Do you know what day it is? Well, one year ago, on September 17th, 2013, an excited young blogger published a heartfelt post gleefully talking about what his first year at MIT is going to be like. That post was called Two Truths and a Lie, that blogger was me, and today I'm a slightly older still-excited blogger who published a heartfelt blog post gleefully talking about what my first year at MIT actually was like.

First things first, I started typing this post a few minutes before midnight and now it's Thursday the 18th, so I'm going to take the time to submerge myself into nostalgia with a #ThrowbackThursday:

PCTI Class of 2013 Graduation with my loving Mom and Dad.

My 18th Birthday/Going Away Party...oh shoot I'm already 19...here comes the nostalgia...

A lot has changed during my first year of MIT. I'm smarter now, or at least I hope I am. I learned valuable lessons about discipline and hard work. I did my own laundry and cooked my own food. Oh, and I also joined a frat. Yeah, that was definitely an unexpected decision for me that changed the course of my entire MIT life. For one, I had a guaranteed social life. For two, I had a gorgeous five-story house to live in. For three, I gained 43 new best friends for life.

In this photo: Phi Kappa Sigma alumni, upperclassmen, fellow 17'ers, and new members. I wanted to make sure everyone was included in this photo, whatever photoshop necessary.

But there was a problem. Sure I learned a lot, but I didn't feel different. I expected to come out of my first year feeling completely changed. And yet I felt the same. Even worse, I could still remember high school like it was yesterday. I felt like I time warped to one year later as an MIT Sophomore. Had I wasted my Freshman year?

I started thinking back. I started looking through pictures of the past year, from fancy formal pictures to pictures of derping around with friends. I re-listened to the songs we PSetted and danced to. I thought of the bajillion people I met at MIT and how every experience I've had with them was all within the past year. I thought of the classes I've taken, the professors I've talked to, the amount of times I stayed up really late studying, the amount of times I said "screw it," and went to bed instead. I remembered the early morning walks to Stata and the late night walks back to Simmons. I remembered all the times I ate at Maseeh Dining and Simmons Dining, all the late night LaVerde's runs, all the different restaurants and places I've been to in Boston. I remembered all the Skullhouse formals, the mixers, the serenades, and the alumni dinners. I thought about how many times I've climbed up the steps of Building 7 and walked down the Infinite Corridor to get to class. I cringed because for a moment I had almost began to take it all for granted.

Wow.

An unbelievably kalosal amount of things have happened between my first blog post and today's blog post. True, high school still feels like it was yesterday, but so does MIT freshman fall, and IAP, and spring. Anyday feels like yesterday to me if I think about it long enough. MIT Freshman Year was another chapter in my book that I can re-read whenever I want, along with every other chapter of my life. Now it's sophomore year and there's new Phi Kappa Sigma pledges, new MIT bloggers, new people Simmons folk, new kids on the block. Time to write the next chapter, to be full of exciting new adventures and changes.

But some things never change. For one, MIT is still a party...

My DEECS robot is still the best robot ever...

...and PSets still leave me feeling like this:

I'm feeling a little festive. Check out my website for a list of all of my previous blog posts. Also follow my Twitter to keep up to date with any new blog posts.

wow.

I'm Joe, and I don't really know where to start this post. I guess I'm a blogger now. Also apparently I'm a real life MIT student now too. Neither of these are things I ever thought would happen, so that's pretty cool. That's probably an understatement, actually. It's insanely cool - the process that brought me from my hometown, to getting accepted into this crazy place, to now being a blogger, happened so quickly, I'm still in a state of shock (so try to forgive me if this post is all over the place). The idea of MIT never became a reality to me until I actually moved here. Throughout all of high school, the idea of college as a whole seemed so abstract and so distant that I basically thought it would never happen, but as I've just very recently learned, it does indeed happen, and it happens very quickly.

So I'm here at MIT, taking actual classes and doing actual problem sets and making actual friends (really!). It's crazy. I moved up here on the 19th of August, for my pre-orientation program I was accepted to, Discover Product Design (DPD), which was so rad. I didn't know what to expect going in to it, knowing literally not one thing about the topic, but I think it's safe to say that I learned a lot. We split in to groups and designed objects meant to fix a problem in our dorm rooms, and then proceeded to build them out of acrylic. My group came up with this (exceptionally impractical) bed whose mattress flips over to fold into a desk that would be way too big for any actual dorm room. Oh well. Speaking of dorm rooms, that leads me to my next point.

Dorms.

For my FPOP and most of REX, I was living in East Campus, Second East. During CPW earlier in the year, I was temped in MacGregor, but ended up spending a lot of my time over on the east side of campus, which included EC, but most of my time was spent in the courtyard of Senior House, trying again and again to master the tire swing (which, mind you, is no ordinary tire swing). Anyways, CPW came to an end, and when the time came for me to apply for housing, I put East Campus first - I wasn't sure that Senior House would be right for me, and when results were posted, I got my first choice - East Campus. When I arrived in Cambridge to move in, the summer resident hadn't moved out of room yet, so I was placed in a room down the hall, in a double alone (a "dingle", as I've heard people call it). But as orientation moved along, I realized I wasn't spending very much time at all at EC - I found myself again and again at Senior House. Here at MIT though, you have a chance to move out of your dorm during orientation to another residence (called REX, or residence exploration). So when the opportunity presented itself, I requested to move into Senior House, and somehow, I got in, and I couldn't be happier here. It's such an amazing and diverse place - all of MIT is, for that matter - and there's such a wonderful community. What really drew me was the culture of music and art that exists here - two things that I am very into. Those are things that I really want to pursue while I'm at MIT, if I can find time, which, as I have come to learn, is a valuable commodity.

Once classes began, life turned very crazy very quickly. People always told me that MIT was hard, but I didn't really know what that meant. I think I have a handle on what that means now. I haven't pulled an all-nighter yet to do psets, but I've come close, staying up alone in the Hayden Library until 4 AM to do my 5.111 pset the night before it was due. If I had to impart one piece of wisdom I've gleaned, it would be that college is nothing like high school. People told me that all the time before I got here, but now that I'm here, I can verify. They are, in fact, different. I could whine and complain about all the work I've already had to do, but that wouldn't be representative of my experience. You get what you put in. Already, I feel like I'm so much more knowledgeable about the topics we're covering than I was just a few weeks ago. I spent over 12 hours working on my most recent 18.01A problem set with a group, and it was definitely difficult, but if you had given me the same problems a week ago, I would have had literally no idea where to begin. As I'm writing this, the results to my first MIT test ever were posted, 8.01, which I took last night. (and I got a 93 yesssssssssssss)

With all the time I spend on classes and actual real work, time for other things has become increasingly scarce, and thus I've been slowly learning to use my time more efficiently. I haven't been able to do as much of the stuff as I've wanted to do yet, but that will come. I'm making sure to set aside time to write music and build stuff - they're still my passions, and I'm pretty sure they're what helped get me into MIT, so it makes sense that I should continue with them. I have this four bar loop I wrote the other day playing right now and I'm trying to figure out what to do next with it. In general, I really want to explore music at MIT and Boston/Cambridge. To celebrate the end of the first week of school, I went to Boston Calling on Friday with a friend, to see Neutral Milk Hotel and The National, which was so awesome. This whole place is so incredibly creative and inspiring, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to build off of that. (Speaking of building, note to self: join the MIT Hobby Shop, it's soo rad.) I'm in a freshman advising seminar called "Digital and Darkroom Imaging", and last Sunday I developed real life film by hand in a darkroom, which was such an experience (also, not easy). I also (apparently) have 24/7 access to the darkroom in the Student Center, which is so cool. My HASS course for the semester is one on Jazz History, and the professor is a musician and is giving his students free tickets to a show he's playing. How rad is that? (very. it's very rad.)

I could write so many other things about my time here so far, and I'm sure I will in future posts. I'm still trying to process everything that's happened so far, life moves so quickly here. I understand why Pass/No Record exists for first semester. Transitioning is hard. Anyways. I think me and some friends are going to IHOP to eat pancakes and work on our next 18.01A pset, so that's what I'm doing next. Thanks for getting through this wall of text, however disorganized it was. (Also, as you may have already noticed, I have a penchant for long, winding sentences with lots of commas. Sorry about that, I'm working on it.)

So, all in all, I like it here. (a lot) 

For several reasons, it’s been quite a while since my last blog. Between then and now, a fusillade of transformations has taken place. Rather than present a disjointed patchwork of events from here and there, I’ll just take a deep breath and start from the beginning, when summer was peaking and plans were forming.

Book Launch

In 2012, I started working on a novel. In 2013, it was completed. In 2014, it was published. The journey from the first uncertain scrawl of words to the final product was a weird, imprecise zigzag, but it’s also one I never foresaw. Back then, if you had asked me why I was writing the book, I probably would have looked at you with furrowed brows and a surprised look. Why? Why I’m writing it? Because…because…

I want to? No, not quite. I mean, yes, of course I want to write. But that’s not why. I don’t know what the why is. I don’t know why the kidnapping on the news stuck with me the way it did, why it bounced around and persisted in my head, fermenting and ripening until it suddenly felt too much to simply be contained. It just had to be written. I couldn’t say why, but it just had to be, and in the absence of words to give shape to this looming story, it persisted like a large pimple, needing immediate attention. The moment I began typing the words, it was like getting lost, vanishing into a dark cabinet where warm voices murmur and where you feel comfort despite the lack of sight. That’s why I wrote the book, and I don’t think I can articulate it any better than that.

What I do know is that I never really intended for it to be published, at least not until the later stages of the novel, a hundred thousand words into the demented lives of Joseph and Ashley. I was writing because, just because, fullstop, and the idea of publishing held the same substance that MIT once did--a height to be contemplated and admired, never grasped. But I already spoke about how dreams sometimes spring out of the boxes they reside in. I just want to talk about the process of bringing the published book to life.

A book needs readers, right? So the publishing press put together a small planning committee. We upturned every rock, burnt the midnight oil, trying to figure out how to promote the book. Ultimately, we decided on a pre-sales book launch that would bring together students, parents, friends, government personnel and the media into a whirlwind of publicity.

The launch took place on the nineteenth of June. Teachers from my high school showed up with students. My friends trickled in, all of them looking so much more different than I remembered. Government ministries were represented, of education, of power. So were companies I suppose were curious about the book, and about whatever waves it was stirring. I think a lot of the unexpectedly profound publicity had a lot to do with my age juxtaposed against the sheer size of the book.

Prior to the launch, I went around a lot, meeting people, introducing the book, giving summaries and free copies and autographs. Whenever they saw it for the first time, there was a certain way their eyes popped open. Sure, they knew I’d written something, but it was so…big. I found this near-universal surprise a little amusing. They’d ask how I’d done it, and it would seem a bit weird because I had had a year and I wrote all the time, and the daily hours of investment, which I guess accumulated pretty fast, seemed sort of normal at the time. I write with every chance I get. And like anything, it just piles up.

Anyway, for the launch, I was dressed in a spiffy red suit, which made me feel claustrophobic. I was also nervous as hell. I remember diving into a bathroom moments before everything began, just breathing in and out, staring at myself in the mirror. The cynical, consistently loud, consistently self-aware and self-criticizing part of me I think comes with writing was actually quiet that day. All of me was quiet, inside and out. I knew it was a huge day, or was supposed to be a huge day, but staring at myself, with my bent glasses hinged on my crooked nose, I couldn’t quite process anything, except the feeling of bigness, of being overwhelmed without being sure why.

Then the event started. Guests of honors were rattled out, most notably a state governor who had sent in a representative. There were a few remarks about the book, followed by an in-depth review by a professor. And I do mean in-depth. His review was long and detailed and sweeping, and brought to light his opinions on the merits and flaws of the book. For instance, to his taste, my symbolism was overdone and a lot of phrases were notably unduly complicated or odd-sounding. But overall, his review was positive. He praised the characters, the realistic nature of their depressing situations. It was actually the first official review of the book, and the first professional review I’d heard and I think I was most aware of the fact that all these people were here listening to him talk about the book, while I sat at the other side of the room, facing the crowd, still sort of shell-shocked.

After the review was over, I read a few pages from the book, somehow without hyperventilating into a nervous mess on the floor. Then the sales began. There were lots of pictures and lots of poses and lots of interviews and lots of clicking cameras. People smiling and talking and mingling and pulling me in all directions when the launch ended. But to my ears, the inner ears that no one could probe, there was only the loudness of my heartbeat, the awe. I don't know why. I do know that the day of the launch was one of the happiest days of my life.

During the launch, most people bought the book at its normal price, but a lot of others, mostly government personnel, wanted to show support for the book and the publishers, and thus voluntarily bought copies at significantly higher amounts. As a result, the novel broke even on the first day of sale, and since then has made over forty thousand dollars.

Aftermath
A lot followed the day of the launch. I still went everywhere I could, trying to promote it. My high school gave me a booth during its Class of 2014 Graduation Ceremony where I sat for several hours and talked about the book to parents. And while sales did happen all the time, they also didn’t happen a lot of times. Since I was one of several people involved in direct sales, there were times I would walk up to people to talk about the book and they would quickly shut me down—the natural fear of all salespeople, I think, wherein we all agree that they are soul-sucking time-wasting leeches. I remember in particular, approaching a bored-looking woman during the graduation ceremony, asking her if I could interest her in the book. She said “sure” and I went into a detailed explanation as to what it was all about. She nodded and smiled and after I was done, she asked, “Are you done?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied. “No.” Then she got up and left.

There were other variants—“I’m not interested” and “Please I’m busy” and the noncommittal “Okay, I’ll come by later and check it out, I promise.” But the ones that did sell involved the same first step—having the courage to go up and talk to people. They didn’t come over to the booths by themselves—at least many of them didn’t. A lot of times, I had to take a breath in and walk up to them and say, “Hey, can I talk to you about this book?” I’m not very good with public speaking. Heck, people have a consistently hard time trying to figure out what I’m saying. I was too aware of this and was always nervous, but somehow always managed to slip into that neutral, controlled, traveling salesman voice whenever I had to. It was a powerful learning experience, and for each sale and each rejection that came from me reaching out to someone, I was at least proud of my effort.
**
The book was featured in three national newspapers, a literary magazine and a national TV channel—African Independent Television. For the TV bit, I naturally had to go up to be interviewed. On live TV. And I didn’t realize it was live until moments before the program started. I probably would have if I hadn’t been so late.

So the extensive network of offices, satellites and equipment that comprise AIT are situated on top of a hill, but this hill is shrouded by extensive high-rises of jutting rocks and sprawling vegetation, and thus making it out from the ground is impossible. There was no internet to even permit me to fool around on a GPS, and even though my parents (who were driving me there) had the address, we had no real clue where the place was. We resorted to the “Nigerian GPS” system, which means stopping continuously to ask passersby for direction. Which was fun because one would say, “Head a few miles north this way” and we would head north and ask someone else who would say, “Nope, wrong direction, head several miles south the opposite way!”

But we did end up finding the station in the nick of time. I was supposed to be featured on a live Sunday afternoon show called “Frontline”, and we were dangerously close to running late.
Thus, there was no time to prepare. The show’s host, Martin Ilo, hurried me into the newsroom. I was more or less shoved into a seat. A swarm of people surrounded me, powdering my face and my nose with all sorts of weird things that, in my disoriented state of mind, could have been anything from lotion to rat poison. Then bright halogen lights washed my face and my host’s in strange glows, and a million cameras rose like vanishing angels and Martin told me to be calm and collected and just think of him as a casual friend and then the show began. I’m still not sure how that went, but it was definitely fun.

So yeah, the book did make more waves than my mind had ever imagined (or intended) it would, but I think the smallest wave it made, at least from a grand cosmic world view or just some objective point of view, was the biggest one for me. But I’ll get to that in just a bit.

In Closing, A Few Things
From the moment I started writing the book and up to its current evolving state today, I learnt a lot. I don’t want to spend too much time talking about lessons, because they were mostly for me anyway, and they felt like the sort of lessons that imprinted themselves on you by virtue of experience, as opposed to some grand lecturing, but I do wanna say a few things.

First, people make dreams happen. Not just a person, people. And there are so many of them I’m grateful for, the wheels of the cog without whom the book would have never spun and taken flight. My parents and friends, the publishers and the salespeople, the government officials that helped out and were willing to let me engage them. So just think about that. That one idea you’ve spent harboring will not be driven to fruition in a dingy basement or a lonely lab. And that’s one of the most comforting, most relieving facts I know.

Second, we’re all capable of courage, but for the things we care most about, it really shows itself when it counts the most. Talking to people, being in the center of things, making public statements, these are the sort of things I can happily do when writing, because the words have a certain drum with which they flow to my head, and it’s rhythmic enough for me that I don’t care so much about how others perceive it. Speaking is almost the direct opposite, and having to do so much of it in such little time was far beyond my comfort zone. But that’s where our most strong-legged dreams will want to take us, beyond our comfort zones. We shouldn’t be afraid to follow them as they lead us.

And finally, make small waves. Whenever you can. I talked about the physically small wave that actually ended up meaning so much to me—and that wave was my little brother, Johnpaul, who I think represented the biggest aftermath of the book launch for me. Johnpaul had been at the book launch.

The day afterward, I found him on the house desktop, which meant the universe was still in order because he was always there playing some really old version of FIFA. But this time, he wasn’t playing a game. As I came upon what he was doing, I was pretty surprised.

“Johnpaul?” I said. “What are you doing?”

He looked up from the Microsoft Office document, where at the corner, I saw he had written seven hundred words thus far.

“I want to be like you,” he said. “I want to write my own book too.”

For me, that small wave was the biggest one.
**

Last weekend was the Tetazoo fall camping trip, and my first time ever joining the group on an adventure through the woods of New Hampshire during the fall semester.

What is Tetazoo? Tetazoo is the name of the third floor of the East Parallel of East Campus, which is currently (and always has been) where I reside at MIT and where I spend most of my time of the year moseying about.

This was not my first camping adventure with Tetazoo. Last spring, I joined Tetazoo on an adventure to Rumney, New Hampshire to camp outside the MIT Outdoors Club's (MITOC) Camelot cabin and go on a rather painful hike in the snow. This camping trip was a little better because we rented out an entire MITOC cabin (this time the Intervale cabin) and there was no snow. Hiking without snow is so much better than hiking in the snow.

My car on the way to the cabin consisted of Duncan T. '13 and two pretty 2017s - Barbie D. '17 and NiBr '17. And me. We left around 4:30pm on the Friday and stopped at Subway and Market Basket on the way to the cabin to grab some food. There was a beautiful view on the way there.

It was dark when we finally got to the campsite. We were all super excited because there was supposed to be an aurora that night after the sun completely set and before the moon came up, but we never saw anything other than the beautiful sunset, a ton of stars and the Milky Way galaxy.

When we got to the GPS coordinates, we were all a bit confused and lost. Duncan was the only one who had ever been there before, but we had a tough time finding the place where we were supposed to park, mostly because there were no other cars. It turned out that we were the first ones there, and we didn't have the keys. Jes P. '15 has the keys, and her car supposedly left before ours. So after walking in the woods looking for the campsite for a half hour, we finally settled at the fire pit by the cabin and waited.

A little while later (after a few unsuccessful attempts by Barbie and I to start an extremely tiny fire), two more car groups arrived. Still no Jes. There were fifteen of us. One of the later-leaving cars got there - still no Jes!

Finally, over an hour after we got there, Jes arrived with her car full of people. She brought us up to the tiny cabin in the woods, and she opened it up. Everyone rushed up the tall ladder in the back of the cabin to claim their spot on the giant 12-person loft in the cabin. There were at least twenty of us up there, putting our sleeping bags down and getting ready to go back outside and start a campfire.

After many struggles, we started the fire in a creative way, and sat around the fire to take in the heat on the really cold night. We all cuddled and huddled together for warmth, and then Will L. '16 took out his guitar.

And then Will played some songs, and then Jake I. '16 played some songs, and we all sang together rather loudly (or as loud as is allowed by MITOC rules and regulations for renting out the campsite, of course). Our Graduate Resident Tutors (GRTs) Chris and Finn arrived at one point with their two year-old daughter, Marie F. '30, to camp out on an observation deck far away from the loud tetazoa. The late car, led by Kayla E. '15, arrived after we lit the fire, and they joined us in our chants.

We sang typical Tetazoo songs while we roasted our marshmellows and ate some s'mores. Finally, the "hardcore" hike people headed to bed so that they could be up at 5am to be super hardcore, and the rest of us hung around the fire for a couple more hours and just enjoyed each other's company. It was so much fun, and really made me love being a part of such a cool group of people.

Finally, we all headed back to the cabin to go to sleep on the loft. A few people stayed downstairs on the pull-out couch, but the rest squeezed together upstairs, and we all got yelled at by the hardcore group for waking them all up. Eventually, we fell asleep.

Three hours after the hardcore group left, my "moderate" hiking group of 17 people got up and got ready to go hike 10 miles in the white mountains of New Hampshire.

We were all very excited, especially our new frosh!!

And look, Kate R. '14 came back to go camping and hiking with us!

The name of the trail we hiked was the Carter Moriah Trail in the White Mountain National Forest. It was a beautiful day!

And there was SO MUCH NATURE!!! 

Tetazoo really enjoyed our breaks with the beautiful views.

And here is me on a mountain!

The crazy person leading this moderate hike was Jes P. '15. She kept running back and forth from the back of the group to the front of the group. She's super hardcore.

And, after four hours, we finally made it to the summit!!! It was so beautiful.

One of the really cool things about this hike and the reason why there were a lot of other people hiking that Saturday was because it was the weekend after September 11th. In honor of the people who lost their lives on that tragic day thirteen years ago, there was an American flag on many of the mountain peaks across America. I'm so happy that we had the opportunity to observe one of those flags up close.

It felt so good to make it up there!

But it was SO COLD.

So although it took a while and it was super cold at the top, the hike was really amazing. We were all exhausted for the ride home, but we all made it, and we had a fantastic time together on top of a mountain and on the journey we took to get there.

Typed out notes in review:

• I wrote this two weeks ago
• I apologize for my handwriting
• Ceri's post is here
• I am also very inspired by Lydia K. '14's posts like her Dragons post. I really like her little doodles, and I still get extremely happy whenever I find her little drawings all around Random Hall.
• SHAKE SHACK! I just had another dream about the portabella mushroom burgers last night.
• I made a mistake - I said that I am only taking four classes. Cross out the word only a million times, because four classes at MIT is a full and very difficult course load, don't let anyone tell you anything different!
• I did not get to draw Beth R.F. '18 and Crystal W. '18 properly. Here they are - on graph paper!

This is Butterstick.

Butterstick weighs 10 pounds. She was named for Tai Shan, the giant panda born at the National Zoo in 2005, whom a zookeeper described as being the size of a stick of butter.

Like a number of residents, mostly frosh, she's a new arrival at Simmons. Unlike those residents, she's not here to take classes or do any research. Primarily because she's a cockapoo.

That's not to say Butterstick doesn't stay busy. She:

1. plays games (as with Emma S. '16)
2. keeps a tight grip on her pink duck toy
3. and helps students like me, who left their dogs behind, feel a bit less homesick.

Butterstick's human, Shannon, is a Residential Scholar. Residential Scholars are faculty or professionals with visiting appointments who live in dorms alongside undergrads or grad students. (Maseeh, Ashdown, and iHouse also have Residential Scholars.) When Shannon came to stay at Simmons, she brought Butterstick - who is hypoallergenic - along, delighting a contingent of residents who'd spent the past year campaigning for a dog, and making Simmons the second undergrad dorm, alongside Maseeh, to have one on the premises.

In honor of Butterstick's 8^th birthday, Shannon threw her a party and invited the neighbors. There were many, many decorate-your-own cupcakes, and some delicious pieces of vegan chocolate cake, to be had.

The birthday girl lapped up the attention, begged for pastries, and generally took advantage of the festive atmosphere. The students who attended spent the time in conversation with each other or chasing after Butterstick, who kept trying to instigate fetch or tug-of-war. Everyone enjoyed a relaxing and delicious study break.

Nadia M. '17 even taught Butterstick to spin by enticing her with a piece of lemon cupcake. Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks?

There have been plenty of posts about MIT's career fairs, mostly talking about the massive quantities of free stuff (water bottles, shirts, pens, cupcakes, etc.) you can acquire from hundreds of companies set up throughout the Z-Center. This year, I didn't succumb to the frenzy of:

This is mostly because I've given away far too many company shirts to justify getting more, especially when there's no chance of me working for most of these t-shirt bearing tech companies in this reality. 

Instead, I tried to approach the career fair with hesitant optimism and figuring out if any companies 1) interested me or 2) would be interested in a CMS/7 major. I vlogged my experience and random thoughts throughout the day, so I'm not going to paraphrase all of that in text.

But I think the most important takeaway for any prefrosh reading this is to please not worry about summer jobs pre-MIT! Do what you love, whether that's working in a lab or becoming a camp counselor or taking time off to spend with your friends and actually relax. There's this increasing pressure to be thinking about college in your every waking moment before college, and thinking about a career in your every waking moment during college. And neither of those pressures is very conducive to happiness. So, even though I'm currently being hypocritical as I worry about careers while typing this, just remember that sometimes life works in funny ways :)

If you haven’t heard of xkcd, stop reading. Instead, go over to xkcd.com, read all 1400+ comics, laugh, cry, fall in love, and then come back.

xkcd is “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” Its creator, Randall Munroe, has something of a cult following here at MIT: we’ve hacked his lectures, celebrated his anniversaries, and replicated this comic in Simmons hall. I’ve even seen some painted as murals on dorm hallways.

But Munroe does more than draw comics: he recently published a book called “What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions,” in which he uses legitimate, scientific tools and data to guess at impossible questions like:

• “How much Force power can Yoda output?”
• “What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the small furry critter) in one place?”
• “If all digital data were stored on punch cards, how big would Google's data warehouse be?”
• “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?”

More often than not, the actual physics causes some form of apocalyptic catastrophe.

The idea started on whatif.xkcd.com, but gained so much popularity that Munroe decided to publish a collection of popular answers from the website, some original answers to brand-new scenarios, and a list some of the weirdest questions he’s received. The book itself is about an inch thick, is absolutely hilarious, and, according to the back cover, contains about 2,300 calories, not that we could successfully digest it.

Two weeks ago, to kick of the launch of the book, Munroe held a book signing event at Harvard’s Brattle Theatre. This was announced last spring, and I thought for a while about if I wanted to attend.

Pro: get to meet Randall
Con: must visit Harvard

Just kidding! Harvard is actually a very cool place, full of wonderful people, and everyone should visit before concluding that MIT is clearly better. Anyways, September 2nd, the date of the event, also happened to be Registration Day here at MIT, but since freshmen had already registered with their advisors, I didn't have any conflicts. I asked Facebook if anyone else was attending, assembled a posse of fellow xkcd fanatics, then headed out with Ostin ‘17, Henry ‘18, and Zareen ‘18. Harvard is a little over a mile away from MIT, which translates into either a 30 minute walk or a 10 minute subway ride. It was pouring rain, so we opted for the latter, got in line, got our books, got our seats, and got excited. Randall Munroe himself took the stage and finally began.

His talk opened with a history of “What If?” - the idea actually originated at MIT (which was more than a little ironic to hear him say aloud in a Harvard Theater). Every year, just before Thanksgiving, MIT hosts an event called Splash, in which pretty much anyone can volunteer to teach a short class on pretty much anything to over 2000 high school students who descend on the MIT campus to learn about everything from “Understand Topology” to “Moby Dick and Modern America.” Randall has taught Splash classes in the past, and was once particularly struck by the how his students much more interested in physics examples involving Yoda and X-wings than examples about “a block of mass m.” This lead to an idea: just because physics itself follows rules and is generally boring, that doesn’t meant that we can’t apply it in absurd, hilarious, or even impossible scenarios. Thus was born the blog that became the book, where all the literal, technical rules of mechanics, heat, and motion apply, but only after we magically create a little green man in a swamp.

The rest of the talk was spent walking through one of new chapters in the book, which I won’t relate here because you should all go buy the book yourself and read it. Mr. Munroe narrates his own work beautifully, and it was a pleasure to hear it live. Afterwards, as the entire auditorium mobbed the book signing table, I elbowed my way to somewhere near the front of the line, eager to speak with my hero before he got too tired of talking to fanboys. Besides: I had a mission.

Conner 2, the floor just below the one I live on, has a tradition of naming units of measure after its residents. Conner 2 bloggers have written about this before: one Snively is one byte wasted on the internet; one Maurer is one unit of awesomeness. Bloggers have also taken this to extremes, personally asking Stephen Colbert and even President Obama what their units would define (responses: “Ball” and *blank stare*, respectively). Now, Randall Munroe is not quite as publicly famous as either of those, but to MIT students, he’s just as prestigious. So I knew that I wasn’t only going to get his signature: I was going to get his unit. I was pumped. This answer was going to be hilarious - while we might excuse the President for being stressed or distracted to come up with a quick, witty response, Randall is a professional comic artist - he makes people laugh for a living. This was going to be epic.

“Mr. Munroe, I can’t tell you how huge a fan I am of your work. I actually quoted you at my graduation speech!”

“Oh wow, thank you. I appreciate it.”
*begins to sign my book*

“But I do have to ask: if you were a unit of measure, what would it be? ‘One Munroe’ - what should it guage? It could be anything, no matter how ridiculous.”

I thought this was an excellent explanation; I had crafted it carefully while waiting in line. What would his response be? Self-reference? Sociopathic abuse of random strangers? xkcd in general?

“Hmm… right now, a rivers’ output is measured in cubic meters per second, which is a very awkward unit. I guess I’d go with that; it’d made things easier.”

Wait. What? HE COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT! Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, or maybe he was too busy drawing Cueball on my book to pay close attention. Either way, I’m reassigning the Munroe to measure "one unit of taking something humorous far too literally."

Which is actually fitting: after all, that was the entire premise of “What If?” to begin with.

Close enough.
**
Year 1: Vincent Anioke. No department.

Year 2: Vincent Anioke. Year 2 Undergrad. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

It’s been a year since I came to MIT, slightly over a year since I started blogging. A year since robots in the FPOP and the free-food tornado of Orientation and the pre-psets era. A year since every building gleamed with newness and strangeness and since I was convinced that MIT was just too big and I’d never get the hang of it. A year since I left my home country on what has felt like the bumpiest adventure ever. Except instead of “Expelliarmus!” and evil noseless freaks screaming “Avada Kedavra!” there’s p-sets and a weather intent on killing me. Close enough.

What’s the biggest change since becoming a sophomore? Oh, that’s easy. The answer: my e-mail. I’m not even kidding. That’s the highlight of my sophomore year. My e-mail has taken a life of its own and grown tentacles and a large eye and several mouths and gone absolutely crazy.

Crazy, right? I get tons of e-mails with the header “eecs-jobs”, all of them usually announcing an available UROP or a company seeking applicants for EECS positions or something along that line. Dozens of them every day. Literally dozens of opportunities for you to explore new research or get a job, delivered right to your e-mail!

A lot of the jobs do happen to require experience I’m still stacking up on, which is a chance for me to babble about one of the most engaging classes I’m taking this semester: 6.01: Introduction to EECS. It’s a challenging hands-on class quite unlike any I’ve taken thus far. I spend four-and-half hours every week in the lab (7-8:30 P.M. on Tuesdays, 7-10 P.M. on Thursdays), working alone or with a partner to model systems that simulate and control an actual robot. We use these bulky red wheeled robot creatures made of motors and lego blocks and a ton of circuits, hook them up to the lab computers and have them do the bidding of our software.

One particularly interesting thing the class gets you to really absorb is how differently real-life situations unfold compared to the seamless electronic predictions. For instance, with a proportional controller, we can utilize the robot’s sensors to dictate how far or close from a wall it should always be (its sensors use sound pulses and echoes to detect the wall distance). Say we fix the desired distance to 0.5 meters. Then, if the code is written correctly, if you put a wall 0.6 meters in front of the robot, it will move 0.1 meter forward. Analogously, it will move 0.1 meter backward if placed 0.4 meters away from the wall.

Now, in the lab, we played around with the “gain” or proportion of the proportional controller. For certain gains, the robot simulation on the desktop shows the robot rapidly oscillating back-and-forth. But when we tried out the code on the actual robots, they indignantly differed from the predictions, as if offended by our blatant stereotyping of them and made weird forward-backward motions too clunky to represent the sort of rapid forward-backward motion we expected.

Which sort of made sense, because the plot of the robot’s motion on the computer (distance over time) would show a series of sharp rises and falls. From this, we would expect the velocity to be disjointed straight lines on the plot, positive for a while and then immediately negative for a while and then immediately positive. But a heavy physical system can’t simulate that sort of motion.

And this was all just in the first week! There have been two more weeks, with the labs getting more difficult and much more intricate. But it’s also an exciting class. There’s a lot of room left to you for implementation. You choose how to write the code that does what we need the robot to do. You choose how to interpret it. Everything just needs to fit a logical framework, but outside of that, there are so many choices to be made, and while there are instructors and lab assistants to guide you, you (and your partner) end up making most of the decisions, and potentially dealing with the dire consequences. Like I said, fun class.

Speaking of classes, I’m taking my first ever official creative writing class this semester—Reading and Writing Short Stories with Helen Lee, an amazing professor. This is a class I’m particularly glad to get because I tried taking it freshman spring, but there was just too much interest, and I lucked out in the lottery process.

Often times, you’ll hear people talking about the simple power of e-mails, and I’m inclined to agree. Last semester, I sent an e-mail to Helen Lee saying I didn’t get into the class although I wanted to. I explained that I really loved writing, and that a spot in the class would mean a lot. She wrote back rather quickly, assuring me that she would save me a spot next semester. And she did! The class was also very over-enrolled this semester, but by simply reaching out and talking, I’d secured a spot.

Sophomore year has been a lot about reaching out. My classes are more involved than they were last year, so I have to grope at people for help (get your mind out of the gutter), use office hours more often. It actually makes for a nice experience when you realize just how much the Institute supports your endeavors. It’s a supreme amount, with all kinds of help existing at every door. The office hours and the teaching assistants and student groups and free tutorials. Guys, MIT rocks.

There’s also been a more involved kind of reaching out, which I did a lot of this week, which I guess makes sense since it was MIT’s Career Fair Week. Companies swarmed campus. For a lot of people, it was an opportunity to assure themselves a year-long supply of clothes via the following basic algorithm:

i) Find a company that’s giving out laundry bags. There are hundreds of companies on campus. Trust me, at least one of them is giving out free laundry bags. It’s an exhaustive method. Complexity: O(n) where n=number of companies

ii) Iterate through the other companies, grabbing a free shirt from each of them. Same complexity as step i) and thus same complexity overall. And if you come up to me mentioning that this algorithm forgot to account for the nontrivial time steps between moving from a booth to another, I’ll either clock you in the jaw or tickle you till you’re in hysterical, clucking tears. Or more likely feature you in a grim story with lots of hooks and lots of red-eyed shadows.

Now, for a lot of others, it was a great way to find internships and full-time jobs. I was able to work on my resume—of course, MIT’s Career Development Office looked it over beforehand and told me ways I could improve it—and apply to eight companies that made an impression on me during the fair. Fingers crossed while I wait on them, but I definitely got the sense that this year is pushing me closer to the real world, to the starkest sense of being an independent individual in a global village, far more than the previous years of life have.

Which of course brings me to the topic of growing up, because I turned eighteen less than a month ago! I can’t believe I’m eighteen, although it apparently doesn’t mean much. When I asked one of my friends what I could do in the US now that I was eighteen, his response was: “Well, now you can join the army and can be arrested and legally tried in court as an adult.” Whoopee!

I don’t have much to say about being eighteen really. For me, it was just a day that came and went, but I definitely understand that I’m nearing that point of adulthood adults seem to talk about with vague and austere mysticism. I did get three wonderful birthday gifts.

First, I got the chance to speak with my entire family over Skype. When I came to the US a year ago, I was instantly plagued by bouts of longing and home sickness, but the feeling more or less petered out as I got into the demands of the Institute. But then I went back to Nigeria for the summer, and for the first time in a year, the entire family was back together. We even traveled together to the United Arab Emirates for a couple of days, where we bonded over the heat and how amazing Dubai is and just that comforting sense of being together. So it was a bit hard letting go of all that again when I returned to the US (I was moody throughout the plane ride, which from Nigeria to US totaled 22 hours).

The Skype conversation itself was quite dramatic. Network was terrible on the other end, so I had to do a lot of screaming to be heard and so did they, and thus on the surface, it’s just me screaming at my family, and everyone else screaming back at me. But of course, it was nice, ending with a fairly immature bout of who could say “I miss you” the most. With my, “I miss you I miss you I miss you” chant shrieked a hundred times, I think I won.

The second gift was from my former roommate James Deng (I have a pseudo-single now #upgrade #yesIjustusedahashtag). He left me a birthday card. Inside it was a 25-dollar AMC gift card and sixteen pictures that chronicled our first-year adventures. Needless to say, the pictures reduced me to a weepy, emotional bawling thing and I compressed him into a hug.

The third gift was from Dori, one of the greatest friends I’ve made in MIT this semester. Before she and I actually spoke for the first time, we had lots of moments where I’d be heading to my room and she’d be heading to hers or I’d be heading outside and she’d be heading to the basement and we'd cross each other like four or five times, all in the period of an hour. Finally, when I went down to laundry later in the day, there she was and we just ended up laughing about how ridiculous the whole thing was. Then we ended up talking for the better part of an hour. It was one of those instant, easy connections, and I’m grateful for her friendship. Which I guess I should be, because for my birthday, she baked me an entire cheesecake!

All that, just for me. It was hands-down the best cheesecake I’ve ever tasted. Of course, I didn’t eat all of it alone. Though I think I certainly could have, except I’m sure there’s some alchemic, Santa-Claus-creating power in the cake.

But that’s fine, because I could shake off any extra calories (delusion of the century), and yes, that’s a reference to Taylor Swift’s catchy new song, “Shake It Off”, which is from her upcoming album, “1989”, which comes out in a month and seven days and 48.392 seconds. Not that I’m counting. It’s her first full pop album, which was a lot of news for me, because I’ve always loved the country elements of her songs. But she’s Taylor Swift, essential goddess and my laptop’s desktop background picture, and I’m excited to hear her new songs, because I know they’ll have her heart regardless of the genre.

And besides, I’m starting to think that’s what sophomore year is all about—following changes, making changes, wherever they take you.

The MIT Fall Career Fair is an intimidating thing. Over 350 companies show up and they all potentially want to give you jobs. That is, if you are a senior. (If you're younger, they may or may not want to give you internships. It's a toss-up.) And you make a good impression. And are course 2, 6, or 18.

This is how I imagine the career fair going for my friends who are course 2, 6, or 18:

There are some companies that want other majors, but 2, 6, and 18 are the big three. This is how the career fair began for me (and everyone else I know who isn't course 2, 6, or 18, as Ceri described in her awesome vlog):

(Fun fact: if you air this grievance on Facebook, you will get a couple of alumni friends messaging you to tell you that their company could really, really use a person like you. Knowing People Who Are Real Adults in the World: 1, Career Fair Information Booklet: 0.)

Even though I'm a now senior and should Take These Things Seriously, I couldn't get too pumped up about going to schmooze with a bunch of companies who, I felt, didn't really want to hang out with me. It doesn't help that I don't want to go into tech - I'm interested in digital marketing and transmedia storytelling - and that my major combination is pretty rare. Explaining how my major works takes up all of the time allotted for a standard elevator pitch. (At some point, I'll probably make an entire post about what a joint major, 21E/S, actually is.)

Last year, I made the mistake of putting "CMS & 6" on my handwritten nametag. This gave a lot of people the wrong impression.

But last year I also managed to score a great summer internship - just not at the career fair, which just goes to show that even if the companies at the career fair aren't looking for you, someone out there is. All you have to do is be direct about what you actually want, and go after it.

Having learned my lessons from last year, I went to the career fair with lowered expectations, feeling very little pressure. I picked out a few companies to investigate and otherwise spent my time weaving between stalls, making sure I passed every company at least once to see if I might be interested in them, or them in me. After all, even if a company is only actively recruiting course 6 majors, they may still need a marketer or something else and just not expect to find that something else at MIT.

Lo and behold, I actually had a great time! I came late enough to the fair that the long lines at the front had died down and registration had actually run out of nametags, which eliminated the possibility of nametag-induced confusion. I connected with a handful of companies looking for marketers (and a local, book-based tech startup looking to recruit for its editorial staff, which sounded like tons of fun). I learned about other companies I wouldn't work for that filled fascinating niches in the tech marketplace. I encountered some alumni friends who had returned from distant lands to court current undergraduates on behalf of their places of employment. And, of course, I snagged a lot of

tl;dr: I overcame my apprehensions, went to the career fair, interacted with some rad people, and had a great time.

And I will never have to buy another pen or T-shirt for the rest of my life.

I am excited.

I am excited because my math professor is sentences away from proving that the set of all real numbers (R) is uncountably infinite. That is, it’s on a whole new level of infinity, and this makes mathematics awesome.

It means that words like “nested,” “hiding,” and “eventually” imply something different and unique now. My first 18.100B Real Analysis homework contained only four distinct numbers in the statement of its fourteen problems. The numbers were 0,1, -1, and 2.

Analysis reveals a side of Mathematics that is gorgeous in itself. No application is necessary to marvel at its results and review the pages of in-class proofs with a fervor of a child who has just learned to read.

I am excited because Mathematics constitutes 44.44…% of my schedule this semester. And since Physics and Chemistry, my other two classes, rely heavily on math practices, over 50% of my academic work is actually dominated by the Queen of All Sciences. This is the schedule I’ve always desired.

What better than to learn about the world through science, and travel into the realms of beautiful abstraction in the interlude? The ability to write about it later on here boosts the thrill, for I am a wanderer of the fantastical world, mathematical or not.

I am also excited about life outside of math. Soon I will rush to my yoga class, where I will depart from the realities of college. I will contemplate the practice in the end, and a color will appear at the back of my consciousness. It will be vivid and surprising, and set the tone for my day. I’m certain it will be bright.

Later I will do my homework, plough through the stacks of PSets I have neglected for a minute too long. Then I’ll head to the west side of campus for work.

I’m a Tech Caller, which means I contact MIT alumni for conversations and donations. Although I haven't had the position for long, already I’m fascinated by the stories the alumni share and the paths their lives take after MIT. I recognize the names of their workplaces and am impressed by their credentials. Most of all, I am excited, even for a brief minute, to get a glimpse of their current lives. Chances are, they will reminisce about their times at the Institute and acknowledge its influence on their growth. Even after years of separation, they still help the students of MIT. I'm grateful for this support.

After work, I will walk through my hall, and I expect to be detained by people. In the evenings, they scatter into the lounges, work and talk together. Their conversations are irresistible, and normally I give in to temptation. After a day of important tasks, I want to share my joys and hear what they have to say about theirs. We may chat about the meaning of life and truth, the length of PSets, events, activities, relationships, cats…

Speaking of cats, I live on a “cat hall.” Fuzzy felines occasionally wander into my room and entertain me with their squeezing abilities. Yesterday a new inhabitant of the hall slithered through a 4.5’ X 4.5’ hole in the window grate. If I could pick a list of top ten super powers, such plasticity would definitely make it on there.

Not all of our floor’s cats are this flexible, however. Some are dainty and sweet, but others are heavy set and proud. Our cats are beautifully groomed creatures with vibrant personalities. As other humans of the hall, I strive to find a way to their hearts. 

I am excited also because after class and work, I will head to the Simmons (“The Sponge”) dining hall for a delicious selection yet unknown. I will meet with my friends there and perhaps together we will get a glimpse of this sunset once again:

We may also walk past my favorite Charles River for some of its revitalizing energy. The sun will finish its descent and the next stunning image will appear:

The Green Building will loom mysteriously when I at last return to East Campus:

Thus, with a (hopefully) sufficient night of sleep, I will complete my exciting day.

And tomorrow I will be excited also. 

After briefly lamenting the longer lunch lines upon the students' return to campus, I reveled in the laughter and greetings heard down the Infinite alongside falling juggling balls, skateboards and scooters that signal the start of the fall term. 

But, even more than their sounds, I love to see and hear about all the cool things offered to students or started by students that decorate the walls. This year, because I've been traveling, my eyes were attracted to posts that related to questions I'd been asked by prospective students. 

What kinds of clubs do we have? 

Usually, we like to talk about MIT Beef and the Lab for Chocolate Science. I also like to share about the Assassin's Guild Patrol Saturdays, but it was nice to see posters advertising blackjack's return to Cambridge.

How supportive are MIT faculty in encouraging students' ideas? What research opportunities are available?

This is a really difficult week for every single student at MIT. I do not want to talk about that yet.

Instead, I am going to show you some pictures of kittens and cats. I hope that you are okay, and that this helps a little bit with making people feel better.

Although it might feel like you are all alone sometimes, you are not alone. MIT is here for you, the students, and everyone else who is a part of our community and more.

And so, I present you with over thirty pictures of KITTENS! (some are cats)

And there you go, lots of pictures of cats. I hope this helped to cheer you up :)

On sunny days, I like to wander through MIT's gorgeous campus. Below are some images I've collected over the course of the month.

Enjoy! :)

Messages in the Sky over Kresge Auditorium:

The Light between Building 18 and the Infinite Corridor:

MIT's Main Entrance:

Lobby 7 aka 77 Massachusetts Avenue

A Glimpse into Boston from the Harvard Bridge:

Surely, the open space signifies an abundance of opportunities.

The Charles River:

My newest source of vitality and inspiration

Seen from the MIT Sailing Pavilion: 

Jewels of the Setting Sun:

MIT Media Lab:

Ray and Maria Stata Center:

Home of the most comfortable lecture hall chairs

E62: The Heart of MIT Sloan: 

Fun Fact: the exterior of the building is lined by 155-million-year-old German limestone. It can appear different colors, depending on the light (from mitsloan.mit.edu). E62 is also the most energy-efficient building on campus.

A Breeze Attracts MIT Sailing Enthusiasts:

Fact: MIT Sailing Pavilion is the oldest university sailing facility in the country. Membership is free for all MIT students who have taken an apporpriate class.

The Amusing Roof of the Green Building:

Featuring a "white spherical radome enclosing a long-distance weather radar apparatus"

Hoping for many more sunny days,

Yours,

Yuliya

PS: What are your favorite places on campus? Photographic answers are always welcome!

Apologies for the video length/quality this week. MIT has me sufficiently hosed this weekend, following an already-stressful week. Such is life.

Hopefully you're able to decipher my rambling in this video! If not, feel free to ask me questions (which I'm sure other bloggers would be happy to respond to, as well) about how we stay organized and how we personally handle classes here :)

It's been a week since the Career Fair, which still feels like yesterday, and two weeks since my last blog post, which also still feels like yesterday. And September is also pretty much over, which shows just how quickly MIT is zipping on by. 

During last year's Career Fair, I amassed a large collection of various colorful shirts and trinkets.

This year, my collection significantly less glorious.

This was because of two reasons:

1) Nearly everything from last year's Career Fair was either thrown away or became junk clutter, so I consciously didn't take as much this year, despite all the shiny swag that was calling out to me.

2) I was serious about getting an internship.

See, last year I was quickly brushed off by recruiters. Maybe it was my lack of coding experience, or maybe it was the bags full of swag that gave off an indication that I was only there for free stuff. At first I brushed it right back off thinking to myself "Oh, no one get internships freshman year. They only want juniors and seniors." But lo and behold, many of my freshmen friends got internships, which made me start worrying about getting an internship as well. I later spent my freshman year learning the importance of placing school first and jobs second. But a very close second.

As a sophomore who finally had basic coding experience, I was ready to start forming more concrete plans about my future at MIT and beyond. That Friday I woke up extra early (9am lol), put on my freshly pressed suit, and made my way to the Career Fair. I talked with everyone, handed around my resume, filled out mailing lists, collected names on business cards, and I even snagged a spot for an interview with AT&T.

I thought I was satisfied. But later that day I had an insightful and inspirational conversation with my Phi Kappa Sigma brother Martin M. '17, who already had an internship with Intel last year. He basically told me that if I wanted something, I needed to go above and beyond doing just what was expected of me to get it. That made me feel invigorated enough to go to every company info session and dinner I could, and I secured an interview with Intel that way.

(Two) Career Fair Pictures:

Finally, after a long, hard, day of talking to companies, getting interviews, and planning my future, nothing said #yoloimincollege like making waffle burgers at 3am with my friends. I highly recommend it.

Tweet to and follow @erickpinos for any topics you'd like to hear blogged about!

East Campus is unique for a wide variety of reasons. We build roller coasters, swim the across the Charles river (YOU HAVE NO PROOF), and have a bajillion cats (SO MANY KITTENS RIGHT NOW).

But a time-honored tradition of East Campus is our Friday Afternoon Club, or FAC. Every Friday of the semester, a different hall bands together to provide some sort of creative food item for the denizens of East Campus. 

Tetazoo takes FACs extremely seriously. So seriously that we once had a FAC titled "The Tetazoo Cares Too Much FAC," where we made personalized cakes for each of the ten halls of East Campus.

Our most recent FAC was especially interesting. It was called the "Bring the Feast" FAC. I was unable to attend the event unfortunately, but I still heard the stories and I got the following fantastic email from Sherin '15.

We definitely had a FAC today. Don't you remember? The career fair is tomorrow, so we had to do it on Thursday. Did we all forget?

Think, Tetazoo, think. Wasn't there a fridge around? Maybe there's some food in there we could use. It's a stretch, but maybe there's hope?

Maybe... maybe if we believe, it'll work. Didn't we hear that from someone? That if we believe it, maybe when we tear open the fridge, the greatest feast we've ever imagined could be waiting inside?

I can believe that. We have the fridge. We just need everyone there to bring the feast to life.

5PM. Courtyard. The feast inside is waiting.

It might be a bit difficult to understand what our theme really was from just the email, so I'll give you a little background.

Part 1: The Beast Fridge

This past summer, the second floor of the east parallel of East Campus had some summer residents who left a fridge unplugged for the duration of the entire summer. As a result, the fridge became full of spoiled, moldy and rotten food and drinks that you could smell from a mile away. 

Beast tried to make the fridge less toxic. They wrote obscenities on it, and duct taped and caulked it shut and sealed it with spray foam and tar. The fridge still leaked terrible smelling liquids. Eventually, the house manager had his men take the fridge away, but the stairwell they brought the fridge down smelled terrible for many days.

Part 2: Robin Williams

This past summer, one of the most incredible people and comedians of all time passed away. He will be remembered always, and we wanted to dedicate a part of our FAC to him. Ever see the movie Hook?

Part 3: The FAC

East Campusers gathered from near and far in the courtyard of East Campus, where Tetazoans were standing around a mini fridge. The mini fridge was duct taped and caulked shut, and it had obscenities about Beast written all over it. A Tetazoan handed a crowbar to some residents of Beast and told them to open the fridge.

The Beast residents pried open the fridge, excited to see what sorts of treats were inside. Finally, they got the fridge open, but were shocked to see that it was not full of food. Inside of the fridge were a bunch of plates and bowls and silverware, and a giant picture of Robin Williams. The residents of East Campus were disappointed and confused, but the Tetazoans had never been happier. The Tetazoans grabbed the plates and silverware and started eating instensely, shoveling the invisible food into their mouths at an astonishing rate. 

The East Campus residents asked the strange Tetazoans - where is the food?

The Tetazoans answered - you have to BELIEVE!

Then, all hell broke loose.

Suddenly, the barbecues were flipped open to reveal tins full of colored pudding. Tetazoans grabbed the pudding with their filthy hands and screamed FOOD FIGHT!!!!

And the result was a bunch of East Campus residents flinging colored pudding at one another in creative ways.

(All photos taken by Molly D. '15)

Fun was had by all.

I really like living in East Campus. People here are so great at having fun and being super supportive, and I love being a part of this fun and accepting group of pudding-covered people who enjoy flinging food at each other.

My first two weeks of GEL kicked off to a great start. I really like working (some would even call it playing) with my team. To help us get to know each other, our team leader and I met up over coffee. Or rather, the excuse of coffee since neither of us is a fan. One of his questions posed to me was: What do you want to work on during junior year?

Junior Year. Wow. I’m already half way done. I only have two more years to make the most of MIT. I need decide what I want out of my MIT experience. I need to decide which classes to take and where that will lead me. That in itself has been an necessarily more stressful decision than it needed to be.

And so one of my goals this year is to work on decision making.

As the ultimate optimizer engineer, my long convoluted decision making process relies resources - time and people - as fuel for information. I’m always working towards the most optimal solution.

But engineers, we don’t always have all the information at the same time. Or the amount of information cannot possible be processed to the highest degree of accuracy for optimization. Often, you have to make judgement calls of whether to launch a shuttle, race a car, finance a project based on limited data in the face of high risk. One of the things the Engineering Leadership Labs (ELLs) teach us is: It’s better to make a bad decision now than a good one too late.

Last April I faced a major decision when choosing between two job offers. One allowed me to spend a summer with my family at home while learning about engineering in the oil industry. The other sent me across the world in Mumbai to get a rare opportunity in project planning on a major oil investment. Better yet I had to make my decision in a week.

Everyone deals with decisions they’re own way. My process looked something like this:

As you can see, there’s no cascade of steps to follow. It’s a lot of talking and being excited and jumping around.

When deciding my summer internship, I even used a decision matrix in which you rate criteria and options separately to weigh your choices against your values.  This functioned as a more systemic method to organize how I felt about each option rather than getting tangled in my thinking.  My most important factor was family.  Others were career skills and playing ultimate this past summer.  The final score in the decision matrix is not what determined my decision. Rather, looking back and having that matrix warrants why I made the decision I did.

Did my process work? Did I have the most perfect summer?


Yes. No. Maybe.  In the end I decided to spend my summer in Houston.  But!  I still got a chance to go hiking in Yosemite after finals!  

That's the view of Half Dome wayyyy in the back!  We climbed that!

California was very pretty <333

And then back home in Houston, I got to play a ton of ultimate with a local club mixed team!

(That's me! #47)

And I spent lots of time with my family. 

Boston just doesn't compare to the Tex-Mex you find back home. 

Oh and also had a real job!  At this very pretty campus. 

It may not be Google, but we still had a full cafeteria and gym!  And there were pancakes for breakfast!!! (I love breakfast.)

Parts of my summer I loved; the other parts I disliked intensely. I missed my MIT friends. I missed Boston weather. I missed the flexibility of working when I wanted to.

So did I make the wrong decision?

Looking back at the decision matrix, I had rated family time, playing ultimate, and learning about engineering in the industry as my top criteria. Turns out, I didn’t realize working full-time was such a significant time-commitment and didn’t get to spend enough time with my brother. But I found an awesome team to play ultimate with. But I didn’t know this at the time. One thing I’m slowly learning coming to terms is: Don’t judge a good decision by how the consequences turn out. A good decision is based on how well you processed the data available to you at the time.

What can I do better?

This past week, I had the opportunity to speak with a GEL alum and he gave me a pretty solid piece of advice.

Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?

That’s exactly the question I should ask myself at least 5 times. The root cause analysis we learn in EID and D-Lab Design can be applied to life. Use WHY to critically analyze what motivates you. Then use that as an important factor when making decisions.

Why did I decide to direct a play this fall on top of a bazillion other responsibilities?
That’s a good question for next time.  

Find a Set:

Set is a visual card game. "Sets" in Set consist of 3 cards that, for each of their four characteristics, are either all the same or all different. A set must meet ALL of the following conditions:

• be all the same color or all different colors
• be all the same shape or all different shapes
• be all the same fill or all different fillings
• have all the same number of symbols, or all different numbers of symbols

There is exactly one set in that board of 20 cards. Find it before reading on.

Set is rather popular on my floor, Conner 3. My suite has a card deck that just lives on the lounge table, waiting to catch the eye of unsuspecting psetters to distract them for hours. Sometimes we’ll just play classic games with each other, and other times we’ll get more creative. Recently we invented Memory Set, which is played like Memory, just with 81 cards, sets of 3, and more insanity. It also happens to be impossible.

What also is impossible is the challenge I gave you - there isn’t a single set in the whole board - though I hope you had a merry chase trying to find one. This is incredibly unlikely; boards of 12 rarely don’t have sets, and boards of 15 almost always contain at least one. In fact, 20 is the mathematical limit. I know this because I spent two hours last week finding it, in a coding competition at 3am.

It all started innocently enough, with Jeff ‘18, Matt ‘16, and myself psetting, chatting, and desperately trying to procrastinate. We dealt out some Set cards, but instead started thinking about probability and combinatorics - how many possible sets are there? (1080) What is the average number of sets in a 12-card board? (2.78) How many cards can you have without having any sets? (...)

As it turns out, this was a surprisingly difficult question to answer. None of our preliminary approaches worked, and we couldn’t translate the problem into abstract mathematical ideas like matrices or vectors that we could solve easily. We tried arranging cards ourselves, but the most we could manage was sixteen. Even Colin ‘16, our resident math major, after sitting in silence for 10 minutes, could only give us “an upper bound of 37.”

I’m still not sure whether he made that up or not. Math majors are like that.

From here, we could have given up. We could have chuckled, Googled the answer, and gone back to our work. But instead, the conversation took a distinctively MIT-esque turn:

Matt: "You know… we could brute force this in Python pretty easily."
Jeff: "Are you sure? I don’t think it’s that simple."
*tentative pause* *quick glance*
Me: "It’s on. Let’s race."

And thus the 3am coding competition was born. First we had to set (sorry) up a general interface for dealing with sets: I chose to define a card as a 4-element array of integers between 0 and 2, inclusively, where each index represented a characteristic and each integer represented a specific variant. This way, I could easily check to see if 3 cards made a set using modulus instead of having to nest a ton of “if” statements.

However, I didn’t really have a clue of what to do with the actual algorithm logic. Since there are 81 cards in a deck, it definitely wasn’t feasible to manually check all possible boards: there are over 7x10^13 possible boards with just 12 cards, and we knew that the answer was more than that (although we did have an upper bound of 37). However, Matt found a much more efficient brute-force algorithm (which is not quite an oxymoron) and emerged with the magic number in less than half an hour: 20.

From here, he wrote a translator to convert the meaningless stack of arrays that represented the “winning board” to a list of twenty plain-English card names: “Single Red Hollow Squiggle,” “Triple Green Striped Diamond,” and so forth. We found those cards in our real deck, laid them out on the table, and, lo and behold, there were no sets to be found.

It wasn’t our most productive night ever. But this sort of spontaneity permeates MIT - this is just one example - and I love it. Yes, the routine of “pset, study, repeat” is hard, but the interjections of adventures that seem like they’re just waiting to happen make the academic grind at least partially enjoyable. Plus, we can now nerd snipe Set players!

To me, a brute-force Python script is a sufficiently elegant solution, but others might disagree. If anyone is interested in the deeper mathematics behind why 20 is the answer, you should check out this paper.

Also, if anyone knows somebody who is an avid Set enthusiast, you should find a deck and deal out the board at the top of this post. Then invite them over and nonchalantly tell them that it has exactly one set. Believe me; it's fun.