Noel and Jeremy both asked a version of: When/why/how did you switch to course 9? How is course 9? Do you like the number 9?
In reverse order: I like the number 9 more than the number 4, but less than the number 7. I really like course 9 (Brain and Cognitive Science), because there's a fair amount of flexibility in choosing your classes; you get to pick six electives from any of three categories (Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognition, and Neurocience) on top of a few core requirements, so you can essentially design your major to shift more towards psychology, neurophysiology, artificial intelligence.. etc. I switched from course 5 (Chemistry) to course 9 by getting a form signed (by both the course 5 and the course 9 people - it took less than an hour), for a variety of reasons (maybe someday when you're older), in the middle of last semester (October or November, I believe).

Carmen queries: emt sounds so exciting, but do you ever really get all the actions? (just traffic accident etc, or is it just to help drunken college students off to the hospital or help a stupid college student who just walked into a pole)
HEY. Hey. Just because you walked into a pole DOES NOT imply stupidity. Especially if you're distracted by the thought of taking your first final which you have to make up a day before everyone else because they're all taking it on a day that you have another final and you can't be bothered to look ahead when you're trying to stick your headphones into your iPod, and I mean, it's not like that coat rack was supposed to be in the middle of the sidewalk anyway.
Anyway, it really depends on the shift you work. You can definitely work a Tuesday morning 0800 shift (8 AM-12 PM), or even a Thursday afternoon 1600 (4 PM-11 PM), and get nothing, and then you can work a Saturday overnight (11 PM-8 AM) and get three broken noses and a barely concious drunk. I will say that because we only serve the MIT campus (which covers both the campus in Cambridge and the fraternities in Boston) we get a significantly smaller amount of calls than professional ambulance services get, but we're certified just as they are, and we run pretty much the same as they do. (My last post about MIT-EMS was here.)

Kevin wants to know: How is the food at MIT?
The food at MIT is solid. And I mean that in the sense that we have good food, not in the sense that you'll starve if you just got your wisdom teeth removed. (We've got Jell-O.) I really like the falafel in the student center, and we just got a Subway this year, and I have a pretty good relationship with Stata Center sandwiches. I think the thing that makes college food so bad in general, though, is that it suffers from a lack of variety - no matter how expensive their meal plans are, which is why living so close to Boston (and having Campusfood.com) is so great. Especially living in Boston - I've got UBurger, Ankara's froyo, Fin's sushi, and Shaw's groceries all on my doorstop, and I'm right by the T so I can just hop on the train in Kenmore and go basically anywhere short of Rhode Island for dinner. Why? What'd you have for dinner? Your mom's home cooking? THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT.

Anon is curious: Kind of off topic, but out of random curiosity, what is the font that you guys keep using in your images?
Gill Sans, in caps.

Sh1fty says: (in response to this entry) favorite home appliance? Standing mixer. I bake to destress.
favorite allotropic form of carbon? Hmm.. is it dull to say graphite? (No pun intended.)
Josh joshes: Favorite Mythbuster? Not the one with the hat.
Favorite Organic Compound? Epoxides. They're chemistry's fat man.
And most importantly: Favorite Muffin? Bran muffins. Specifically, this one. But hey, congrats on getting in! And also, turning the dome into a muffin, I guess?...
Steph scrutinizes: Favorite shoes? I just bought these awesome Nike Airs about a month ago:

Anon asks: I have a totally unrelated question: I noticed in one of the dorm videos that some people living in the dorms had pets. So, are we allowed to keep our pets on campus?  See, there's this cat that kind of owns me...
Depends on the dorm. Certain floors in certain dorms, e.g. EC, Random, Senior, and Bexley, are already cat-friendly and have their own rules about bringing new pets in; in order to make a floor cat- or dog-friendly (although I'm not sure if any dog-friendly floors actually exist), you need to approve it with everyone on the floor, your GRT (like an RA, the graduate student that lives on each floor and serves as a liason between the floor and the housemasters), and other members of the administration first. You can also try to convince your GRT to get you a cat or dog and keep it in their apartment, which doesn't require paperwork. (We're getting new GRTs next year, who have an adorable dog, and although some people on the floor are allergic they've cleared it to keep the dog in the apartment only.)
As far as other dorms, you're generally safe with the kinds of pets that can be kept in your room, like hamsters, or rocks, or your roommate.

Judy H ponders.: Anyways, would you say Harvard classes are less demanding than those at MIT? Is it easier to get a good grade because of grade inflation??
It's really difficult for me to answer this question, partially because I've taken all my classes at MIT save for just two classes at Harvard, so I can't really be called an expert on the Harvard grading system. One of the classes I took appeared to be on the easier end of the spectrum for Harvard, and the other appeared to be on the much harder side - and neither of them were humanities classes; so really, I have a pretty bad sample size. Kind of like trying to describe a couple hundred course meal after eating the soup and salad. Basically, I can't make any sweeping generalizations, but the two classes that I took were graded pretty differently from classes I've taken at MIT.

anton questions: Harvard and MIT have different academic calendars. Has that posted any challenge for you in taking classes at Harvard
The only challenge it posed was the one time MIT had a four-day weekend, and Harvard did not, and everyone made fun of my lab partner Nina and I for having to work while they all had a big party. We laughed back at them while we had a two-week reading period before finals, and Nina and I went outside to sit in Killian Court sipping fruity beverages while everyone else was running around frantically having hernias over final projects.
If you take a class at Harvard in the fall, there is the schedule conflict that MIT has its fall semester finals before winter break, and Harvard has them after, so you take finals both before and after - although I think they're changing this next year.

ekim implores: Japanese is attendence-mandatory?  How does that work? What happens if you miss a class?
The attendance-mandatory policy works by grading our speaking ability on a daily basis, and you're permitted to drop two daily grades, so if you miss a class you just drop that day's grade. Note that most all other MIT classes are not attendance-mandatory, and the ones that are may have a different policy.

another12 inquires: The mom keeps saying the east is more formal than northern california- but Ive got packing issues. The airlines are limiting us. How do I get a 70 pound amp east? Ship it, if it's worth it to you! DO I really need to pack a " suit/nice jacket" and stuff? If you want to go to formals, interviews, or kick it with Susan Hockfield, yes. How much to calculate for the cold, beyond 19 pair of socks? I suggest long underwear, but it doesn't really start getting bitterly cold until around Thanksgiving. You can buy some of the heavy stuff around Boston if it's too much to pack, See this entry for more on packing.

Sam says: Cramp spray?  For realio?  Kamber, my birthday is only 8 months away. Forget it, Spam, I already bought you a beard comb. Actually, I'm pretty sure you shaved, but whatever, you can use it for the back of your head or something.
Also, could you remind me and the vast MITblog community what you're doing this summer, again?
Only for you. I'm living in Boston with my room/floormates from freshman year, working in my lab (taking MRIs of the visual word form area), studying for the MCATs, beating the ultimate set list in Rock Band, taking a photo class, exploring Boston's little cafes, and falling asleep a lot in public places. More on this later!

More questions, more answers. Leave a message after the beep.

Two years seems like a lifetime to me, although I can't begin to tell you how quickly these past two years have gone by. So I understand if you feel like the time from now to when you graduate will probably take a little longer than Pangea did to separate. Whether you've pre-written your life story or are like me and have very little idea of what you're going to eat for lunch today (update post-lunch: a salad), the Next Big Mailing represents a lot of decisions you'll have to make for the future, and a lot of those decisions involve advising.

When I received the NBM two years ago, I spent just about all my time with the housing booklet. I took that thing to classes and bragged to my friends about how my school wasn't going to stick me with a random roommate like their schools would, roommates that probably had a weird habit of chewing up furniture, or a third leg. I spent weeks debating the pros and cons of Burton Conner vs. Senior Haus, and in retrospect, very little time thinking about advising. Anthony tried to steer me away from this, telling me to go for a seminar rather than traditional, with an adviser that taught in a field I was interested in. Seminars, he said, were ideal, since you'd get to meet and interact with your adviser every week. But this advice was lost on me in the multitude of options - seminar or traditional, residence based advising or regular, not to mention Experimental Study Group, which has its own set of advisers entirely.. the different combinations seemed more like a Sudoku puzzle than a major decision.

There are a lot of advising options for freshmen, and it's very easy to get overwhelmed among all the choices you have to make when starting your first year of college, but my point is this: don't stress out about picking the correct adviser. The advice you need to make good choices will be there if you look for it, and you won't always necessarily feel most comfortable looking to the person who is supposed to give it to you, even if you spend all the time in the world making sure you have the perfect seminar in the perfect department.

That being said- and I promise this'll make sense in a bit, it'll just take a second- really, I'm serious, where are you going? COME BACK- last night the bloggers and Ben went out for dinner to celebrate his last day as a MIT employee.

Nance (who was invited as well for his send-off, but was unable to attend) often tells the story of how, upon arriving at MIT, someone said to him, "Welcome to the family. It doesn't matter if you were born in [as a student], or married in [as an employee]; you're family." Still, there's one thing that those who married in don't get at the end of their time here - a degree. And so Paul had the brilliant idea to make them their own MIT degrees, which we personalized a bit:

Here's a close-up of my design, so you can read the text:

[As a disclaimer to future harried applicants: MIT Admissions uses Facebook in no way to stalk prospective students.]

We made one for Nance as well, and Matt got a little jealous:

All in all, it was a fun time - Keri and Ben made the famous Keri face, and I got to eat some of Snively's fries - because for some reason, even though he was HALF AN HOUR LATE, he got his food first (seriously, Cheesecake Factory, what is up with that):

The beginning of this entry does have a point, however, other than to show off my newfound Latin knowledge, and to dispel a little admissions advice - I'm signing the card. The advice I got from Ben Jones over the last two years has been absolutely invaluable to me, and I will sorely miss the guy who always gave good answers. I would not be the person I am today if not for Ben's vibrant personality and his talent for words, as both my unofficial adviser and my friend, and I'm eternally grateful for everything he's done for me and the institute.

We'll miss you, Ben. Best of luck.

For more information about Ring Delivery, check out:
The 2010 Ring Delivery Website
Article in The Tech about the 2010 Ring Delivery
Mollie's 2007 Brass Rat Entry
Melis's 2008 Ring Delivery Entry (which was also delayed. Seriously, Mom, chill out; I posted, didn't I??)
Laura's 2009 Ring Delivery Blog Entry

Change - it's a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. Big change, political change, we need change. On a more personal level, it's something that I've been itching to write about over the past two years, and have never really found a way to coherently put those thoughts to paper. But on this flight home, after two ridiculously trying weeks and after my left leg has almost completely fallen asleep, I'm going to give it a shot (and hopefully succeed at the coherent part before the bottom half of my body gives way entirely to deep vein thrombosis).

If I were to write to a letter to my past self, myself just before entering college, I probably would have said something like "Things are about to change. Also, pack more socks." I already knew this in the past anyway - not the socks part, the other thing - so why would I reiterate that? I know I remember that anxious anticipation vividly. I could feel it coming like Tony from West Side Story, bounding gracefully around a rooftop singing about some dream he had. (I did not do this.) In fact, to me, change was the point- I actually never seriously considered attending any schools on the West Coast, because I wanted to get away from eighteen years of the expected. And so I moved, 3,000 miles away from a little town and a lot of who I used to be.

In retrospect, it is the best advice I can give to someone trying to choose between colleges - go far.

When I think about myself in high school, the way I perceived myself and the way others perceived me, the difference is almost comical. I had never played Guitar Hero, never learned from one of the world's leading experts on polyketide synthase, never baked a ransom cake for a fake kidnapped cat. I rarely stayed up all night talking about the future until maybe the summer after my senior year, and I definitely didn't have a blog that was read by more people than the guys I ate lunch with, and maybe one random dude in Moscow.

(Of course, some things never change. I still eat peanut butter and jelly out of the jar from a spoon. I still watch "You've Got Mail" when I'm sick, and I still like staying up late for no reason even though I'm a morning person. I also, obviously, still plan things out really well.)

Nelson Mandela once said, "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered," and I'm pretty sure when he said that, he wasn't thinking of me. I don't think he meant to talk about migrant college kids, kids who love their school and have never experienced many of the situations and emotions that come along with it, but still left their heart in San Francisco 3,000 miles away. Nelson Mandela had his own problems. So it's just a coincidence, then, that his words fit our story so perfectly. I come back here and my friends and I will naturally marvel about how our hair's lengthened or shortened, how Avni finally figured out how to use eyeliner and how Mike suddenly became the life of the party even though we barely knew him to speak before - in the backdrop of the same diner we inhabited for most of high school.

But personal change aside, there's also the fact that college, no matter where you end up, is a rapidly changing environment by definition. Like its component parts, the students that are constantly developing themselves, college is a highly permeable membrane with things and ideas and people passing in and out of it. You fall in love unexpectedly with a senior two months before he leaves for grad school on the opposite side of the country. Your roommate moves away out of the because she can't stand the rowdy Hungarians that occupy the suite next door. You find yourself failing physics when you've never had trouble mastering E&M before, but all of a sudden all the Biot-Savart equation just falls out of your head like it was never even there.

What other option do you have but to adapt?

Maybe that won't be you. Maybe you'll come to college and your bearings will come to you instantly, imported, installed, and ready to go, and you'll find a group of rock-solid people who will be supporting you always. But if you're not from The Matrix, you'll have to figure it out on your own.

The good news is, most of the people here have encountered the same situations you're about to jump into, especially in your freshman year at MIT. We've done REX and we've discovered time and time again that Anna's burritos are really all kinds of terrible for you, but we still keep going back for more; we've overslept 20 minutes of one of our last big exams of the semester and burst frantically into the exam hall with greasy hair and drool on our chins. The only constant thing about change is that it never stops, especially now, and we know that too. Maybe it's something I'll never fully come to terms with, but I'm working on it.

One summer is all that separates me from junior year and the complete rollercoaster of being a sophomore, that year when you're hypothetically just starting to know what's up but still change your major at least once or thrice, and I'm just sort of starting to get comfortable. And still, even though I've written that change is constant, I have to remind myself I can't depend on things to be the same. It's a lesson I'm still learning the hard way, as I'm pretty sure now that there isn't any other way to get it in your head. So as you begin to make the leap into the first year of the rest of your life, know that the people around you are changing just as you are, but don't worry too much about taking my words to heart - I promise you'll be reminded of them sooner than you think.

Packing more socks, though - I'm serious about that one.

I read the blogs a lot as a prefrosh. And sometimes, one or three of the bloggers would drop off the face of the earth for a little while, and I would look down at their page over my absurdly high nose and think, "PSHHH."

"Pshhhhh," I would think. "If I had the honor of being an MIT blogger, I would not post as sparsely as a Donald Trump's hair. I would post every day, about classes and my terrible eating habits and the way the trees look from my dorm room and exactly how long it takes me to tie my shoes in the morning. There is no EXCUSE!"

I have no excuse. It's been a month and a week since I last posted. And it's not for lack of material, either (it takes me 6.2 seconds to tie my shoes). I've got the Boston Marathon, Ring Delivery, AXO Lip Sync, the Burton Conner cruise, Dance Troupe, and the last study break we had in which we drank milkshakes while listening to Kelis under a sign labeled "THE YARD". I have all of that, and still it's been a month because I've been either hosed, or just kickin it in the sunshine out in Killian Court, or eating whipped cream out of a can.. or some combination of the three.

So I'll start from the beginning: marathon day. Every year the American Red Cross invites a handful of MIT EMTs to come work the aid stations through the chief of our service, and so on April 21st I got up at a ridiculous hour to watch people go do ridiculous things.

I'd never seen a marathon before, let alone the Boston Marathon, so it was a pretty exciting day. The wheelchairs are released about an hour before the runners, then the elite women, then elite men, then everyone else.

"Everyone else" doesn't really adequately describe the incredible sight of 20,000+ people on their way to running 26 miles, which included a huge variety of people from all walks of life, from college students to grandparents to amputees to a woman who was 14 weeks pregnant (and stopped in to use our aid station's restroom). It also included a couple hundred bandit runners, who haven't officially registered for the marathon (there are a couple barriers to entry, such as the ridiculous qualifying time of a little over 3 hours, or a small fee) and therefore do not wear numbered bibs. Bandit runners themselves include completely serious 26-mile-runners to the costumed 2-mile-walkers:

Around mid-day the runners had all passed through, and so we packed up and headed to the very last aid station to hang out with more colorful runners:

We were having a pretty chill time at the last station - at that point, most of the runners were basically finished- when all of a sudden, Jon Wu '06 sat up and yelled, "IT'S BAKER HOUSE!"

MIT had a pretty consistent presence, actually, including Bryan '07 and a few others:

As EMTs, we handed out vaseline for chafing and sprayed a lot of calves with cramp spray, as well as treated more serious patients. It was good practice, and I got to deal with things we don't normally see on the ambulance, like hypernatremia.

So okay, this entry is pretty overdue, and it's maybe not one of the best on MITBlogs, but they can't all be winners. I just found that entry last night and watched the video about eight times, and I feel like bringing it back completely makes up for all of my recent absence. Again, I apologize, and I may or may not be back before finals, but whatever happens - my deprotonated heart will love you.

Below you'll find accounts of six very different rooms on my floor, Burton 1, all decorated in such a way that creates a place that not only serves as home, but uniquely displays their personality. Each person was photographed in their room after being heavily prepped by a team of hair and makeup artists, as well as relaxing in their personal trailers parked outside of their rooms. No, actually I just ran frantically around the floor with David '08, aka DTemp, a photographer for the MIT yearbook Technique, who is a total pro as you're about to see. I hope you enjoy reading this entry as much as we enjoyed making it!

Dima '10 and Rich '10

Dima and Rich's room is located in the opening of the biggest suite on the floor, so it's a pretty central location for people to hang out and drink tea. It is furnished both tastefully and practically, with a Picasso painting that Dima often tells people he painted himself amidst Ikea furniture. "We actually didn't initially know what we were going to do with our room," said Dima (pictured in the foreground). "But we did know we wanted a comfortable place to unwind after a challenging day of classes, a place to drink tea while discussing scholarly topics, and most importantly, get all the babes - or, at least, a large proportion of them."

"So with these goals in mind, we set out for the local Home Depot to buy paint. We ended up buying the paint "Royal Academy" by Ralph Lauren, which for those who don't know is a complex shade of burgundy, not unlike a French Merlot. So then we painted our room, and 5 trips to Ikea and a little guidance from Francisco, our interior decorator, later... you know the rest. Oh yeah, and we also had a feng shui fountain above our tea shelf last year but, due to a feng shui overload, it broke."

Rich's side of the room, opposite the feng shui tea shelf, contains his desk, futon, and handmade loft. "Basically, I had a huge space in my room, so I went to the Porter Room [a big room in Burton Conner with broken down lofts] and looked for spare wood, and one Saturday my dad came over and we built it. The ends were already made, and we made the top part. Then I put Christmas lights underneath the bed and it created a really cozy area. I thought it would really open the room up if we could put my desk or futon underneath. We wouldn't have space for a futon if I didn't build a loft, or at least the room wouldn't be as open."

It's fairly rare to find two sophomores in a double, as most move into singles, but Dima and Rich also have arguably the best room in Burton-Conner - the double is not only quite spacious but includes its own bathroom (not pictured here, although you can see it in the extra photos at the bottom).

Angela '10

Cathy '10 and Anisha '11

Though they're practically polar opposites, as Cathy hails from upstate New York and Anisha all the way from Malaysia, they can still agree about their favorite part of the room. "It's definitely the 'I hear you're gangster...' poster. I feel it represent the overall vibe of the room pretty well; I mean, I am pretty gangster," said Cathy, with a big smile. "It makes me laugh everytime is see it, and it also makes me laugh knowing that it is the first thing Anisha sees every morning when she wakes up!" Anisha agreed, "The gangster poster is a pretty good reminder that I'm definitely not in Malaysia anymore. As for Cathy being gangster... well..."

As for decorating, "we didn't really do much to our room cause I kinda like having lots of space," Anisha explained. "And so we focused all our creative powers on the paint job." Cathy nodded, "Aside from the painting, we created this strip of names around our room. We tell everybody who comes in to grab a sharpie and sign the wall. I LOVE it, the people sign in soo many different ways and it's so fun. Last year I always had people sign my wall in simmons and loved it, so I really wanted another signing sort of thing. So Anisha and I decided upon the strip of un-painted-ness to be signable and SHAZAM! It was. And I love it!"

Garrett '11 and Matt '11

Garrett and Matt's huge double is now a great place for freshmen to convene and study for their exams, or just kick it. "When we moved in, it was quiet, white, and crowded; now it's blue, loud, and crowded - with guests, which is legit."

Simone '10

And lastly, but certainly not least (maybe the most?) -

Connie '11, Lauren '11, and Mahati '11

Although - there isn't much of the less mess section. "It's usually too messy for people to hang out here," Connie said. Mahati agreed, "We theoretically have a nest of pillows to accomodate guests, but often, my violin and music stuff it sprawled all over it, along with everyone's dirty laundry."

As for the look of the room, Mahati mentioned that they all like to paint their walls occasionally, especially when stressed. "We went for a artsy, earthy, color-saturated, cluttered, eclectic look," said Connie. "It's actually got a lot of Indian influence, which all of us really like. We started off choosing two really bright contrasting paint colors and we had a lot of hangings from China, India, and a random Tibetan store in Plymouth."

All three girls were given the option to move into singles at the beginning of the semester, but each turned it down. They all agreed that they loved their room, even if it was crowded and messy most of the time. "We can add whatever we want on a whim, and our room is just a way for us to be creative every once in a while," said Connie.

So those are the six cribs of Burton 1 we chose to highlight, although we have several more rooms on the floor, and we photographed twelve in total. The rest can be found here:

  

  

Anyway, we hope you enjoyed this (first?) installment of Burton 1 Cribs! Thanks for reading, and a big thanks to everyone who made this entry possible!

]]> http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/residential_life_housing_options/burton_1_cribs.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/residential_life_housing_options/burton_1_cribs.shtml Residential Life / Housing Options Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:26:38 -0500 Jess K. '10 There is probably a meter somewhere that measures how much fun you are having at school. Or maybe it's a bucket, swinging by the handle with each addition of enjoyment. This bucket probably exists somewhere under the tunnels of MIT, and when it fills up past its capacity it tips over and you get showered with psets and tests and remember why you were there in the first place. My bucket sort of exploded last Saturday - and thus the five exams and psets followed quickly after - but it was totally, totally worth it.

A little background, with a lot of parentheses: I just got picked to be a FAP (Freshman Arts Program) counselor, which is an FPOP (Freshman Pre-Orientation Program) that takes place the week before orientation (the week before classes start for freshmen). FAP involves spending a little time in your discipline (either music, creative writing, visual arts, photography, dance, theater, or film - my discipline, which you should all sign up for) and the rest of the time participating in random arts activities (like building a city out of trash, or seeing an improv show in Boston, or having a talent show/karaoke/dance party). Not only is FAP one week of pure awesome (I mean, come on, you get to hang out with The Angela Monster), but you also just might get the chance to participate in crazy incredible opportunities like this one.

Three weeks ago the Office of the Arts invited a handful of MIT undergrads (all FAPers, though not necessarily from film) to participate in the Michel Gondry exhibit at the Deitch Gallery in New York, inspired by his new movie, Be Kind Rewind. The movie features two guys left in charge of a video store (Mos Def and Jack Black), one of whom is accidentally magnetized and causes all the tapes to be erased. Left to their own devices, the pair is forced to recreate all the movies in the store, or "swede" them. "Sweding", a term coined in the film, implies that the movie is made under a strict time restraint and creative use of limited resources, i.e. switching the camera to "night vision" for a evening shot, with the characters wearing photocopied masks of their faces so as not to invert their skin tones.

Gondry is most famous for this type of organic innovation, as seen in his 2004 Academy Award-winning film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". He is also known for his visually stunning music videos such as The White Stripes' "Fell in Love With a Girl", Foo Fighters' "Everlong", and Radiohead's "Knives Out", as well as several videos for Björk. He served as an artist-in-residence at MIT in 2005 and 2006, and also just recently came to visit us at the begining of February to screen Be Kind Rewind. "[At MIT,] you can try something, and even if it don’t work, you can try something else," he said, during an interview after the screening. "And I really like that."

So it takes four hours to get from Boston to New York, which means we had to get on the earliest possible bus - 8 AM. Getting on the earlierst possible bus meant getting on the earliest possible T, which meant getting up at 5:30 AM. And it was raining.

After breakfast at McDonald's and a four-hour nap, we got off the bus and, lead by the director of the artist-in-residence program Michele Oshima, headed off into New York to grab food. Thus began probably one of the most well-fed days of my collegiate life. Lunch was at an organic French bakery/restaurant and MIT Office of the Arts picked up the tab, so when they asked us if we wanted dessert the answer was DEFINITELY a yes. (Except for Ken, who got another quiche.)

After eating, we visited a small gallery featuring the short films of an Australian artist, Tracey Moffatt - "Artist", "Lip", and "Doomed" - all of which were compilations of movie clips, edited to create an ironic social commentary. "Doomed" resonated with me in particular, as it showed several clips of large-scale disasters in succession such that that we were essentially desensitized to it upon leaving the gallery.

And finally, we made it to the Deitch Gallery!

We were told that we would have two and a half hours to make the movie - 45 minutes each in Workshops 1 and 2, where we would plan it out, and 1 hour to film. We were then directed to Workshop 1, where we were given a variety of instructions, including picking a genre, a title, writing out a 8-10 sentence storyline, and considering the different sets we had available to use. I became the cameraperson, which means that's my ugly handwriting on the whiteboard.

Workshop 1 was conveniently located above the rest of the gallery, so that we could look over the balcony and see the various sets available:

After Workshop 1, we made props and storyboarded the movie at Workshop 2, which we later discovered we did mostly wrong. But we continued on to make our movie anyway! Filming was pretty crazy and stressful, but we were pretty much used to that from school, so I really enjoyed directing. The movie starred Sila '11, Dave '10, and May '11, the last three emotional people in a world of apathy, who decide to use their talents to cure everyone of their indifference and are eventually get sucked in themselves. (Hence the giant "FAIL" on the whiteboard.)

Oh, and then Michel Gondry came and watched our movie.

We were all kind of embarrassed about showing it in front of people in the first place, but showing it in front of Michel Gondry felt a little like throwing together everything you have in your refrigerator at the end of term (for me, hummus, saltines, and orange juice) and serving it to Martha Stewart. It was certainly not the best job we could've done, especially filming in just one hour with no editing, but that's not to say it wasn't a ridiculously fun experience. Running around and trying to find the next set to film in was something I'll never forget.

And I'll definitely never forget Michel Gondry coming to dinner with us.

Over dinner we talked about a variety of different topics ranging from our movie ("It was.. okay!") to the importance of proper storyboarding ("This (our storyboard) is not the best one I've seen.."), from Eliot Spitzer ("I don't see what the big deal is") to prostitutes ("They are so mean!"). Mostly, though, he told us about his new movie, about a girl who comes to MIT to discover a world of possibility in various experiments being run underground. Hearing him talk about the film, as well as ask us pointed questions about the feeling of arriving at MIT for the first time, was incredibly uplifting, as a lot of movies try to portray MIT pretty unrealistically. The script is still in its early stages; even so, I'm so excited for its release.

As a whole, we left New York feeling inspired, and May left with a kiss on the cheek from Michel Gondry. Except she didn't know it was coming, so she moved away right as he was about to kiss her goodbye, and left Michel Gondry hanging awkwardly. "Uhh.. I was trying to kiss you, but I will just shake everybody's hand instead." And everyone was disappointed. Thanks a lot, May.

Though I think Dave summed it up best when we got back to South Station:

Dave: Can you believe we were here just this morning?
Sila: Look, even the McDonalds menu is different now!
Dave: (wistfully) So much has changed...

(Thanks to Michele for making this entire incredible experience possible!)

]]> http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/music_the_arts/meeting_michel_gondry.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/music_the_arts/meeting_michel_gondry.shtml Music & The Arts Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:41:22 -0500 Jess K. '10 (CONGRATULATIONS, Class of 2012! I'm way excited to meet all of you, and also not because you make me feel old. But I'm mostly excited. Excited to get fitted for my dentures. Anyway, I'm still hosed, and I have a million other blog entries that I've been meaning to write - including having dinner in New York with Michel Gondry on MIT money - BUT this should only take a second, and I haven't blogged in so long that I got pushed off the front page, and the only thing I hate more than getting pushed off the front page is grape-flavored anything (it's not even a flavor, I swear). The point of this entry is that my friend Liz '11 and I recently got elected social chairs of Burton 1, and to celebrate that we had a Pi Day party. So I thought I'd take a second to post a bunch of pictures and make you all jealous, and a little hungry. But I mean, you're second semester seniors now; you could eat pie all day and still pass your classes.) (You are passing your classes, right?)

From: jess
Subject: IT'S PI TIME (PIE IN THE 132)
Date: March 14, 2008 10:13:04 PM EDT
To: burton1

There is an ABSURD amount of homemade pie (two apple pies, apple torte, vanilla cream, chocolate cream) in the 132. Bring your own plates and forks. Warning: you may get pied in the face (Kes was the first victim).

Happy pi day!
Brought to you by your social chairs + eva + anna haaaas

I'll be back next week, when I return home for spring break and attempt to recover being blasted away by six midterms and a sugar overdose. See you soon!

]]> http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/pi_day_again.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/pi_day_again.shtml Miscellaneous Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:31:55 -0500 Jess K. '10 I am RIDICULOUSLY hosed this week (three exams, a problem set, a lab report, a t-shirt design, a poster design, a UROP proposal, an EMS elections meeting, an overnight shift, a trip to New York, another exam..), but I haven't posted at all in March, and if I stopped posted entirely while I was hosed it really doesn't look like I'd put up my next entry to until about a few weeks after I graduate. Also, I made fun of Ben for not posting since, oh, I dunno, before Snively posted his first entry. His first entry, might I add, of like eight billion. Snively is totally making me look bad.

The only thing that makes it worse is that I have two entries on hold that I really want to write, but can't, because I'm only allowing myself a ten minute study break before I have to go back to reading six chapters for my first exam on Tuesday. So, there'll be an entry responding to your questions from last entry, and the Burton 1 Cribs entry about the different rooms on Burton 1 soon, I promise.

Because Ben did it last summer, and because my blog bio is essentially the same one I wrote in my first entry as a blogger, I recently decided to write a new blog bio. Not only that, but I decided to write a survey. It would be mind-blowing, I decided. It would have all those questions you always wondered but never wanted to ask, like my favorite kind of chocolate bite-sized candy or my favorite Guitar Hero. It would totally win all of Ben's surveys.

However, I ran into a wall while trying to write it, and so I requested help from Sam, whose mind is a creative vesicle of survey questions just waiting to be tapped. And so I tapped that. His mind, I mean. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you: The Sam Survey.

(Questions written with help from Sam)
Name: Jess
Major: 9 (Brain and Cognitive Science)
Year at MIT: 2010
Residence: Burton-Conner (Burton 1)
Previous Residences: San Francisco, Next House (3rd East), Burton 2
Extracurricular Activities: MIT-EMS, MedLinks, ESG (5.12 TA), Dance Troupe, and UROPing in the Gabrieli lab
Favorite class taken freshman spring: 5.12 (Organic Chemistry I)
Favorite Thai restaurant in Cambridge: Pepper Sky
Favorite animal: Dinosaur
Favorite chocolate bite-sized candy: Toss up between peanut m&m's and peanut butter m&m's
Favorite Guitar Hero: Guitar Hero II
Favorite kind of eggs: Omelettes, scrambled (either with pepper or cheddar cheese), hard boiled, over easy, in that order
Record for number of grapes held in mouth at one time: 21 (they were big grapes)
Favorite flavor of gummy bear: Green, closely followed by red
Favorite fabric softener: Bounce (not to be confused with the Gwyneth Paltrow movie)
Favorite Arcade Fire lyric: "If you want something, don't ask for nothing! If you want nothing, don't ask for something!" -Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Favorite member of Penn & Teller: Teller
Favorite German word: Schmetterling
Favorite state quarter: Toss up between Oklahoma and Wisconsin
Most recent grocery list: Cheese (feta, parmesan), tortillas, salad, vegetable broth, bread, leeks, basil, Go-Gurt, instant ramen, microwaveable curry
Favorite combination of colors for argyle: Light blue, brown, grey
Favorite line of the T: The caves of the green line always makes me feel like I'm at Disneyland
Song used as the opening credits of your movie: The Shins's cover of "We Will Become Silhouettes"
Favorite accountant from The Office: Kevin
Favorite kind of kick: Roundhouse
Favorite piece of EMT terminology: Spontaneous pneumothorax, or "sucking chest wound"
Best Scrabble word: "SQUEEZE"
Favorite pencil: Papermate Sharpwriter. They look like real pencils, but they're mechanical. They make me feel like I'm staying true to my roots
High score on Helicopter: 1433
Favorite building: 46
Favorite palindrome: Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog
Favorite non-Beaver athletic mascot: UCSC Banana Slugs
Favorite Burger King commercial: This one
Anticipated method of death: "In a breakdancing contest. That turns into a riot." -Sam

What have YOU always wanted to ask? Comment your questions in. (By the way, I probably won't change my blog bio. I kind of like the old one. Sorry, Sam!)

]]> http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/the_sam_survey.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/the_sam_survey.shtml Miscellaneous Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:24:06 -0500 Jess K. '10 I have an interesting relationship with Harvard. Coming from MIT I have a propensity to spit upon all popped collars and finals clubs, but I have an older sister who is a pretty cool human bean while simultaneously being Harv '08, and I've gotten to know some of her similarly cool friends - like Sam, who does a beautiful Flight of the Conchords impression, or Nick, who was recently sued by Apple for defending free speech on the internets. I'm also cross-registering there and taking two Harvard classes this term with my friend Nina '10, so while my collar isn't physically popped, it's been feeling pretty starchy as of late.

Going to Harvard as a MIT student can sometimes make you feel like the only boy at Wellesley. You can easily pick me out of a crowd, rocking ratty untied Chuck Taylors and an MIT Orientation Leader 2006 shirt, wondering where the heck the building numbers are and why my recitation ('scuse me, "section") is in a place called "Malinckrodt". (I wasn't an Orientation Leader in 2006, obviously, because I was getting oriented. The t-shirts were free in a box outside 7-103.) Amongst a sea of generally well-dressed, well-groomed and well-mannered Ivy Leaguers, my knotted, unwashed mane that serves as home to many a transgenic fruit fly and is slightly remniscent of Amy Winehouse sticks out like I'm wearing a Tim the Beaver suit.

Nina, on the other hand, fits right in with her peacoat and colorful scarves. The people sitting in her suite kitchen with me right now have recently come to the consensus that Nina is one of the best-dressed people on our floor, and effortlessly so. And yet she still manages to be an excellent pset buddy and lab partner, so you can see why I'm taking Harvard classes - basically, I'm hoping that in time her intrinsic fashion sense may somehow rub off on me. Like in those chick flicks where the girl becomes hot, but still learns that it's what's on the inside that counts. Or not, like in Grease. Or she becomes an ogre, like in Shrek.

Nina also was the one to convince me of how easy it was to cross-register, since she had a pretty good experience taking Chemistry 17 last term. In fact, it's pretty much just like registering for normal MIT classes - you have a separate form that needs to be signed by the Harvard professor, your advisor, and the director of the HASS (Humanities, Arts and Social Science) office, which then gets turned in to both the MIT HASS office and the Harvard registrar. No more than half of your classes can be Harvard classes, and you must be a full-time MIT student to cross-register (paying full MIT tuition, which you kind of have to do anyway if you're taking MIT classes).

So about four times a week now, I take the T or the 1 Bus to Harv, which means I have to factor at least 10-15 minutes' travel time into my morning routine of sprinting out the door with a Go-Gurt (portable breakfast food FTW). As easy as it was to register and as easy as it is to get there, though, at times it can feel like I'm studying abroad. There are cross-cultural differences aplenty and a definite language barrier - 5.13 becomes Chem 27 and Course 5 itself is now Chemistry and Chemical Biology; teaching aides are no longer TAs but TFs (teaching fellows); and of course there's the whole dressing up for class thing. (I guess over there they just call it "getting dressed".)

Don't get me wrong - I'm definitely glad to be taking advantage of this opportunity, and I enjoy the mixed experience. But I can honestly say, and I think Nina will agree with me on this one, that there is no greater feeling than getting off the bus at the end of the day and stepping back onto MIT ground. There's nothing better than knowing that you've returned somewhere where you can punt your 7.03 p-set all day to code a wiki for Burton 1, and you can tell someone that, and they will know exactly what you mean. Basically there's no place like home, like in The Wizard of Oz. (Or not, like in Poltergeist.)

My schedule, if you're wondering, consists of:
Stat 100, a Harvard class that fulfills a Course 9 requirement (in place of 9.07, Statistics for Brain and Cognitive Science). It's probably one of the easier classes on the Harvard spectrum, seeing as every exam is open notes/open book. When I heard that my jaw just about unhinged and crawled away. Nina was like, "Welcome to Harv."

Chem 27, my other Harvard class, is sort of a weird amalgamation of 5.13, 7.05, and 5.310 (or I guess 5.36, since the lab is a little more geared towards organic reactions). That's Organic Chemistry II, Biochemestry, and a chem lab; so there isn't really any class like this offered at MIT (of couse, Harvard doesn't really offer 5.13 or 5.310 either, and so because MIT splits them into two classes they're taught really differently). Twice a week we have an hour and a half of lecture; once a week we have one section (recitation), and one five-hour lab (most MIT lab classes meet twice a week for five hours, and once for a one-hour lecture). This also means I am blessed with the glory of Tuesdays, in which I get up at 7 to bus over to Harvard for a five hour lab, hightail it back to MIT for my attendance-mandatory Japanese class, sit through another hour and a half lecture of 9.00, then bus BACK over to Harvard for Chem 27 section. By Tuesday night I can usually be found limping, battered and bruised, back to Burton-Conner, sometimes with bits of an unknown organic acid in my hair.

Chem 27, if you're wondering, is definitely one of the harder classes on the Harvard spectrum. Exams are pretty close to what I'm used to at MIT, and lectures contain all sorts of gems like the glucosidase inhibitor "deoxynojirimycin". (I remain unconvinced that "deoxynojirimycin" is an actual word. I'm still waiting for the professor to announce, "By the way, you remember that glucosidase inhibitor I told you about the other day? Deoxynojirimycin? I actually just fell asleep on my keyboard when I was writing the lecture slides, so uh, that's not real. Hahaha.")

21F.502, or Japanese 2. A lot harder than Japanese 1. One similarity between MIT and Harvard - languages in college are definitely not like languages in high school. Yeah, they start you off with "domo arigatou" and all the basics, but it's a lot faster paced, and from day one they speak rapid Japanese at you (same as when I took French for one week, and Chinese for one week). We've all sort of gotten used to it now, but on the first day everyone was like, "er, this is Japanese 1, right?"

9.00, or Introduction to Psychology. Professor Gabrieli is not only one of the more interesting lecturers I've had, but I also just started working in his lab this IAP. Rather than your average introduction psych course that sticks mostly to Freud and thinking really hard about your feelings, 9.00 has more of neuroanatomical applications - i.e. in yesterday's lecture, where we discussed the limitations of the lateral geniculate nucleus in visual processing. He also starts every class with a song from his iTunes playlist; today's gem was "You've Got My Attention" by Copeland.

And, there's also my UROP, which I'm doing for credit (as opposed to for pay, or volunteer). I get to write programs for people to look at while they're in the MRI, and sometimes in lecture Professor Gabrieli talks about what I'm working on and I get all excited and My Friend Matt Cohen is all like, "nobody thinks that's cool but you."

Here is something cool, though - the girl who works next to me is Nupur Lala, the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion and star of the documentary Spellbound.

The thing is, they probably should have never told me that she was the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion. Because now anytime she does anything, like ask for programming help, I think to myself, "The 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion just asked for programming help." Or, "The 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion just got up to refill the toner in the printer." Or, "The 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion is TAKING A NAP AT HER COMPUTER." Not only is it a pretty big line to get in your head, a lot of the times I also forget to add in that she was the star of the documentary Spellbound. "I mean, the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion and star of the documentary Spellbound is TAKING A NAP AT HER COMPUTER!!"

Nupur is my hero.

]]> http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/learning/coursework/half_harvard_half_mit.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/learning/coursework/half_harvard_half_mit.shtml Coursework Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:36:59 -0500 Jess K. '10