Hello everyone, My name is Taren Rohovit. I’m currently a sophomore here at the University of Utah, majoring in psychology. Both last year as well as this year I’ve lived at Lassonde Studios, and it’s been an amazing experience. Last year, I started a company called Index with my partner Mathew Beseris — Index, if you don’t know, is an app that allows you to share all of contact information at once through a QR code. I was asked to document an example of what a typical day might look like for a student entrepreneur. Enjoy!
8:00 a.m.
I prefer to work at night but surprisingly the rest of the world doesn’t operate on a nocturnal schedule. So, I tend to roll out of bed at around 8 a.m. The exact time depends on what meetings I have planned for the day.
I live in a pod on the fifth floor of Lassonde. Although I did clean it up a little for this picture, I usually keep it about this clean. I’ve read a lot about how having a messy living area can actually make you more creative, but I still prefer more of a minimalist vibe.
8:30 a.m.
I don’t have a particularly long morning routine, just the basics: shower, brushing your teeth, ect. That being said, I’m a strong advocate that the morning is far superior to the night shower. For breakfast, I normally just get a blueberry smoothy from the Miller Cafe at Lassonde. I read once that blueberries are supposed to make you smarter, so my partner Mathew and I have a joke about trying to eat as many blueberries as possible.
9:00 a.m.
As soon as I’m all ready for the day, the grind starts. Today I had an early meeting with Mathew to talk about some coding questions I had. Mathew is majoring in computer science and is easily one of the smartest people I know, so of course whenever I’m having trouble with homework he’s the first person I hit up for help. I snapped this cool picture while he was thinking about how I managed to break my program so badly. (I’m kidding, it wasn’t that bad.)
10:00 a.m.
Mathew and I were working on the 5th floor of Lassonde, which is also where Jackson Leach, the third member of Index lives. We had a chance encounter with him as he left his community, and this is where the day took an interesting spin. Earlier in the week we were testing a new code structure for the QR codes we generate. Unfortunately, our test accidentally broke some of our services. So today started out with a mad scramble to fix what broke, thankfully, Jackson knew exactly what to do and was able to fix the bug in no time.
10:30 a.m.
Since we were all together, we decided to move our little impromptu meeting down to our office in the Neelemen Hangar. Each semester the company launch program at Lassonde lets student run companies apply to hold an office space, and this semester Index was lucky enough to get one!
11:00 a.m.
The team is hard at work in our office! This is where all the magic happens for us. I tend to spend more time in the office than I do anywhere else, so we’re lucky to have such a nice space!
11:30 a.m.
The team is still grinding away at work. I figured I would take a quick break to get a better photo of the whole office. You’ll notice we have a ball on the table, I’ve always thought that having toys around a work environment can make work a lot more fun.
12:00 p.m.
Just finished up our meeting! We all made some good progress. Recently we’ve been focusing most of our efforts to try and push out an Android version of our app, which hopefully will be done in the very near future!
1:00 p.m.
I just took a quick break to get some lunch. I normally just eat at the Miller Cafe in Lassonde because of how easy it is. Now I switched up to doing some coding homework. Although I don’t help code Index, I’m minoring in computer science so that I would have a better understanding of our services.
2:00 p.m.
Next I met with Lassonde’s very own JoCee Porter to talk about getting an Index code made up for her non-profit business, Celebrate Everyday. Today we also had a news crew from Montreal, Canada, following us, so JoCee is getting her picture taken here.
3:20 p.m.
This is the view from my room on the fifth floor. I’m about to head out to my class, and it looks like it’s going to snow…. It might be a chilling walk back. Good thing I like the snow!
3:40 p.m.
Class just started. Today I have my computer science lecture, which although is very interesting, the lecture can be a little long for me. The class goes from 3:40 to 5:00 which is about my attentional limit for sitting in one place.
4:45 p.m.
Class is almost over! A lot of times I can’t help but try to multitask in class by trying to knock out some homework at the same time. Not sure I would recommend that strategy as sometimes I miss important information, but it frees up some time!
5:05 p.m.
Class is out, and I was right, Utah is in full-blown blizzard mode. It’s harder to see in this photo, but the snow is really coming down. I know I said I like the snow, but this is a little more than I would like for a walk.
5:15 p.m.
Finally back to Lassonde. It was quite a chilling walk. However, I thought that Lassonde looked really pretty in the snow so I stopped to snap this pic. I think it’s easy to forget how lucky I am to be living in such a beautiful modern building. I think architecture can have a huge positive impact on creativity and motivation; I think Lassonde’s architecture definitely achieves that.
6:00 p.m.
Back in my room getting some dinner before I go off to do some more homework. I usually work until about 8 or 9 in the evening depending on deadlines. However, I’ll end this little day journal here as I don’t think more photos of me working is very entertaining. Thanks for coming along!
