Break Room Conversations

Reflections from my days spent on Baja

11/27/22

Wait is Jewish summer camp not what I think it is?” – Jake (Not a jew)

“What’d you think it was?” – Maddie (last name Finkel [so a jew])

“Oh lord… JAKE” – Me (a [getting an F in judaism] jew)

“AND HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW IT WASN’T A EUPHEMISM” – a (Well-meaning) Jake

I snorted out my no Thai after that response from him. That humor and the feeling in my stomach of “did I just snort out cheap Thai food?” moved to horror when I realized that I had snorted out said cheap thai food onto the war room floor. I then cleaned it up and continued eating the remaining that was still in my takeout box.

Ok look I’m sure many people agree with that move. But the war room is one of the nastiest places on campus. Well… probably. Honestly for all the crap central campus gives North Campus, I don’t want to know what is buried in the walls of the oldest buildings on central campus. But the war room? A floor covered with months of grease, coolant, ice from shoes and god knows what else. The room is pretty gross, all anyone needs to know. Jake and Brenden once sent a rather pointed message about keeping it clean. A decent goal, but poor execution. But either way, it was a losing battle.

So anyhow I loved the place.

Like yes, it’s gross, and there were no windows: Just a bunch of CAEN (school desktop) computers in a ring. And not much else. Sometimes a fridge.

But the people! Oh, the people made it all worthwhile! For while I had plenty of problems with Baja and it gave me plenty of stress, there were some amazing people. And while I’ve written about this in length in perhaps some other reflections: The best moments of Baja were never the competitions, it was the dumb crap in the war room.

The “War Room” is also a stupid name that we came up with long before my time. And even though Baja tended to be the main force in there, there was a variety of students who would come through. Friends trying to do homework, steel bridge working on designs, visitors from other teams. It worked out. The other computer spaces are called the “Formula Office” and “Rover/Solar Car office” so it wasn’t even like every group had a flair for the dramatic.

The conversation I started this with was when were trying to explain to Jake how you would go to an eight-week Jewish summer camp every summer. He thought we were referring to something far different. This started a whole string of arguments on “How badly did Jake fuck up?”, and “Does Jake need to go to temple to repent?” and my personal favorite of “Does that make Jake still a better jew than Sam?”

There was the time that Stephanie and I asked Justin about his use of spices and had liberal feedback. Such great feedback that he changed his cooking style and then sent snap chats to Stephanie every time he meal prepped showing how much spice he was adding to his chicken and rice.

We did a lot of late-night homework. I don’t know why some professors make their homework due at 8 in the morning. Well, that’s inaccurate, many professors will make it so work like pre-labs and homework is due by the next class. There’s a fair amount of college research on the unhealthiness this encourages in college students compared to making the homework due at 5 pm or even midnight (which is the standard generally) but it led to some late nights there.

Chart Above: A rather poorly drawn chart I made in microsoft paint my 2nd year about the team

There was the night that I pulled out the pink fuzzy blanket I used to keep in the war room to work on my senior design project, sipping my coffee that is best described as “biological hazard” by Linnea and listening to Brenden playing every childhood commercial on the aux while he tries to fix his laboratory report due the next day. We had even installed LEDs so that later in the night we could turn off the lights and get ambiance at the same time.

You could also ask why didn’t we just go home and take showers, eat some vegetables, and be friends outside of the shop. In all honesty, we didn’t have the time to chat before midnight and our roommates would’ve killed us. Also, many of us were constantly doing Baja or schoolwork while chatting with each other. Another valid point would be why I talk about this with such nostalgia when this could’ve just been friends chatting while having coffee. These kinds of off-the-nose conversations are far from rare in college or even life. Especially because for many of us these weren’t our closest friends in college. They certainly weren’t mine (although who mine are is an interesting question for another time).

To try and explain it I’ll steal the talking points of the MythBusters. To those of you who don’t know, Adam and Jamie created a 14-season show where the two hosts had a fun banter and bounced off each other well. There was a slight caveat that came out afterward however that they didn’t actually like each other. Never got dinner together outside of the show, so don’t talk now. But they made a fantastic show that more or less relied on them getting along plus the occasional gratuitous showing of dynamite. And you can look up the interviews but Adam talks about how despite them not being friends they had a different dynamic. When you spend thousands of hours working with someone you just learn to react to their movements and how they go through life. He talked about how in their underwater car experiment they didn’t even have headsets and could just communicate through hand signals. Mariana and I don’t speak anymore but we certainly can work together. The night the car ran for the first time my senior year we all ran I was wrenching the propshaft into place while Mariana filled it with gas, right above my head when I wasn’t wearing safety glasses (oops).

So could I have had these conversations in my house or a bar or maybe somewhere with sunlight? Sure. But the tone of it is different to me. Those are places where you’re expected to have fun. And this is not to say that I dislike the bar. The bouncer at Charlie’s recognizes me by sight now. But when you find fun banter or topics in a place when you have homework due or are covered in grease it’s about finding the smaller moments in life. And for those, I’m always thankful.