For this project I chose to focus on my life as a Carnegie Mellon Student and the burdens that come with the lifestyle I live here. I wrote down several of my life problems onto eight cardboard boxes and attempted to carry them all with me around campus. To add to the drama I filled some of the boxes with leaky bags of water that dripped down the boxes and soaked the cardboard and my clothes.

The idea of carrying boxes attracted me because they are difficult to carry even if they are not heavy. They are awkward and unwieldy, even if they can be very light in comparison to other things. If they are light you can deal with them and lift them without hurting yourself, but you’ll have some trouble doing it. This was the same allegory I wanted to make with the problems I have as a CMU student (or a college student in general). My problems are light compared to those of others less fortunate than I, but to some degree the struggles I face are real.

The reactions I got from other people were mostly curious looks as I struggled to balance the leaky boxes with strange words on them. However I did get one nice reaction. As I was starting to walk with the boxes I dropped them for the first time and two guys ran up to me and offered to help me out. I politely refused but was glad that I had elicited a positive reaction from people. It’s also nice to know that people, even strangers, were willing to help me as a fellow student with my problems. Another interesting thing that happened was that as the water got all over me it actually froze directly onto my coat. It was really cold that day.

So I consider this project to be successful conceptually but I feel that the execution could have been done differently. The water didn’t soak the boxes as much as I thought it would and they didn’t fall apart like I had expected them to. Also if I were to re-do this project in the future I would paint the boxes gray or some other neutral color to dis-associate them with shipping packages. However, I do feel like this project was an overall success because of the interactions and reactions it provoked.