My day starts promptly at 8:35, which for some reason, is the time I consistently wake up in a panic every day after sleeping through two alarms. See, at this point, I’m a pro at getting ready in just about ten minutes. I bring up the rear in our line of bikers as five other friends and I make our way to work a little bit more than a mile away. Once I get to the office, I make coffee (one of the employees taught me how). When it turns out well, I have a cup of it. When it’s bad, I have two to three cups so that nobody else at the office has to drink it. Ben, Collin (the other win-tern at Detroit Future City), and I usually get there before most of the employees, so during the first hour of work, I enjoy the peace and quiet of our office space and do computer work. Once the office starts filling in and the calm of the office becomes naturally disturbed, I start making phone calls. Depending on the day, we have a check-in meeting with Erin, our awesome boss. Then comes lunch. When the Duke kids make plans to eat with us, we all eat at New Center Park, which is right next to our office, at around noon. Collin joins us if he’s in the mood for socializing, but usually, he likes to eat at one o’clock so that his day is broken up better. When the Duke kids don’t join us, I usually eat around two o’clock. I left my salad supplies here (I eat salad now—this is very new for me), and I make salads pretty much every day at office for lunch. Anyone who knows me will know this is very out-of-character, but they can rest assured that the salads are pretty much as unhealthy as they can get because apparently, iceberg lettuce is not actually better for you than spinach. At least this is better than when I used to eat the donuts next door for lunch (best donuts I’ve ever had in my life). Ben, Collin, and I usually try to meet every day in the upstairs mezzanine meeting room to work on the green calculator and other assignments. These two and I always have a riot, and they’ve become two of my favorite people that I’ve met this summer. Usually, Collin and I disagree about something, and Ben plays peacemaker. The three of us work on our various assignments until five o’clock, then we bid adieu to the people at DFC and our other friends (the security guards and the people who work at Café con Leche Nord) and bike back home. Occasionally, instead of in-house work, we have research excursions. We must have walked more than twenty miles throughout Detroit. We walk because we want to be on the ground and interacting with the neighborhoods, rather than just speeding through them. These have been some of my favorite days in Detroit. Usually we argue our way through the real Detroit—the unfiltered, raw, beautiful Detroit that’s full of Midwesterners that do justice to their friendly, hardworking reputation. Our assignment is to document vacant lots, and Collin’s a native who knows the area very well, so it’s always a productive time, even if we sometimes fight about character development in Quentin Tarantino movies all the way through. But these field trips are few and far between. For the most part, we just stay in the office and then bike home. I eat almost as soon as I get home and then check out of the world via Netflix unless we have a team dinner, Enrichment Activity, or otherwise planned event. Then starting at around six-thirty, I usually join the rest of the Duke Engage people and spend the evening hanging out. If it’s with the girls, it means movies and cookie dough. If it’s with the boys, it means Pretty Little Liars. The only time we all hang out together is if it’s for a planned activity or an impromptu bike ride or we’re chilling on the weekends. For the most part, we like to stay low-key during weekdays. At some point, I do some sort of exercise, even though I avoid group biking like the plague (car-drivers are mean, the roads were definitely not built taking bikers into account, and Duke-biking almost always feels like a race). However, after putting more air in my tires and adjusting my bike (thanks, Bryce), biking has become quite invigorating for me, so I’ll probably go on a long solo bike ride tonight. Usually I stay up talking with some of the girls until around midnight. Then I detox, shower, and have a little bit of me-time where I shut off from the world. Then I go to sleep! All in all, this is a very cursory depiction of a day, but the things I will remember about this summer are the themes that have become interwoven throughout the weeks that we’ve been here. Themes of beautiful friendship, adventure, civic responsibility, hard work, laughter, soul-searching, and love. One day in the life is not going to express all that, but the days add up to something quite beautiful and intangible…and that is what will make this summer one for the books.
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