I decided to use a slightly different format my day in the life post, by focusing on the highlights of each day rather than each individual day to show what stood out to me.
Before I even got to Detroit, I knew one of the hardest parts of the summer would be getting up at 8am every day. After taking 8:30 classes freshman year and working a 9-5 for two months, I am starting to believe that my body is simply not built for it…at least not without coffee. Of course, as I write this, I realize how privileged I am to even have the luxury of complaining and how lazy I probably sound.
Lin and I successfully rode the Q- line to work on our second day. One the first day of work, we rode it all the way to downtown, the opposite direction of where we were supposed to be heading. Although the Q-line was a major breakthrough in the Detroit transportation system, it has a long way to go before it is considered reliable or fast. Over the course of the past two months Lin and I have learned to be more flexible with the Q-line. We realized that even if we got to to Q-line stop at the same time everyday, there could be between a 1-minute wait and a 25-minute wait. We learned to accept the extra wait time because it gave us more opportunities to take in our surroundings anyway.
Some of the most interesting encounters I’ve had in Detroit have occurred riding or waiting for the Q-line. I’ve been approached for money. I’ve been approached by people who simply wanted to tell me their story. I’ve seen a 70-year-old man give up his seat to another 70-year-old woman. I’ve even been approached for bodily services, which I ended up taking as a compliment of course.
After attending meetings, researching various things, and working on presentations for most of the day, it was important for us exercise after work. I often chose to MoGo wherever I could, including biking from uptown to downtown for a haircut at Sam’s barber shop. At the beginning of the summer, Zhao, Prath, and I set goals of gaining 5-10 pounds each by working out at the gym. Although I’m not sure if we actually reached our goals, it was cool to see our progress. Though I could only hobble around with a bad ankle, I also loved playing basketball with the other seven guys this summer.
After returning from the gym everyday, the kitchen turned into chaos (a fun kind of chaos), with everyone trying to cook their dinner at the same time. As for how I got the food to cook with, that is another story. In order to maximize my money and my time, I decided to shop in three week intervals at large stores like Meijer and Target. On the way back from the store, I always carefully laid all of the bags on top of me like a blanket, because there wasn’t enough room in the trunk. With several huge bags of frozen meat and vegetables, I was lucky enough to be able use another room’s freezer to store my extra food. I am sure Carrie, who was gracious enough to drive us, can attest to my unconventional shopping ways. If you can’t already tell from this paragraph, I am a very cheap person. At the end of each day, I make sure to pack my lunch for the next day. This is usually a ham sandwich, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, yogurt, and and apple.
Room 222 always welcomed the weekend because it meant we got to catch up on our sleep. Unfortunately, most of our suite never made it to brunch with the early risers, but we usually started our day off strong by around 1!
I included a picture I took of an eight mile street sign in my post, not because it was part of my everyday life in Detroit, but because it provides a perspective of Detroit we never really got to witness face to face. While I did get to experience life in Detroit, I also recognized the importance of noticing that we were in somewhat of a Midtown bubble. While living in midtown and downtown is nice, living in Detroit encompasses much more than that.
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