Hi everyone! By now you’ve probably seen the decisions promo video, where we made a giant oven and cooked a giant pie in it. Kristen and I, and a bunch of other people (mentioned below) put too much work into it last semester, over IAP, and basically until it was uploaded, and I’m excited to give you the full story of the complete mess that we made. Here are extra video clips that we filmed, and there will be timestamps throughout this post that correspond with this video:

We started planning this in November-ish. We went through a bunch of ideas, like a Buzzfeed/Tasty-style video of a pie recipe, going for a Guinness world record for largest/most pies (way too big/logistically difficult), and finally, this. Kristen did a bunch of thermo (0:07), and I used volumes to scale up normal pie recipes. After we had our ingredients and materials finalized, we bought all the ingredients from Costco and needed a uhaul to bring it all back (0:53). We were buying 140 cans of peaches so Petey had Costco put them all on a pallet and forklift it into the uhaul (2:01). The Uhaul sank a few inches when the peaches were placed inside.

We also got 100 cups of butter (0:17), 100 pounds of sugar and flour, and 7 large cans of shortening.

On the way back, Kristen, who was driving, needed to brake suddenly and the whole pallet just fell everywhere (2:16). This dented a few of the cans and made a mess in the uhaul so we couldn’t use them

Kristen is an actual course 2 and made the frame. We designed it on Solidworks over winter break, and then she scavenged metal from a scrap metal yard (3:02). She’s a mentor at a makerspace/machine shop (The Deep) so we had access to their machines and welders (3:58). We brought all the metal over to the shop and Kristen welded the pie rack by herself (4:29). The night after we were up until 3am welding the oven frame.

Then we noticed a problem. We had made it in 2 parts to be bolted together so it would fit through all the doors and hallways and back to East Campus but the steel was so heavy, we weren’t sure if it would support all the concrete blocks we were going to stack on top of it. We couldn’t just add another leg at the droopy part because that was supposed to be the opening of the oven, the “door” that the pie would go in through.

We sat for a good 15 minutes trying to figure out how to stabilize it without blocking the door, until Kristen had the biggest brain-est energy-est and realized we could just rotate the oven frame. The pie could go in through an adjacent side and we could weld legs onto the droopy side. Brain cells this big.

Kristen and a bunch of East Campus residents put together the oven in the courtyard. Even with the extra leg at the droopy part, we still didn’t trust the frame to hold up all the concrete blocks, so we decided to cover the top with layers and layers of aluminum foil instead. The air gaps between the layers of foil did a pretty good job of keeping the heat in.

Next was to make the crust dough and freeze it so we could roll it out and press it into the pie tin on bake day.

The official video has super aesthetic clips of me sprinkling sugar and carefully measuring ingredients in the 1E kitchen but this was filmed afterwards using more reasonable quantities. We actually made the dough and filling in Talbott kitchen and it was chaotic.

We made this recipe 90 times, which is too much of anything probably.

We made the peach filling the night before baking (6:40), around 228 times this recipe. It requires cooking the peaches before it goes into the pie crust and it took fucking forever because there was so much liquid that had to boil out. Also so much butter, it was disgusting.

The butter melted during the cooking process, but when the filling mixture cooled, it re-solidified into a mass of cinnamon and nutmeg coated fat at the top of the pots.

We also needed to drain out as much of the liquid as possible (7:11) so the pie wouldn’t turn into soup, which it did in the end anyways. Katherine Yang had the big brain idea of siphoning out the liquid using pvc tubing (this is how people steal gas). It kinda worked.

We mostly used strainers to get the liquid out, and that also took fucking forever. We started cooking at 7pm and finished at around 5am, and by then, we needed to start rolling out the dough.

While this was happening Kristen was cutting the giant aluminum sheets and riveting it together to make the pie tin (5:08). Here’s me laying in it because I’m 5’2” and the pie was 6.28 feet in diameter. We covered the tin in many layers of aluminum foil afterwards to make it watertight and because the aluminum was found at a scrap metal yard.

At 6am we started rolling out the dough (8:25) and it was just too much dough, we didn’t even roll it all out. We pressed it into the tin (8:45) while the briquettes were heating up and being thrown into the oven. We pre-baked the crust, but the dough we lined around the sides of the tin fell down to the bottom into an uncooked lump, and the middle of the crust burnt (I think the coals were too close to the pie tin, and the heat went straight into the tin instead of distributing around the whole oven). We just ignored that and started scooping the filling, which there wasn’t enough of, on top of the burnt/undercooked pie crust (9:15). The peaches had cooked down and reduced in volume way more than we expected, so instead of being 4 inches thick, the pie was about 1 inch thick. At this point, before baking, the pie still looked alright.

It also took fucking forever to bake, and the peaches kept releasing more liquid and creating a swampy soup. The crust kept absorbing the liquid and not cooking fast enough, and the longer we baked to try to get the crust to cook through, the more liquid came out. Unlike the video would have you think, we didn’t lounge around and watch adventure time while waiting for the pie to bake (we filmed that afterwards- 10:00). Instead, Kristen watched the pie bake and I made pie crust crackers (little squares of pie crust to be eaten with the pie filling since the crust was either burnt or undercooked). This was probably the best idea in this whole terrible idea, thanks Mary (1E GRT)!

Finally, 21 hours and one panic attack later, at around 4pm, the pie came out.

As you can see it doesn’t look great. It was swampy and the crust was undercooked in some parts and burnt in others, but apparently people thought it tasted fine. I hid in the kitchen because I couldn’t handle any more people or stuff in general and helped Jenny, who stayed up and helped the entire time, clean all the butter-coated kitchen surfaces and pots. These were giant fucking pots and would barely fit in the normal-sized sinks. There were also butter-coated storage totes and butter-coated buckets and butter-coated utensils. Everything was coated in a layer of butter which took fucking forever to clean. I had to take the storage totes and buckets into the shower and scrub them.

So yeah, after staying up for 30 hours and working for 22 of those hours, this was worse than all of Kristen’s and my finals weeks combined. Our feet hurt when standing up and sitting down, and our backs were going to collapse. I d̶i̶e̶d̶  slept for 19 hours straight and then went to the bad ideas ball the next day (a party that 1E throws every IAP for Bad Ideas), where I drank to forget my problems and served the strained peach juice to our guests. There was a whole trash bag-lined trash can full of it (7:18) and I don’t think very many people wanted it. They were horrified but only we knew the true pain we had endured the past two days.

Here’s all the people, credited and uncredited on the video, who helped with this project:

Petey Peterson (Adult)

Christine Muir (Adult)

Alice Ursella (EHS Adult)

Andrew Peterson (Drone Adult)

Cowboy Lynk (Camera genius)

Kristen Young (Thermo expert, welder, big brain)

Jenny Zhang (worked for 22 hours straight with me and Kristen the night before/day of baking)

Natasha Ter-Saakov (Bad Ideas Chair who approved this truly bad idea, gave us workers, and also helped with the baking)

Kathleen Esfahany (putting together oven, baking crust crackers, going to Costco with us)

Shuli Jones (making filling)

Katherine Yang (making dough and filling, knows about baking large amounts of stuff and also siphoning)

Chetan Sharma (making dough and filling)

Laney Flanagan (making dough + PUNS)

Mary Tellers (suggesting that I make pie crust crackers which was such a big brain idea)

Jake Whitton (making dough and baking)

Kat Jiang  (making dough and filling, putting together oven)

Zoe Sheill (making filling)

Deven King-Roberts (putting oven together and baking advice)

Maxine Beeman (putting oven together)

Andrea Meister (straining/scooping filling into pie)

Tho Tran (making dough)

Mayukha Vadari (making dough)

Sabrina Mazer (making dough)

Stephanie Chin (rolling out dough)

Jingyi Zhao (rolling out dough)

Charity Midenyo (sitting with Kristen in shop so she could weld & not be in shop alone)

Joel Hutchison (putting together oven)

Eileen Hu (putting together oven)

AJ Cavallaro (baking)

(Ongoing list- I don’t know everyone’s names)

Thank you so much for helping out! I wish we hadn’t birthed this terrible idea but you guys made it possible in 22 hours instead of like 100.

Waiting for decisions sometimes made us feel like kids, scared of the monsters in our closet ready to jump out at us.

If you’re feeling like that kid right now, afraid of the unknown, know that there are a lot of other doors than just the one on pi day you are waiting to open.

If you end up feeling limited by your circumstances,

get creative!

If your decision makes you feel lost, just keep swimming,

remember what it is that makes your heart sing, and

keep doing that, whatever it may be!

Taking a chance on yourself can be scary. You are very brave for doing so!

But if you get sad, let yourself feel sad. It’s okay.

If you feel alone, look at the people around you! You’re incredible together!

When things don’t go the way you want them to, it’s easy to feel down. Look at all of the good things that haven’t changed around you.

i’ve been thinking about pi day and decisions lately and the song ‘here comes a thought’ from steven universe⁠01 i debated with myself for such a long time on whether or not i should post just the audio or the full music video, and decided the video was so gorgeous it didn't matter that it probably makes little sense to most people. came into my head, and i thought the words were really fitting for the emotions we feel towards college admissions decisions.

of course, steven universe is a cartoon show and the lyrics relate to a different thing from college admissions. but there are points in the song that evoke the same emotions.

something you did that failed to be charming
things that you said are suddenly swarming

it’s easy to find negative emotions during this time in your life. i remember decisions day when i applied early action. i could barely concentrate in class because my mind was swarmed with thoughts, thoughts of what my decision could be. even though i told myself i didn’t really care what the result would be, i felt sick to my stomach.

a college’s admission decision, for almost all of us, is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. it’s not often that you know the exact time and date that a potentially life-changing decision arrives. and so admissions decisions can be hard to ignore and easy to lose yourself in.

oh, you’re losing sight, you’re losing touch
all these little things seem to matter so much
that they confuse you

in the scheme of things that is your life, your undergraduate college experience will usually be four years. you have so much to do afterwards. regardless of what your decision may be, you have not failed nor succeeded in life. your life is your own, and you alone will dictate how you’ll grow and change as an individual over the next four years, not the admissions officers.

take a moment, remind yourself
to take a moment to find yourself
take a moment and ask yourself
if this is how we fall apart?

but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not
it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay

it’s okay to be nervous, anxious, excited, whatever emotions you’ll feel right before you view that decision. remind yourself to breathe and ground yourself, even if just for a second. and we, the bloggers, will be here with you, talking with you, and existing in the same virtual space as you when the time comes.

and it was just a thought, just a thought, just a thought, just a thought, just a thought
it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay
we can watch, we can watch, we can watch, we can watch them go by
from here, from here, from here

There are many things in life that require you to have the ever elusive skill of patience – waiting for the bus, waiting on a friend at a café, or (dare I say it) constantly refreshing the decisions.mit.edu page. I remember when I was in your shoes. Back in the day, I had to do it not once but TWICE because I was deferred the first time around in December. It was torturous, and the clock seemed to tick too fast and too slow. There was nothing I wanted more than to know the decision but I feared the finality of it, all at the same time.

I find the act of waiting (not scrolling on my phone or talking to someone, but just existing) extremely difficult. Scientists say it’s because we have very short attention spans now from our phones and need constant stimulation. Which perhaps is true, but also if I leave my mind to its own devices, I often descend into a deep thought spiral. Then, sitting at the coffee counter, I start wondering if I got the time wrong or the date wrong, or maybe they’re mad because I left them on read for too long last week, or perhaps something terrible happened to them and they’re in the hospital and…you get the point. So I’ve developed some go-to time-burners to get my mind on something else.

Variable weather calls for variable coping mechanisms (especially since you applicants are all over the world!).

Waiting on a nice, sunny day:

Go forth and feel the warmth on you skin! I will be jealous as my lips crack and my skin turns lizard-y in the Boston cold.

• Workout per Veronica’s wonderful plan!
• Wander around while listening to some tunes. For some new sounds, check out what the bloggers listen to, a good 2019 variety show: The New York Times 2019 playlist, or a great podcast about music when you want an in-between: Switched on Pop (one of my favorite episodes – on the one and only Taylor Swift).
• Go explore your city! If you leave your hometown, this could be the last few months to visit your favorite places and/or discover new ones. For example, a lot of yoga studios have community classes that are donation-based or $5, museums and other galleries often have student discounts, etc!

Waiting on a dreary, rainy day:

Grab some popcorn and escape the stress of this world for the stress of another world. Here are some TV shows and movies I’ve been watching for those Netflix and (actually) chill nights:

• Russian Doll: a Black Mirror-esque show with an actress from Orange is the New Black, basically she keeps dying and reliving the same day. It’s way better than it sounds.
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: these are also all a little bit macabre, i’m sorry.
• Sorry to Bother You: a psychedelic look at modern day race relations in a world that is just a step away from our own.
• Her: Ex Machina-esque but less frightening, an unconventional rom-com.

Waiting on a blustery, snowy day:

Doesn’t it make you want to just crawl into bed, a cup of chamomile tea in hand, and snuggle up with a book? We have a lot of these kinds of days over here, so I have many a recommendation.

FYI, I read on my phone or iPad on Kindle and Axis360, an app that most US libraries support to borrow eBooks, convenient to pull out on the subway, in class (shh), or right before bed. Books on my docket (or just ones that I love):

• For the feel-good types:
  • Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine: still reading so can’t say too much yet, but it deals with hard topics in a lighthearted, approachable way.
  • A Gentleman in Moscow: lovely prose, a slower-paced read so don’t expect any dramatic showdowns.
  • Little Fires Everywhere: a suburban utopia gets turned upside down, a mother-daughter piece of fiction that hits me right in the feels.
• For the magically-inclined:
  • The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories: the namesake is the only short story to ever win all three short story awards, so good ah
  • La casa de los espíritus: on the queue, as well as Allende’s other book Más allá del invierno. English versions are available too if that’s more understandable.
  • American Gods: An adult version of Percy Jackson, featuring a complex clash between the old gods (i.e. wisdom, darkness and light) and new gods (i.e. technology, media)
• For the practical / technologist:
  • Algorithms to Live By: get a head start on 6.006 (Intro to Algorithms), applied to daily life.
  • When Breath Becomes Air: a good perspective shift, talks a lot about life, purpose, and death.

So pick your poison, and I hope this helps countdown the final few hours. Best of luck!

Sometimes, its hard to pull yourself out of bed.

The uncertainty of what the day holds can be scary. Or exciting. Or overwhelming.

You’re probably feeling a lot of butterflies right now. Butterflies that might want to make you float. Butterflies that might want to make you vomit.

But whatever it is that you’re feeling, you know that there is only one way to move: forward.

And so you pick yourself up. And you take it one thing at a time.

Because today is special. Because you’ll never be in this exact same place in this exact same moment feeling exactly whatever it is that you are feeling right now.

As you get through the day, I’d like to remind you to listen to the world around you.

To the rhythm in your footsteps. To the breezes’s soft hum. To the anticipation in silence.

Because you’ll never be in this place in this moment feeling what you’re feeling ever again.

So here’s a little something to help you cherish every little bit of today. Because quite frankly, there’s nothing that makes you feel all the feels like walking around with a soundtrack to life (shout out to my friend Rukia H. ’21 for helping with this playlist).

Give yourself some time today. To realize just how far you’ve come. To hold your head up high. Because you’ve come a long way. And you deserve to make every second of this day your own.

PS. I’ll be feeling the anticipation today too. And I’d love to hear how you’re doing :)

There were many wonderful applicants to MIT this year, which unfortunately means that we had to turn down some great students. For those of you who fall into this category, this is an open forum for you to talk, shake it off, and remember that you will survive, even thrive, wherever you go; whatever you do. Stove-cook your oatmeal and never look back.

Many people applied to MIT this year, and unfortunately we could not accept all of them. We have placed a small number of students on the waitlist. If you would like to be considered for the waitlist, or you want to learn more about it, you can read more here.

Some of you may feel happy to be waitlisted. Some of you may feel sad. Some of you may have complicated feelings that you don’t know what to call; that’s okay too. For right now, we just ask that you have a little patience.

YOU GOT IN! CELEBRATE! BE HAPPY!

MIT Regular Action admissions decisions for the Class of 2023 are now available at

> > > decisions.mit.edu < < <

You can log in using the same username and password that you use to log in to your MyMIT account. There are no interim screens, so you should be sure you are ready to receive your decision online before logging in to decisions.mit.edu.

Between Early and Regular Action, 21,312 students applied to join the MIT Class of 2023. As of today (inclusive of Early Action), we have offered admission to 1,410 students.

The Class of 2023 has been curated with care to collectively climb the mountain that is MIT. They represent all 50 states, 67 countries, and nearly 1,000 high schools all across the world. Though they all do different things — morphology and marathons, innovation and informatics, twirling and taekwondo — they are united by a shared standard of rigorous academics, high character, and a strong match with MIT’s mission to use science, technology, and the useful arts to make the world a better place. We can’t wait to welcome them to our campus to join the 4,602 outstanding undergraduates who already call MIT home.

There are also students who may be climbing other mountains, with other mountaineers, next fall. Of the students to whom we do not offer admission today, we have placed a small number on our waitlist and informed the balance that we will not be able to admit them to the Class of 2023. Turning away so many kind, generous, and super-smart students has left us bleary-eyed and reminded us that what we do is more than a job, but a privilege and an honor. Thank you for sharing your aspirations and inspirations with us in the application process.

If you are among the many stellar students to whom we are not offering admissions, then all I can remind you is that success is not always a straight line. That your path isn’t something MIT sets you on, it’s something you make yourself. And if you spend the next few years trying to make wherever you are as amazing as you can (as you already are), then someday you’ll look back on this Pi Day and realize it all worked out okay.

I’m closing comments on this blog post to concentrate conversation in the open threads for admitted, waitlisted, and not admitted students. Answers to frequently asked questions for waitlisted students can be found here, with more information about next steps to come in early April.

Congratulations to the Class of 2023, and best wishes to all of our applicants. No matter where you enroll next fall, please make it a better place. I know you can. I hope you will.

I have a lot of feelings. It doesn’t take much to make me cry, whether I’m moved, frustrated, or sad. There’s one Google Search Story that gets me every single time, and I regularly tear up watching World of Dance. My voice unconsciously rises far too often, and sometimes I realize mid-conversation that I’ve been animatedly yelling⁠01 If I had a dollar for every time my mother told me to lower my voice, I could probably retire early. the entire time. A colleague recently told me to chill and “be cool” in selection committee – I told her that was not possible. I blush embarrassingly easily. I should probably forego wearing turtlenecks ever again, because I’m constantly overheating due to excitement or awkwardness. When I’m really mad, however, I swear I feel my blood run cold. Of the many memorable and inspirational lines in Harry Potter, I relate to this moment in Order of the Phoenix the most:

Ron said, “One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.”

“Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have,” said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.

So as you can probably imagine, when we release our admissions decisions on Pi Day, I have a lot of feelings. Too many feelings. My emotional teaspoon runneth WAY over with elation, disappointment, relief, exhilaration, heartache. I don’t exactly feel as though I’ll explode. Rather, I feel as though my heart is being pulled in too many directions at once.

My Pi Day 2018 Pie! Anybody else channel an excess of feelings into baking?

The seemingly simple outputs of our process – admitted, waitlisted, not admitted – belies the complex discussions and emotions behind our decisions. The vocabulary of our decision-making process greatly exceeds those three words. Here are some pared-down (and edited to make legible and remove identifying information) words and emoticons I wrote about applicants this year:

• She has, frankly, one of the best letters of recommendation I’ve ever seen.
• Seems like a really kind person from essays and letters of recommendation <3
• She is very awesome! :)
• He’s just an objectively wonderful young person.
• I get the sense from the essays that he has had to fight to get to take classes at this level. He’s really impressive.
• Great fit for MIT, and I think the program she started is cool. I like her personality too!
• He’s a survivor and has a lot of intellectual firepower. I feel lucky that he chose to apply to us!

Maybe you’ll be surprised to hear that not all of these students were admitted. But I hope you’ll believe me when I say that our admissions decisions, whether you have been admitted or not, can never fully capture our deepest belief in your worthiness and your potential or our admiration for your goodness and your greatness.

To students who are admitted, we are able to express our feelings more easily: Congratulations! We are so excited to welcome you to the MIT community, and we hope you pick us! You are excellent – never doubt that.

To students who were waitlisted or not admitted, I know you may feel disappointed, and the truth is, as admissions officers, we too are disappointed that we can’t admit more of you right now. Many of you have a pizza our hearts, and we are envious of the institutions that get to be a part of your journey.

To all of you, thank you for trusting us with your triumphs and trials, your dreams and daily lives. Vulnerability is an act of courage. In sharing your stories, you’ve taken a risk; you’ve opened your self to be seen, knowing that someone on the other side might embrace you or turn you away.

A couple years ago, after experiencing a particularly painful rejection myself, Brené Brown’s words on the power of vulnerability helped me weather my own disappointment and understand my feelings of shame in having “failed”:

Shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won’t be worthy of connection? The things I can tell you about it: It’s universal; we all have it. The only people who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it, the more you have it. What underpinned this shame, this “I’m not good enough,” — which, we all know that feeling: “I’m not blank enough. I’m not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough.” The thing that underpinned this was excruciating vulnerability. This idea of, in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.

There is no shame in allowing yourself to be seen, in seeking connection and community, in pursuing the unknown without guarantee of success, in things not working out. Rather, I’d say there is great beauty in all of those things, and in life, nothing truly good comes without some risk. There is no shame in feeling. While you may have many feelings about your admissions decision, keep your heart and your mind open, and know that you are worthy and you are enough.

My parents tell me that when I was two years old, Tarzan was my favorite movie. If I saw or heard anything Tarzan-related, I’d beg them to let me watch it. Realizing my obsession wasn’t going away, they hid the VHS tape on a high shelf and hoped I wouldn’t see it. Jokes on them, because many, many years later, I still love Tarzan’s vine-swinging scenes. Almost every summer, my sister and I tackle a new ropes course. Although I have never thought about it before while on a ropes course, I would guess my residual fascination with Tarzan contributes to how much I love the feeling of ziplining through the trees.

When we are very little, being clueless is normal. We are beginners in everything we do, from reading, to using Microsoft Paint,⁠01 This gives me a lot of nostalgia: https://jspaint.app/ to jumping off the swings! Being a beginner isn’t scary. But, as we grow older, we learn some new feelings. We learn how good it feels to be the best at something and how scary it can be to fail. Year upon year, as we build upon our successes, we forget what it feels like to be a beginner. Suddenly, being a beginner is scary.

For many students (myself included!) the subject area that they excelled in during high school was the subject they intended to major in here at MIT 02 Of course, it makes sense that people choose a major they are already familiar with; if you're good at some subject, then you probably like it a lot, which is important in choosing a major. . This made me kind of sad, because I felt like it was silly to limit what sorts of classes and activities I did in college by what I did or didn’t succeed in during high school.

I recently spent a weekend with my friends at MakeMIT, a hardware hackathon hosted on campus. My friend Priscilla L. ’20 and I wrote code for software side of the project, while my friends Janice T. ’22 and David L. ’22 took care of the hardware side, designing and connecting all the 3D-printed parts and sensors. By Sunday, from a collection of 3D-printed plant parts, an Arduino, an ultrasonic sensor, some LEDs, and some servos, we produced “BloomBud” – a plant that can (sort-of) interact with you. BloomBud isn’t quite functional yet, but it was an amazing weekend. I had no experience using microcontrollers or sensors before, but through the magic collaboration and hackathon resources, I learned so much!

testing out bloombud… he’s trying his best ^_^ (the light on the leaf adjusts w/ the hand)

Being clueless isn’t so bad. Tarzan wasn’t always a physics-defying gymnast. He starts off being pretty mediocre, actually. He falls off vines and slips off branches. By senior year of high school, many people have gotten too used to flying. In order to try your hand at completely new things, you need to be okay with falling sometimes. I want to encourage all of you readers – especially the newly accepted prefrosh! – to embrace the scary feels that come from being clueless.  At a place like MIT, it can be really hard to let yourself be below average when everyone around you seems so above-average. Don’t let this limit you – every new field, audition, or competition where you feel overwhelmingly clueless is a huge chance to grow. There are three trillion trees out there for us to climb!

For the past few days, I’ve been walking around with this weird feeling on the inside. As if goosebumps are embedded deep into my skin. Subconsciously, I’ve been feeling a lot of feelings. Sadness. Despair. Hopelessness. Confusion. Fear.

When I first received news about the tragedy in New Zealand, I was unfazed. Not shocked at all. The first thought that came to my mind was again. It’s happened again. And so I set my phone to the side and continued on with my life. I avoided social media for the next 24 hours, because I simply didn’t feel capable of confronting reality. But subconsciously, my amygdala was processing all kinds of emotions. These emotions accumulated into internal goosebumps. And when that wasn’t enough, eventually into tears. Tears that initially just sat on my lower eyelids. Then became streaks down the dry skin of my cheek. And eventually became a loud sob.

I can’t remember the last time I cried like that. Alone and on a sunny Sunday afternoon. But there I was weeping. Weeping for people whose faces now flood my Facebook feed. Weeping for people who were as innocent and defenseless as it could get. Weeping because in this incredibly beautiful world, hatred and inhumanity still persists. And I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Today was a day of different feelings. Hope. Togetherness. Gratitude.

Today, the MIT community gathered for a Vigil of Hope. Classmates, friends, colleagues came together to offer comfort in their presence. They didn’t have to be there and yet chose to come out and support the Muslim community and humanity at large. In that moment, the goosebumps returned. Because beauty and kindness can be just as all-encompassing as pain and fear. Different kinds of tears ran down my cheek as the Chapel filled with prayers in Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit and English alike. “Unity in the face of diversity.” And for that, I say Thank You.

After the vigil, I stood in the neighboring lawn, rummaging through my backpack. I had to run to class and I couldn’t remember where my assignment was. I knew it was somewhere in my bag and so I stood, flipping through a never-ending collection of loose pages. Then came the wind, scattering every single paper into every single direction possible. As I stood there, accepting that my notes, psets, practice exams were gone with the wind, the people around me begin to rush over. I tell them not to worry about it, to get on with their lives. That I’ll be ok without the papers. But I kid you not, approximately ten people began running around collecting the thin shits of paper. Ten people that stopped in their lives to help a disoriented, highly disorganized and mega-emotional gal get her things together. All with a smile on their face. A reminder that kindness still exists. And for that, I say Thank You.

in late february of 2017 me and jessica t. ’20 did a hall exchange. a hall exchange is where two people, who live on different halls and almost always on different dorms, live in each other’s rooms for several days to explore what living in that hall is like. there are semi-official programs that facilitate such transfers, but jessica and i knew each other well enough by this time and arranged the exchange ourselves. we decided we would to a joint blog post and write about our experiences, but never got to finish it.

two years later, jessica and i are neighbors at next house. instead of studying 6.857 notes like i should be or writing up the 6.033 design project preliminary report so nisha doesn’t yell at me, i scrolled down and down and down in my google drive and found the incomplete logs. reading them over, they’re such a throwback and deserve to be on the blogs, even though they’re not really finished.

agent jynnie – day 1 – feb 26

Arrived at East Campus with three bags, hoping this is enough to survive out in the wild. Thankfully was able to enter the premises undetected and without any trouble as agent june opened the door for me. The climb to 5West was not terribly laborious and was well greeted when I entered 5W.

The TV lounge had perhaps five or so people sitting on the couches watching the Oscars and agent June introduced me to Joon1 (Ree), Joon2 (Jessica), Joon3 (??), and Joon8 (Allan). On the blackboard behind the TV (which I learn was donated by a resident who won a hackathon prize from DirectTV), there is a small family tree that disintegrates into Juans upon Juans.

I was then shown my quarters for the next week, a rather spacious single with one large window opposite the door, white walls, a desk only a little smaller than my own, a bed, a rather tall bookshelf, a drawer, a sink, and a fridge. What particularly caught my attention was the high ceiling and two League of Legends posters on the wall. The quarters are most certainly comfortably sized and well-equipped.

Agent June gave me a detailed briefing as well as an overview of life and general rituals of the clan in 5W. I am to expect four-legged beasts roaming around that may occasionally drop in and lay on the floor or chase a spool of industrial string around, hall feed on Thursdays, various occasions where the clan eats communally at odd hours of the night and perhaps a special festival at the end of the week. I was tasked with joining EC-discuss and meeting various key clan members of 5W.

I decided to begin upon the latter task first, and joined the gathering for the Oscars (which I must say take terribly long) and rather enjoyed laughing and blaming Steve Harvey. We were blessed to be watching a stream in which the streamer literally quit when they messed up (#SPOILERALERT) Best Picture and La La Land did not win (and it’s not a joke!).

Afterwards I learned the codenames of Joon1, Joon2, Joon8, one cruft, and Sarah (just Sarah – I don’t know if her name is spelled this way – sumimasen), as well as met the magnificent beasts Loki and Peru.

It’s been a good night. Leaving the door open as I work on these field notes, I meet a few other clan members (Emily and unknown who passes by). The halls are oddly quiet at 2AM (perhaps I am too accustomed to hearing the League and Smash players in the night), but I look forward to exploring more tomorrow.

~ Signing Out ~

Agent Jynnie

agent june – day 2 – feb 27

next house: winding hallways, pastel monochrome walls, plain, mural-less, but a fine place to call home for a week. agent jynnie’s quarters are warm, ambient, inviting: there are four different ways to produce light in her room. a ripe banana sits on the desk. floral bed sheets, an empty fridge, a bouquet of flowers in an orange juice glass, a tiny chalkboard complements a tiny whiteboard, pictures hung up on the walls. even with a meal plan, agent jynnie’s shelves are well stocked with sustenance, moreso than mine. my quarters, in comparison, are less personal: the objects and furniture within forgoes aesthetics in favor of function. it is less spacious here, but more than enough room such that the difference in size is unnoticeable.

two east is a group whose customs and traditions i have already grown used to over the months — agent jynnie, on the other hand, has never really interacted with my home clan before, and must introduce herself to many new people. i, someone who is already fast assimilating, have already decided to immigrate someday: i hope to make the arduous trek next year. but this week, i say that i am simply a visitor, a traveler from a faraway land.

there are no beasts roaming the halls, nor are there sprawling murals, those historical expressions of individuality. there is a large chalk wall in the primary den where drawings and memes are scrawled: but the medium is implicitly temporary, something that has the power to be erased. no, what two east lacks in its exterior it more than makes up for in its inhabitants and its customs. the five-thirty dinner club is sacred, and should be respected. the stir-fry line waits for no one. the neighbor named bill enters my abode and asks me if i have determined the correct final velocity for a dust particle of mass m and charge +q released at the point (d,0) and traveling a distance s starting from rest in a vertically oriented electric dipole. i politely shake my head. his head follows suit, mutters to himself that the integration was surely correct, and disappears.

at the moment i am what mit students would call ‘hosed’ — sophomore standing giveth, and sophomore standing taketh away. at the moment, i enjoy going from moment to moment, deadline to deadline, feeling myself grow as a person, as i learn more about my major, my classes, my friends. i am inevitably tired most days, but i can usually stave this feeling off and it only manifests itself in the early morning and late at night. i wonder how long i can last before i inevitably miss a deadline and become desynchronized. but for now, i am still in balance — and i carry on.

until morrow.

agent june

agent jynnie – day 2 – feb 27

I woke up to a pristine, crisp day, the 8:15 morning streaming out from the campus courtyard. It’s quite jarring to look outside and see not New House, but the courtyard between buildings 18, 54, and 14. People meander around and I watch, feeling mildly hawkish for a good 15 minutes, before deciding to try and find sustenance.

East Campus is a “cook-for-yourself” environment, which better translates to “fend-for-yourself”. Agent June’s stores are slightly depleted, mostly made up of chocolate, potato chips, and a bag of grapes in the fridge. (I can only imagine how he has survived without scurvy for this long). I decide on a handful of grapes, and first grab is good. But upon my second reach in, I peer into the plastic box in the La Verde’s bag and notice a little white. A little fuzzy whiteness. I shut the refrigerated cold store, take a deep breath, and shoot agent june a quick message that reads:

“and yo boy you should not have been eating those grapes
they are moldy”

After I gather my wits about me (and wondering whether agent june is actually a zombie), I dispose of the grapes. I settle on astronaut food (granola bar) and a trip to Stata later.

Perhaps one of the most wondrous things about living practically on campus is I leave for class five minutes before the hour, climb six flights of stairs, and still arrive early. #Hashtag definitely not Next House things. And even though I return back from a long day, the walk back is quick.

Returning, I wanted to attempt doorsurfing, but found that 8:08pm is not a prime time to find people to meander after and instead ring in at Munroe and (thankfully) get in without issue.

I discover 5W sees more people in the evening and nearing midnight. I amble in and join a couple of clan members in the TV lounge as they discuss the hall beasts and discover that male hall beasts also have nipples. We shelve that discussion as well as literally shelving the hall beasts onto a bookshelf. I additionally learn about some prime hacking locations and carding/sliding, as well as the different stereotypes for east campus halls (see Figure 1).

Throughout wandering and sitting in agent june’s room with the door open working I meet several other clan members including my first two frosh (!!) Serena and Adriana (who do not introduce themselves to me as Joon#). It’s refreshing to be in a foreign area and the natives are highly welcoming.

Around perhaps 10pm, the NPC Emily R. tasks me with meeting another beast of 5W (which for the life of me I cannot recall his name, I think it starts with an R???). The tabby is an exquisite beast lurking under Volz’s bed and consequently I become trapped in the dungeon of Volz’s room (shoutout to ceelo who I was studying with but dealt with me being sucked away). Her room is a gorgeous mirage of artwork and space murals.

I discover that 5W is my CMS paradise as Allan and Emily passionately talk about Fox and Becky (the Ann Hunter of CMS?) and Rik and their classes and theses and I stare wide-eyed at my new idols. And I am stuck in Volz (the sagely chem major)’s dungeon for another two or three hours, leaving only to find Challenger, another beast of 5W.

As the night gets younger and I begin to think maybe I should start my psets, I return to my room and leave these logs. I have discovered the clan members to be all highly warm and welcoming, sociable and bonding over cats and psets instead of smash. I plan to examine the murals and quotes I have seen across the walls of 5W more closely tomorrow/in the future. There may also be the cookies and cheese ritual tomorrow as well. Till then.

~ Signing out ~

Agent Jynnie

agent june – day 3 – feb 28

i rolled up agent jynnie’s curtains soon after i silenced the 7:30 alarm and a brilliant wave of light flooded into the room. normally, i would curl back up into bed and mutter ‘mmph five more minutes’ but the sunlight inspired me to get up and have breakfast instead. i must admit that having a dining hall so close by almost makes breakfast viable for me (i am not a breakfast person).

agent jynnie and i exchange messages about our time in each others’ halls: it seems that jynnie has been doing some extensive research, and reading her field notes of my hall causes me to smile. as two east is quite familiar to me, it is strange to describe it in such specific detail, but i may try.

there are two major modes of entry, through the main staircase near dining or through the swipe entry near the entrance to next house. as the swipe entry is in most cases inaccessible to me, i shall describe the main staircase: to reach it, you must pass what is called the tfl lounge, which features comfy couches and a tv well-equipped with cables and a ps4. you also pass a mathematical mural and a piano, and a larger lounge area which is usually sparsely populated. due to the preparations for next act, the large expanse is occupied by a set of black.

eventually, one is able to see the main staircase, with dining to the left and a music room / fitness room on the right. going downstairs, one finds a pool table, table tennis, a large kitchen residents call the country kitchen, and the laundry room. two east is upstairs on the second floor.

there is a stark difference between the quality of infrastructure between east campus and next house: next house is new, clean, has elevators, and a warm palate. east campus, although i love to call it home, is more archaic: it is, to say the least, in need of repair. i am not sure which i prefer over the other. both, i conclude, have their respective weaknesses and strengths.

two east is not unlike fifth west: there are several lounges, one with a tv, and in essence it is one long hallway. however, two east’s hallway turns corners and twists and winds, whereas fifth west and all the other halls on east campus are linear: the entire hall can be seen from any point. sometimes, the hallway splits into two, or juts out to create small peninsulas. i will elaborate on this further on a later date.

most of today was spent composing an essay for linguistics – i argued for the preservation of endangered languages. i used agent jynnie’s remote to turn on the rgb lights, pulled up two east’s spotify playlist on shuffle, and worked quietly for several hours. afterwards, i made my way to the main lounge (a few dozen paces away) and conversed with several two east residents, many of whom i have known and become friends with prior to my stay.

at midnight, we celebrated the birthday of WILL, which involved singing a variant of ‘salsa tequila’, bennett spitting bars, and a very intentionally poor rendition of the classic happy birthday tune. german chocolate cake was subsequently served. also – apparently it is customary to wish jennifer a happy birthday on these occasions as well, although it is never actually jennifer’s birthday.

unfortunately, the rest of the week is still quite busy for me, so i will have to stop my field notes for today here. but i plan to interview a fellow next house resident in the coming days: i will update you with the transcription and let you know how this goes.

till morrow,

agent june

[end of transmission]

i guess that transcription never got updated, huh?

now is actually a good time to admit that i’m moving back to east campus next year. reading these made me happy, reminiscing about how both 2E in next house and 5W in east campus were both so different only two years ago, and now the feel of both halls have undoubtedly changed. but i miss my 2020 friends: i miss the short walks to class where i could roll out of bed and into lecture, i miss the walls, i don’t miss the five flights of stairs, i miss the seniors i’ve said goodbye to year after year while aware at the same time that i am well on my way.

It’s been one week since decisions were released for the 2023s, and one week and a year since the 2022s got in or didn’t; two years and a week from 2021 adMITs, and I got into MIT three years and one week ago. The time has gone by so quickly that I can’t even think of a good metaphor for it. Instead enjoy this large photo of my very small dog, who is waiting on me to come home.

I have mostly avoided going into detail on here about getting admitted, because I think it’s not that great of a story. A good admissions story would be like

She worked so hard and was rejected by every school, but then she got that fateful tube in the mail!

or

Everybody loved her and she led a saintly perfect life and she got into every school ever!

or

No one believed in her until she got into a good college and proved all the haters wrong!

but mine was more like

She worked so hard and got into all the state schools she applied to, and then Tulane waitlisted her, and then MIT accepted her, but she was still pretty sure that she was going to Georgia Tech, and then Johns Hopkins and Brown and Dartmouth rejected her, and she was offered the waitlist for Columbia! She ended up going to MIT!

I told my dad about the Johns Hopkins rejection, and he was mad on my behalf. He’s never applied to college, but he was sure that I was a great candidate for whatever school I applied to so the rejection didn’t make sense. “I want to know why,” he said, before telling me to call the Johns Hopkins admissions office and ask them why they rejected me. I didn’t. I had already gotten into MIT at that point, so I felt sufficiently validated and did not see the point in keeping that rejected feeling alive. That and I really don’t like talking on the phone with strangers. I didn’t tell my parents about the other rejections.

Since then I’ve thought a lot about this concept of WHY.⁠01 Typing <em>why</em> like this reminds me of Christian school where I learned that in certain texts Yahweh was written as YHWH and that often YHWH is represented in all capital letters in English translations of the Bible. This is why some Bible verses are like <em>And then the LORD said to Moses...</em> Anyway, in a similar but distinct way, the word <em>why</em> can be thought of as having a sort of mystical aura that isn't fully encapsulated by its dictionary definition and so for the sake of this post deserves typographic markers of significance. From that length of that sentence, you can probably tell that I am not a writing major, but it makes me feel powerful when I write something that makes people feel out of breath. You can see WHYs in every stage of admissions grief:

• Denial: WHY wouldn’t they accept me? It’s meant to be. They must have gotten something wrong. This has got to be a joke.
• Anger: WHY the hell would they tell me no?
• Bargaining: Please, God, WHY would you let this happen to me? You know I would have done anything to get in, and still would.
• Depression: WHY am I not good enough for them?
• Acceptance:⁠02 Nothing like a healthy dose of Acceptance to wash down your Rejection. It doesn’t really matter WHY. This is reality now. Okay.

I’m in my third year here at MIT, and I’ve grown up a lot. One of breakthroughs that I’ve had is understanding that a lot of NOs are not followed by WHYs.⁠03 The real galaxy brain move is asking WHY after a YES.

In high school, and middle school, and elementary school, and early childhood, when we hear NO, we can ask WHY and expect a decent response.

NO you can’t eat that crayon. WHY? It isn’t food, and it might make you sick.

NO you did not get the leading role in the school musical. WHY? Your classmate was a better singer.

NO you aren’t getting an A in this class. WHY? Your work is not good enough, and here are the things that are wrong with your work.

Then college admissions season comes and we get all these NOs and take them as indicators of failure or flaws in our personhood. We don’t get a WHY along with our NO, so we come up with our own WHYs that often just make us feel terrible.

It’s because I don’t play any varsity sports!

It’s because my essay was bad!

It’s because of that one bad grade!

It’s because I didn’t have time to take the SAT again!

It’s because my letters of recommendation weren’t perfect!

It’s because I suck as a human being and am destined for the trash life that I deserve!

The cold hard truth is that you can never really be sure why. If you’re so sure that it was That One Thing, the healthiest thing to do is to work on It, and make it better so that next time you might get the job, or make the cut, or ace the interview. I think rejection can hurt a lot more for people with technical brains, because we tend to think of ourselves in terms of what our numbers are. WHY wouldn’t MIT want me if I’m ranked 2nd in my class at the number 3 school in the country, and I got a 1550 on the SAT, and I took 7 AP classes and got an average score of 4.8 on them, and I have a 4.5 weighted GPA despite doing 3 extracurriculars at difficulty levels 95, 70, and 65 out of 100 difficulty points, and my defense and agility scores are in the 90 percent range despite my impediments of being First Generation (-20 Experience Points) and Middle Class (-100 My Parents Can Just Buy Me A Spot At [REDACTED] Points)?

I take issue with the “WHY don’t they WANT me?” line of thought for several reasons, but I think Jessica (an actual admissions employee who reads applications and stuff) covers it beautifully here.

Of course, I’m giving this advice from my cushy spot as an MIT undergrad. I get why that might make my words seem empty. Obviously my life is set up to be perfect, I’ll get any job I want, I’ll make so much money, and everyone respects and admires me. Unfortunately, being self-aware is probably the only area in which I truly excel, because it doesn’t seem like I’m that good at getting jobs, making money, or having a GPA that anyone can respect. I’ve spent at least 24 hours of my “off” time applying for summer internships, and of the 20+ gigs I applied to, I got one offer, six rejections via email,⁠04 I love emails that start with <em>Dear APPLICANT,</em> ! That's how I know I got the job! It really makes me feel good when a company has multiple typos in their rejection email to me! and who knows how many companies I’ve applied to that haven’t even taken the time to tell me NO. I would love to know what about my application puts me in the reject pile! I want my applications graded with a red pen and assigned a grade so that I can numerically compare myself to other people who applied to the job! 

For some people, college admissions will be the first time that they will feel that sting of rejection, an uncompromising NO hidden among the platitudes of “We had a very competitive applicant pool this round…” and “While we wish that we could offer everyone a spot, unfortunately…”

But you’ll get used to it eventually. In the wise words of blogger colleagues and comrades Nisha and Kathleen,

01 joon looks much more aesthetic than i did in my picture jesus 02 in case you were wondering this is true outside of pictures as well

To set the mood: i’m so tired… by lauv & troye sivan

What a headache

Where does the time go?! We’re somehow halfway through the semester already. I envisioned my final semester to be ~ c h i l l ~ but it didn’t start out that way.

I spent the first few weeks trying to figure out what classes I wanted to take. I was registered in 10 different classes the first week, made some tough decisions, and dropped down to 5 the next.

Through out all this switching around, I also started a new UROP in the HCI Engineering group at CSAIL led by Prof. Stefanie Mueller who taught the 6.810 class I took last semester. For the past few weeks, I’ve been rushing to finish prototypes for a project to be submitted to the UIST 2019 conference, deadline April 5th.

A prototype:

Suddenly, I started having headaches that wouldn’t go away. At first I thought it was a fluke. But a week later, the headaches alternating between getting much worse to slightly better and I went to MIT Medical urgent care. Nothing significant had changed in my diet, sleep schedule, or lifestyle. The doctor diagnosed it as tension headaches, and suggested I take it easy, rest, and drink water. Quite peculiar, because I wasn’t any more stressed now than I had been the past 3.5 years. My body was forcing me to lighten my load.

The evening before Add Date, I dropped a class and switched two non-required ones to Junior/Senior P/D/F.

And now my schedule is a tad bit lighter:

Below is a rundown of my classes this semester.

6.033

I don’t have any pset classes, but I’ve been doing so much reading and writing. 6.033 (Computer System Engineering) is a CI-M, and we’re reading technical papers each recitation.

For example:

Last week we submitted our 2,500-word preliminary report for the semester-long Design Project.

Brainstorming, like…

6.S978

I’m taking 6.S978 (Privacy Law) for intellectual curiosity (aka just for fun) and have been reading case briefs, Supreme Court opinions, and research papers and trying my hand at legislative drafting. For example, *Carpenter v. U.S., U.S. v. Jones*, and Kyllo v. U.S.

The class is taught in conjunction with Georgetown Law, and I’m in a group with 2 law and 1 other MIT student. We’re working on devising a federal bill to regulate smart city transportation technologies. I’m quite out of my element here, but I’m getting a lot of help from the law students. The two of us engineers are trying to pull our weight and contribute our understanding of technical solutions to privacy law (read: differential privacy).

For example,

4.053

This semester, my days start early, either 9 or 9:30am. It isn’t ideal, but I wanted to take classes in Course 4, and the two I ended up with are morning studios.

A new class, 4.053 (Visual Communication Fundamentals) is an introduction studio to graphic and visual design. The lecturer works full-time as the Head of Product Design at Continuum. *** This is the class I’ve always been missing in my life, even if it’s at 9am. *** I’m spending way too much time on the projects simply because I’m so invested in it and I love it. Each week, we have a lecture and then a critique of either a work-in-progress or our final presentation. So far, we’ve produced a redesigned membership card for the New England Aquarium, a cafe menu, and a brand identity for the City of Cambridge.

A vision for my future cafe :)

4.314

I’m taking 4.314 (Common Ground: Art, Science, and Agriculture) for my last HASS requirement, but WOW, this class has completely transformed the way I think, perceive, and understand the world. It’s opened up my awareness to power relations, infrastructure, and state building and our relationship to ecology, agriculture, and the land we live on. Our class discussions have me rethinking and questioning pretty much everything.

We have lots of readings on a variety of topics such as: James Scott’s Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest State, Silvia Federici’s Re-Enchanting the World and George Caffentzis’ The Future of ‘The Commons’: Neoliberalism’s ‘Plan B’ or the Original Disaccumulation of Capital?, and Dominique LaPorte’s The History of Shit, and studying films like Wild Relatives and The Gleaners and I.

The class is centered on an architectural, archeological, and ecological heritage site in a village near Ramallah, Palestine, where we’ll visit over Spring Break. We’re studying traditional ecological practices within the context of the first civilizations, and how they may offer alternative solutions for our current ecological crises around the world. My group is working on designing a rocket stove, which we prototype and tested with clay.

Miniature rocket stove prototypes…

Other

Earlier this semester I also did some fun things. Here are some highlights.

Learned how to weld for 4.314! We also got shop training at the Media Lab:

Spent a weekend for the Winter Canival in Quebec City, even colder than Boston, and skating on a outdoor lake, oh là là:

Designed a sticker for the College of Computing launch:

Heard from the Design Director for Google Home and Wearables:

…in addition to other talks by designers at IDEO and New Balance organized by Course 4, and even stumbled on a talk with the former US Ambassador to Russia.

Got wet lab training for my UROP and tested different silicon gels and carbon fibers:

Skated for the last time with MIT for the Skating Club’s Spring Exhibition. Shoutout to my friends for going out of their way to make this poster:

Walked across the Harvard Bridge too many times in the cold:

But the city is starting to warm up beautifully:

Graduation countdown: 68

Since its founding in 1861, MIT has been a special place for Technology⁠01 In fact, MIT in the early twentieth century was often referred to as simply 'Technology.' to flourish. However, not everyone at MIT cares that much about Technology. Some people here are interested all kinds of different fields, from anime to manga. What is there to study here that isn’t Technology?

It turns out, due to a fatal loophole in the founding charter, that you can actually study anything here as long as it does not disrupt this Massachusetts Institute’s acronymal third letter! At MIT, you get to choose your own T.

Most students here follow the path of least resistance and attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the most normal and infamous school under the MIT umbrella. That’s fine and all. They get “grant money” and “news coverage” and “accepted into top-ranked Ph.D. programs”, but who needs that.

The cooler, non-Technology students here get the freedom of learning about cutting-edge science from the leading educators in our chosen fields for the low, low price of the same amount that MITechnology students pay for their degrees.

Some of these interesting educational paths include:

• The Massachusetts Institute of Tarantella: A lively course of study in performance. Vivace!
• The Massachusetts Institute of Tardigrades: Water bears.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Tautology: Currently, there are either no students studying this or at least one.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Tea: This one is split between people who study hot leaf water and people who study problematic behavior on Twitter.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Technicalities: Law school.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Teenagers: A new pilot program for teens who want to get into MIT right after middle school.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Telemarketing: Apply to be a Tech Caller!
• The Massachusetts Institute of Tex-Mex: Wayyy better than Anna’s.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Time: They maintain the Master Clock.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Tolkein: Study abroad in Middle-earth.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Tomorrow: They help come up with advertising campaigns for For-Profit Universities.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Tribology: I don’t know much about this one, but I hear the capstone course 2.361 is famous for being an all-around good time.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Trichology: Free lint-rollers in their lounge.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Trolling: I might minor in this department, but I’m not sure which of the classes I should take.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Tufts: Satellite campus.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Twiggy: Known for their instrumental role in popularizing the Mod look.
• The Massachusetts Intsitute of Typos: Copy-editing school.

As someone who is not that interested in Technology at all, I found MIT’s sanctity of acronym principle to be relieving back when I had to declare a major. After exploring all of the departments, I was excited to become a part of the Massachusetts Institute of Taxidermy‘s Class of 2020! So far I have not taxidermied anything big, since they save the harder subjects for the senior-year projects when we get to use real nude models. I have, however, practiced my taxidermy on several plants and small amphibians, like the ones below.

I really like how much expression and liveliness I can impart in something that is dead. Really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Thanks MIT!

To the Department of Course 6-Tea:

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to pursue a technically-rigorous and intellectually-enlightening undergraduate degree at The M.i.T. the past 3.5 years. Unfortunately, I regret to inform you that I will not be completing my degree in Course 6-Tea at this time.

I’ve been surrounded by so many talented and bright undergraduates and professors who have taught me so much about tea, but today, I accepted the opportunity to complete my degree at another university down the road, which hopefully will relieve my headaches.

I wish you the best of luck with your other students pursuing their Course 6-Tea degrees. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions.

Regards,
Kevin S.
The Other School Down the Road ’19

I saw going to college as a rebirth. I really disliked high school. College was a chance to both remake myself in a friendlier mold and to build up the friend circle I never had in high school.

What I didn’t realize is that a social circle is not something magical that you discover once and then sticks around forever. At least, not for me. A social circle is something that I’ve had to work to seek out and keep and occasionally something I have to rebuild.

I was a pretty lonely high schooler. I didn’t have many friends, especially senior year. I was really focused, especially on academics and atypical hobbies that didn’t revolve around the high school community. As a result, I didn’t fit in with the other people in my class and I consistently felt like my priorities were at odds with those of the people around me. I’d be lying if I said that none of the situation was my fault–I’m a natural introvert and boredom and frustration made me aloof.

I didn’t want college to be a repeat of high school. I knew that the environment would be really different–I’d be around smart, multifaceted people who were focused and ambitious like me, and I could choose my friends instead of spending the whole day around the same people. That gave me hope. And I also decided that I needed to change my attitude. I was going to be more positive and open and I was going to try hard to build the friend group that I craved.

And for my first year and a half at MIT, that worked spectacularly. For most of freshman year I was on a huge social high. I was let loose in a candy shop of interesting, down-to-Earth, welcoming potential friends. (Fun fact: I still think that MIT students are especially down-to-Earth and non-judgemental.) REX was one of the best weeks of my life. I found an awesome friend group first semester. I was so happy to be around people that I liked and that liked me back that I didn’t mind that MIT was a lot of work and I used the term “pset-party” unironically. I started wondering if I was an introvert at all because I started loving meeting people and making small talk. It’s true that I missed my family sometimes and took some stressful classes and still experienced some social FOMO that was left over from missing out on everything in high school. But overall it was a really great time.

I thought that this was what college was like. I expected it to last forever, and it didn’t.

Second semester of sophomore year I grew apart from most of my freshman year friend group and I went through a breakup that I took pretty hard and I still didn’t feel connected to my living group. I felt like I was back at square one. I was lonely and, in retrospect, probably a little depressed. For a while I felt like I didn’t belong at my own school any more. I was afraid that I was watching high school repeat itself, that I was closing myself off, that people no longer made me happy, that I was doomed to be solitary. I remember being apprehensive to go back for Junior year because I felt like I’d regressed from where I was the year before.

Fortunately, that perspective turned out to be way too fatalistic. What I didn’t fully recognize at the time was that while I was shedding most of my freshman year friendship circle I was also building up the next stage of my life at MIT. That same sophomore spring, by happenstance, I found my lab–the same lab I’m working with now, two years later, that’s been a huge part of my life since. Junior fall, I moved living groups again–it was the third living group I’d been in, I’d already changed once, and I was nervous about it and starting to think I’d never find the warm live-in community that so many people seemed to have in college–but I ended up making friends with the people on my floor and finding a really solid community. My interest in languages and my humanities concentration in French introduced me to people outside of my year and department. And even through the whole mid-college-crisis, my still-best-friend from freshman year was there for me, so I was never really alone.

I spent Junior year building a new friend circle. I made a bunch of friends in my lab and my supervisor became my mentor and role model and still is to this day. Working in my lab gave me a sense of teamwork and belonging that came not just from social acceptance but also from skills that I could contribute to a group of motivated, driven people. I challenged myself to hang out more with my entry (that’s the MacGregor-specific term for a floor) and got closer to the people I lived with. My interest in languages led me to take classes with people I wouldn’t have met otherwise and eventually led me to the Language Conversation Exchange, where I still volunteer.

Senior fall rocked. First, I had a great summer interning at my goal company in Seattle and hanging out with a bunch of friends from MIT. And then I came back to school and that rocked too. I learned a lesson from the ridiculous course load I inflicted upon myself Junior spring and took a relatively chill schedule, which meant I had more time for socializing and sleep. I spent a lot of time with people from my dorm and learned how fun it was to have friends living down the hall. There were a bunch of Senior events planned which means I even partied a little bit (:O yes three years late). I took on more responsibility in my lab–I even got to train some new UROPs. I finally cross-registered for a really cool Spanish class at Harvard and I volunteered and participated in the language exchanges. Winter break was awesome too. I spent finals week in Washington D.C. with the only person I know who’s a bigger U.S. history nerd than me–my brother–and I spent IAP in Andorra which was AMAZING, experientially and linguistically.

Me and my brother Max visiting Lincoln’s memorial in D.C. This is one of the most respectful pictures we took during our trip. Most of the time, we tried to imitate the statues we were taking pictures with. We thought that maybe that wasn’t appropriate given the gravity of the monument.

I thought I’d finally cracked it. I thought I’d finally found my people! I thought that Freshman and Sophomore years had been a misstep, and that I’d moved on and finally found my place.

And I was…wrong. In the past couple months, things have shifted again. Over winter break I lost two of my good friendships in pretty quick succession. That was a kick in the gut. As a result, some of the social groups I relied on aren’t the same any more. The first couple weeks of the semester were rough. Since then I’ve been throwing myself into my research.

My research situation has changed a lot too, but largely in a positive way. I’m now technically an MEng, or Master’s of Engineering student, which is MIT’s one-year Master’s program. I’m super fortunate that my professor has money to fund me as a Research Assistant, which means I’m only taking two classes this semester and spending the rest of my time researching. It’s really exciting–I’m learning a lot and I *finally* have time to focus on research in a way that was not possible as an undergrad (I submitted my first conference paper last week!!!) It’s also taking some getting used to. An RAship is more like having a job and less like being a student, which means I’m learning to negotiate the challenges of workplace responsibilities and relationships.

So basically this semester, a lot of the pleasure and meaning in my daily life is coming from my work instead of my social life. I love having important work to do and I love that I’m finally a fully-fledged member of my lab. But, as you probably gathered from the fact that I just wrote a whole blog post about it, my social connections are really important to me and I’m bummed and taken aback that I’m losing some of them, again.

And I think I’m taken aback because my assumptions about how social connections work are wrong. I never assumed I would be friends with the exact same group of people throughout college, but I guess I did assume that there was a “place” waiting for me somewhere here that I just had to find and then I’d be welcomed and comfortable and part of that group for basically ever. And that’s not true. Sometimes you leave people’s lives and sometimes they leave yours. Social connections ebb and flow. I knew that I had to work for my relationships, but I didn’t realize that even then, sometimes they don’t work out.

I’m never going to “find my place”. I’m going to find a place. And I’m going to have to work hard to keep it and sometimes, maybe often, lose it and find another one. It sounds exhausting. But at least when this happens I now know that I don’t have to look back at high school and wonder if there’s something wrong about me that’s dooming myself to a life of loneliness. This stuff happens. Things will come back together again.

My parents have always been there for me–no matter what’s going on at school.

So has my best friend Yida, who I’ve known since freshman year and who has been a wonderful part of being at MIT <3

Finding my place at MIT is something I’m still working on, and, I now realize, something I’ll never stop having to work on.