselves of sleep and nutrients and social lives for a semester in which grades mean nothing?  Why do we break apart our comfortable routines at the expense of our health?  Because life isn’t comfortable.  This is the big time, and we knew it when we signed on, even if we didn’t expect such tremendously trying circumstances when we decided to matriculate.  College is meant to shape identity, and by losing the things we thought we needed, we can learn to rely on our wits and perseverance.  And maybe once we’ve rebuilt ourselves from a pile of discarded necessities, laundry will spin freely through the washer and dryer once more, and a good night’s sleep will be granted to all receptive.