Vignesh Panchanatham

We arrived in Cleveland on Thursday night, but we had no meetings on Friday. The three-day weekend was much needed. Even though Felipe and I accomplished pretty much nothing, those three days were our first break since the week after midterms. Even after finals finished, we were working on setting up meetings for the summer, so time to relax was in limited quantity. I lazed around in our AirBnB catching up on The Good Fight, only leaving my room to eat. Despite the relaxing nature of the weekend, it was also the scariest part of the trip so far. There were no updates on the status of Felipe’s international work permit, so there were significant questions about whether he would be able to work during the summer. If the permit didn’t come soon, then it would be possible that I might need to find a new partner. The uncertainty of the situation was taking its toll on us. Felipe spent the next two days calling people about his status and preparing contingency plans for...

When Felipe and I arrived in Detroit two weeks ago, we encountered the first challenge of our ten weeks together this summer – renting a car. As 19-year-olds we can only legally rent a car in Michigan or New York, the reason we are starting this summer in Detroit, but that ability comes with a $50-a-day fee for underage driving. Thus, our rental car bill got an addition of $1600 and only one of us could drive. As the US citizen, and at the time, the only one legally able to work due to visa issues, I took on that role. I quickly realized that I absolutely hated driving more than an hour. On Monday, a drive to the Dow Chemical headquarters in Midland took two hours each way and left me feeling completely exhausted. By Thursday, I had given up on driving solo the whole summer, and we went back to Thrifty to add Felipe as a secondary driver. Other than the challenges of driving, Detroit was amazing. We came in with low expectations for the area, and left completely astound...