Moving Closer to MIT

Before I go into today's optimization, I'll give a little excerpt of why I am focusing on being optimized. During this initial summer semester at LGO, I took a course called Systems Optimization, where complex business processes and systems are analyzed and evaluated to produce a best/optimal result, given certain limiting factors and conditions. In other words (getting rid of the technical junk from the last sentence), the point of the class is to find the optimal solution to a business problem. So for me, I am trying to discover the optimal ways to live out the life of an LGO student, hectic and chaotic as it can be but fun to its core.

So, when I started in LGO, I actually drove to MIT every day. I worked just a 5-minute walk away from the building for my previous company, so the commute was familiar and I could plan in advance the time it would take to get to MIT. Unfortunately (and quite stupidly), MIT requires all commuting students to park in a garage outside of Westgate Hall, which forced me to take a shuttle to the Sloan building. All together, each one way between home and Sloan took 1 hour! So, I was completely wasting 2 hours of my day and the great college experience in a car or bus!

So, what did I do? I did what any student would do to regain sanity: move closer to campus! I took the following route (from Malden to Cambridge):

As shown in the picture, I definitely became happier and more in touch with the LGO life the closer I moved to campus. I switched my commute from the car to the train and started to save an hour and a half of my day right from the start. Also, I don't have to drive everywhere now, so I can enjoy the night life more freely. In a way, my sanity was saved, so I could focus better on my courses and my social life.

In this spirit, here's the optimization lesson of the day: exceptional performance (in terms of the LGO social and work life) is possible [ :) ] by moving close to campus and not relying on the same commute as you did for work. Hope you come back for more!