Miss Fit at MIT- Chapter One- Lucky Little Lazy

Lucky Little Lazy

I have always been lucky. That explains the e-mail that said “Congratulations, you have been admitted to the Master of Engineering in Manufacturing program in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.” That e-mail was from THE Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US of A.

Only pure, plain unadulterated luck could explain it, abetted by one big, gigantic clerical error. That’s the only way someone like me could get into someplace like MIT. But then, I completely ignored that fact, put on my big boasting feathers and strutted around like a peacock in the rain. For the next few months that followed, I was the queen bee, who had just been given bragging rights and I thoroughly enjoyed all the attention. After all, I was supposed to be this extremely bright, sharp, intelligent, and need I add brilliant, smart, young thing that got to go to MIT.

So, like I was saying, I have always been lucky. Knock on wood. I have it written on my forehead, literally. I have a black stare-at-me Aries unibrow. Those who follow astrology would know that it screams Lucky. Those who don’t, well, never mind.

I’m lazy. Lazy: Resistant to exertion and activity. Slothful, slovenly, indolent, sluggish, torpid. Okay, I was just trying to show off my GRE wordlist. Anyway, I am a one hundred percent lazy daisy who doesn’t get things done unless it threatens to cause some minor disaster.

Secondly, I am late, always and without exception. Except when I have a date. I mean, I was even late for my English board exam. Now who does that? I am always late to class, late for appointments, late to the airport. But then again, I am lucky, so I have never really missed a flight.

Thirdly, I am the eternal backbencher. Backbencher: one who positions himself or herself at the point furthest from the source of knowledge and quickly attains a state of suspended consciousness (I mean sleep. Duh, non-MIT losers!) without external agitation.

There, you have enough bio on me to understand that there was no way I could get into MIT, except by pure unadulterated luck. Hell, I only applied to humor my dad.

Anyway, here I was beating my drum and acting all wise. And they gave me all the love, respect and adulation that I completely did not deserve. I bet that if I would have started wearing flaming orange pajamas, it would have become the fashion in my far flung engineering college in Bawana. Just to let you know, I think orange pajamas are sacrilege and no self respecting individual should venture out into public wearing them. Even if it is the public of an engineering college with very low bars set in terms of a fashion sense.

However, every silver lining has a cloud. My cloud was that this admission to MIT could completely ruin my reputation. A reputation that I had painstakingly built over the four years of my undergraduate education. A reputation that I was immensely proud of. A reputation of being cool, calm, casual and s-mooth. Now my labor of love of a rep was under the axe and I was increasingly in danger of being branded a dork. After all MITians are the dorky, studious type. The scary part is that they’re even proud of it! They have T-shirts that say cutie п. Oh my God, what was I getting into! Land of the walking Greek letters? That is so not cute.

But, every cloud has a silver lining. My dad was so immensely proud of me that he went around telling everyone who was not interested and everyone who was definitely not interested, and everyone who absolutely did not give a damn, that his brilliant beti was going to MIT, the freaking best school in the world. The point is- that when daddy is happy, he loosens the purse strings and I got to buy whatever I wanted. I should have asked for a Ferrari. Anyway, I bought a lot and I bought some more, some that I didn’t need and some I might never use, but I bought anyway. It’s the bought that counts.

Then I started the impossible task of trying to pack all my junk, my whole world, into two suitcases, under 21 kgs each. Huh! I’m a girl, cut me some slack, women are supposed to travel with excess luggage, it’s in the hormones. I think that they should have different baggage limits on flights based on gender. Still, I managed. Applause. Thank you. So here I was, with my two big bags and numerous small ones. I put me on a flight to Boston, to MIT, to the land of the walking Greek letters.