As a thesis writer with a deadline immediately after spring break (most likely, as you read this, I am dashing to the math department with draft in hand) I spent vacation in a large and very quiet room perfecting my LaTeX skills. At some point in this wide expanse of unmarked time, it began to seem as if I and my thesis were alone in the world. In between chapters, I hit upon an idea.

Perhaps, through some great act of simultaneity, I could re-orient myself. Perhaps, though far apart from friends, I could nonetheless marshal the forces of e-mail towards community. I sent a message out into the void asking a simple question: What are you doing right now?

As a point of reference in future solitude, here is one moment spanning eight Harvard lives:

Babi Das: Just arrived home from my little sister's junior high musical. On the way back we stopped by to pick up cheesecake and congratulatory balloon. Am online to check to see when my plane departs tomorrow and to see whether or not I indeed have a corporate finance problem set due Monday, as suspected--no word yet from my problem set group. Will be off to pick my sister up from a post concert party at 10:30 p.m.

Jess Jacobs: I am sitting in my boyfriend's sister's apartment (we are house-sitting) in New Haven checking my e-mail and drinking wine while my boyfriend clears the dinner table in his boxers. We just finished having dinner and watching La Cage au Folles.

Paula Levy: Sadly, I am getting to know the split environment, i.e. putting in corrections to my thesis format in order to avoid doing any substantive work. Feeling pain in my back. Sitting in a chair with my feet crossed and my wrists injudiciously resting on a gel wrist rest. Drinking apple cider. My life is not exciting. :-(

[E-mail from Paula, dated three minutes later:] I now have a cow sitting on my left shoulder. Really.

David Molnar: I am catching up on e-mail, thinking about math homework, and trying to enjoy a bit of blessed idleness at the same time. Except this idyll has been interrupted by a friend's talk-request, which led to a conversation which has led to me being late for a meeting at Uno's. There we'll talk, and I'll flirt with the idea of having my first legal drink on the way to tonight's Going of the Hour ceremony.