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Friendship String Bracelets

I wanna make one for every person I know at school. (unattainable goal, but I still wanna do it anyway haha)

I've lost track of the exact # I've made for various random people, maybe ~190.

And I do not plan on stopping because I actually need this activity to help me focus lol

Hey Alexa, play "What Would Jesus Do" by CAIN

I saw this meme on Pinterest last summer. And it gave me the idea to use Morse Code letters to make a “JPWNHGHITMITFP / BHSGEA / MTLBWYA” bracelet 😂 😂 😂 😅

JPWNHGHITMITFP: Jesus Probably Would Not Have Gotten Himself Into This Mess In The First Place
BHSGEA: But He Still Gotchu Everyday Anyways
MTLBWYA: May The Lord Be With You Always

Laser Cutting

Undergraduate Association (UA) Winter Craft Market 2024
The UA hosts an annual winter craft market underneath MIT's Big Dome.

My great friend - Adelene - and I laser cut a bunch of coasters, ornaments, plaques, and other gifts!

(All photos from the event were taken by Adelene on her DSLR!)

inside Santa's workshop:
We made everything in Metropolis (makerspace located in the basement of building 6C)

May or may not have been laser cutting on a Thursday night til 5 AM.... but it was probably our most fun day of the semester >:)

CPW Keychains!
Laser cut 35-40 keychains for Campus Preview Weekend 2024

CPW is a weekend in April when admitted students check out MIT
Gave them out @ a joint worship night event hosted by several Christian groups on campus.

More Jesus-related stuff:
He's always cooking, not gonna lie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Made a bunch at the beginning of 2024-25 school year, told pals to take however many they want!

Crocheting

Whale Keychains!
Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) project, March 2024

Made 35-40 whale keychains, gave them out in the Infinite (MIT's largest hallway)
Funded by a RAK mini-grant (<= $250) from the MindHandHeart initiative

Calligraphy Cards

Hand-drawn Nametag Backgrounds!

for the kids at summer camp: made ~380
for Cru's weekly large group meetings: made ~600 during fall 2024 semester

Sewing/Quilting/Weaving

Clay

My wonderful cousin Young made like half of these with me, and he's the one who taught me how to use modeling clay - I love you, buddy!!! :))

Digital Drawings

Not gonna lie, a lot of this was more of a middle/high school hobby. I haven't used Procreate extensively in years 😅

Comics for Overthinkers :)

I began this endeavor during summer 2024 and intend to continue during the school year, as it seems I am not the only one who relates to these things...

so apparently the drag-and-drop website service I'm using doesn't wanna show the PDF
Instead, here's the Google Drive folder link that has the comics
You can also copy & paste the link yourself: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1x8L_HfKcZ2VOPLfj3scA-YkFO30N7dVP?usp=sharing
My apologies, I don't currently know of a way to make the PDF just show up here :(

Paintings

3D Printed Stuff that I painted on later

(included links to the free models I used, all available on Printables)

GRAMMY trophy
This was a loving/humorous gift that I spent wAYY too much time on 🤣. I erased the recipient's name in the 2 photos below, in order to spare any potential embarrassment lol.

Uno reverse cards (model 1, model 2)
I technically did not paint these, since I just switched around the filament colors to be Christmas-themed. However, I didn't have a better section of this portfolio to put this in, so it's going here!

Klombo the purple dinosaur/lizard from Fortnite
Birthday gift for my brother!

My Favorite Meme Templates

Prequels/Star Wars

Animated/Cartoon

Other Bangers

Meme Hall-of-Famers for General Purpose Use

About Me :D

My buddy Gracie and I made a playlist of our favorite NF songs below because they're legendary:

Hello!!

This is just gonna be a list of stuff that's kinda sorta maybe relevant. Hopefully there's something informative About Me in there, haha:

I am studying computer stuff and brains at school. That makes it sound like I know what I'm doing - I really don't.
Korean food is a W
Refrigerated fruit is a W
I love my little brother, who is bigger than me
I love my brothers at school who are basically family.
- A lot of them are punks though.
- And some are now graduated, which is super great and kinda sad at the same time :,)
I like Star Wars a lot. Maybe a little too much
I derive a kinda ridiculously wonderful amount of joy from
- giving out funny jokester items
- executing lighthearted pranks
- clean memes
Favorite books in the Bible to read, though all of them are cool:
- Philippians
- Job
- 1 Kings, Chapter 19 in particular
- Proverbs
- 1 Thessalonians
- 2 Timothy
- James
- Jude
Praise You In This Storm w/ Phil Wickham and Casting Crowns is a great song.

First disclaimer:
OK - for this last part aBoUT mE, I've written, re-written, scrapped, transposed, reversed, projected onto different planes, and convolved it. It still doesn't feel quite right because it's hard to write these sorts of things with sounding cliché, soppy, disingenuous, or platitude-y.

I don't think I'll ever find this to be 1000% perfect. But I did my best and will settle w/ this for now!

Last disclaimer:
I stink at writing concisely. If you find lengthy walls of text to be off-putting, then I got good news for ya - this is a random website on the internet!!! that (presumably) no one is forcing you to read!!!! 🤩 🥳 😁 Therefore you don't needa keep reading if you don't waneww!! :)

But if you have decided to stay then this is MY ARTS AND CRAFTS PORTFOLIO and I'LL write WHATEVER I WANT for HOWEVER NOT-CONCISELY I WANT lsdkfsdljkfjlasd >:(

Personal Essay straight outta my heart/mind:

This is for my fellow MIT homies. I'm just 1 person, so understand that this is just 1 of many possible takes.
I really do love you guys and hope this is moderately encouraging to more than zero people.

School is hard. Life is hard. Stuff is hard all the time.

MIT people are great. I don't think we have a whole lot more/less problems than the average college student in America. Some problems are just commonalities that undergird the post-secondary education system -- problems that simply follow people anywhere and everywhere. What I DO think at least somewhat differentiates us from other student bodies, is... well, workaholism.

Of course, workaholism exists pretty much everywhere. But at least in my observations so far, MIT people tend to be more in denial as to whether the whole workaholic-ing thing is actually working.

Which makes sense! A lot of us are used to fixing a problem by just brute-forcing it with more hours of grinding our teeth. More sweat, more hard work, more thinking power, more research, more "Me Doing Stuff" TM (C) (R) LLC.

So when hard stuff in life hits unexpectedly -- stuff that you can't escape by just working or thinking your way out; stuff like loss or grief; stuff like chronic pain or physical injuries; stuff like family crises or financial shocks; stuff like never-ending bad news; stuff like crippling loneliness or purposelessness -- a lot of us just frankly don't got the emotional muscles to handle it. That's when it kinda starts to suck to be an EngINeER. That's when you might wish you were maybe good-er at other things. That's when your lifelong workout strategy of beefing up your brain while letting your emotional muscles atrophy doesn't really feel like the strat anymore.

I half kid, but if you've been there then you know what I mean. I can say this ^^^ with good confidence, because I myself know what it's like to be put through this exact same wringer. It stinked.

I'd like to say that I victoriously made it out to the other side using my marvelous capabilities, but that'd be lying to you. In reality, it was more like the Grace of God dragging me out of the wringer with some really kind people to help out along the way, as I figuratively kicked and screamed and tried to give up. I still got the literal scars, and I still don't live a perfect life cause only one Man ever did that and I ain't Him. 😅

I know that I wouldn't have made it without some of the right people just being in the right place at the right time. And if I was in control of time/space/matter, I probably woulda just let me be a bedridden potato for the rest of my life. Thankfully, I ain't behind the control board for the universe. Instead, I have been a recipient of divine Grace, even when I had done basically nothing to deserve it from the people around me at the time. It was a degree of compassion and self-sacrifice that was & still is mind-boggling to me - especially when you haven't been shown that kinda mercy and compassion before. I certainly hadn't done enough 'good deeds' to deserve that kinda mercy on a cosmic scale either.

As a fellow workaholic, it frustrates me to a ferocious degree when I "owe" someone for the massive help they gave me, but there's no opportunity for me to offer something back of comparable magnitude. In this "line of work/service," the only thing anyone can do is pay-it-forward. And that makes me wanna tear my hair out because I wanna repay the EXACT person who showed me Grace.

But perhaps it's a good thing that paying-it-forward is my only option -- because I ended up spending my entire last year at MIT trying to redeem my pain and lost time by passing on the unmerited kindness that was so graciously given to me. Sometimes, that looked like passing on the insights I learned from my trials. Other times it was doing things for others that I knew were comforting for me, or sending kind messages to a person who's too bedridden to move. Or just sitting in silence with someone until their pain subsides.

Really, no one should walk through this kinda thing alone. If you ever find yourself drowning in despair, exhaustion, purposelessness, or whatever it is, and you need someone, then I don't care if you knock on my door at 4 AM or interrupt me on my way to class. There are more important things at MIT than just the work. I care about you, regardless of however long I've known you or haven't known you; that doesn't matter to me, and it never will.

Maybe that sounds odd, but it feels simple enough to me: after having tasted amazing Grace, it's kind of impossible for me to not have the passion to show that same Grace to others.

I can't guarantee that things are ever going to be in my power to fix.
I can't guarantee that things will work out the way you want them to.
Sometimes I might not be the right person to help.

Sometimes, I won't even know what "helping" ought to look like because, just like you, I'm a flawed friend and person. I don't have the superhuman strength or knowledge to fix everything in our fallen world that ought to be fixed.

Sometimes I will try everything I can possibly think of, and struggle with all my might, but the only thing left for me to do is just sit there and cry with you.

But I will do the best that I can.

There's a really poignant scene from The West Wing episode "Nöel" (Season 2, Episode 10). Josh Lyman is suffering from PTSD. His boss, Leo McGarry, orders an appointment between Josh and a doctor from the (fictional) American Trauma Victims Association.

The conversation in the video clip occurs between Josh and Leo after the appointment.

The point I'm making by including this scene, is that you are NOT the first - NOR will you be the last - college student to go through the wringer. There are many who came before you, and many who will come after you.

I've fallen into the metaphorical "hole" that Leo talks about in the past. By God's grace, I have (mostly) climbed out. You don't have to walk through anything without a friend. 🙂 👍

This is at the top of the page as well, but here's my FB Messenger and school email (audreymh@mit.edu). Contact me any time if you need it

Art Stuff