...but I'm not the one being affected here. What are your thoughts?

(Oh man I love otters so much)

So, let's take a look at the schedule of a first-semester senior with two classes and a swim test* left between her and graduation:

9.15 - Biochemistry and Pharmacology of Synaptic Transmission. This is the last of my six Course 9 elective classes, and it's looking to be one of the best. Twice a week, Richard Wurtman stands in front of 40 students and talks about neurotransmitters and drugs for 90 minutes. He does not use any notes. I have been trying to figure out how any one man can have that much information in his head. (Please send any hypotheses you may have to keri-lee at mit dot edu. I'm dying to know.)

9.71 - Functional MRI of High-Level Vision. Remember when I was a TA for a neuroscience class this summer at nerd camp? With these guys? We spent some time in class talking about neuroimaging studies and their uses in localization of brain function. Most of those talks were in relation to the fusiform face area (FFA), which responds selectively to faces over objects presented in the visual field, and Nancy Kanwisher, who has taken part in many elegantly designed neuroimaging studies and co-authored just about every neuroimaging paper that isn't a gigantic pile of crap.

Yeah, so she's teaching this class.

My thoughts when I walked into the room were as follows:
1) HOLY CRAP YOU ARE A VERY IMPORTANT PERSON I AM INTIMIDATED BY YOU
2) HOLY CRAP THAT IS A GOLDEN RETRIEVER SITTING ON THE FLOOR OF THE CLASSROOM
3) HOLY CRAP I AM TOTALLY SITTING NEXT TO YOUR DOG

After sitting and actually listening to her for two classes, I concluded that Nancy Kanwisher is my new favorite person ever. Her discussions are really interesting, and she consistently brings up points that make or break neuroimaging studies.

7.342 - The X in Sex: A Genetic, Medical, and Evolutionary View of the X Chromosome. An advanced 6-unit seminar class in the Biology department being run by a postdoc at the Whitehead Institute, 7.342 assigns two papers a week on some aspect of the X chromosome and its role in biology - in the first few weeks, we've discussed the multiple causes of sex reversal, the discovery of X-linked traits and sex-specific areas on the X chromosome. it's a super small group that meets once a week for two hours, so we actually get to talk in depth about the papers we read for the week and what each of us got out of them. I wish the Biology department would promote these classes more and start doing so earlier, since so many people are eligible to enroll in them (juniors and seniors who have taken at least one class beyond Introductory Bio can sign up), but if they did, there'd be too many people for the discussions to work as nicely as they do now.

4.343 - Photography and Related Media. This is a grad class, which I'm taking because I took the undergrad-level class last fall and I am running out of photography classes to take for credit. We take pictures using digital and film cameras and go through workshops on printing, lighting, and other aspects of photography, all the while working towards a final term project.

If you're interested in photography classes at MIT, Biyeun from the ARTalk blog has written quite a few posts on it, which you can check out here, here, and here.

On that note, I'm also taking a color photography class through the Student Art Association. The class rocks so far, and I've managed to successfully not spill hot toxic developer all over myself yet. (Progress!) The SAA has amazing classes and studios for all sorts of different artistic endeavors - ceramics, sculpture, drawing, painting, all that - and I've always had too much on my plate to do anything with them, but not anymore because I'M ALMOST DONE WITH MIT. YEAHHHHHHH. The class meets on Monday nights, though, which means I had to drop a class I've been trying to take for two years:

21W.763/CMS.309 - Transmedia Storytelling: Modern Science Fiction. Admittedly, I was mainly interested in this class because of the instructor. I worked with Beth Coleman at WMBR for over a year as an engineer for her radio show; she's a sound artist, DJ, and a pretty swell lady. The class was nothing like what I'd expected - there's some science fiction writing at the start of the term, but the class is mainly using that as a jumping point for the creation of an augmented reality game (ARG) in a style influenced by I Love Bees. This is completely unlike anything I've ever done, and it's wayyyy out of my comfort zone, and it's exactly why I was psyched about the class after the first meeting. Anyway, now I can't take it because COME ON, COLOR DEVELOPING AND PRINTING.

When I'm not in classes or trying to have a life, I spend about a million hours each week working desk. Welcome to Senior House. I let you in. I sort your mail. I offer up your daily dose of snark.

It's a rockin' good time, y'all.

*No, I haven't taken my swim test yet. Yes, I've known how to swim since I was 3. I was scheduled to take it my freshman year at 11:30 on a Monday morning, which was too early for me then and is too early for me now. I'll take it soon, I swear.

What made this different from all the other days when I carry my camera around all day and take awkward pictures of my friends and everything around me is that hundreds of other people on campus were doing the same thing with the same purpose: to take part in A Day In The Life, a project open to the entire MIT community sponsored by Technique, MIT's yearbook and photography club. Students, faculty, and staff alike have been uploading their photos to the website, which Technique describes as a "collective photo blog" and which allows you to view timelines of multiple people's photos at once.

Over 120 people have collectively uploaded thousands of pictures of their days so far, and it's really interesting to see not just what people do over the course of a typical day, but also how they choose to frame that. The project made me notice the things around me all the time that I never really stopped to look at.

Like eating lunch in Stata, where seats fill up around noon and everyone moves quickly all the time.

Or the pattern of the splatter paint on the walls of my room, which I stopped noticing about two weeks after I did it.

It also gave me the opportunity to take a million pictures of the disastrous construction zone all the way down Amherst Street to the corner of Ames and Amherst (also known as WHERE I LIVE. RAWR.), because my parents do not believe me when I tell them how ridiculous it looks. The stairs to Senior House were cordoned off for over a month. Everyone was using the handicapped ramp. Delivery guys and taxi drivers keep trying to turn the wrong way down what was once a two-way street and not understanding why pedestrians and the drivers of oncoming cars keep giving them the finger.

Anyway, Check out ADITL. It's made of awesome.

...all right, that statement's also a lie. There are some things about that bio that are immutable; my birthplace will never not be Jamaica, and my love for pie is still only surpassed by my love for bacon and Arrested Development.

I've now seen more snow than I ever cared to see in my life; by that token, you can tell that I'm certainly not new here anymore. (In case the last three years of blogging and my recent distress over becoming a senior didn't clue you into that.) My old bio is also a testament to my former desire to earn a degree in Chemistry (HAHAHAHAHA) and spend my life playing with brains, blowing stuff up, and curing cancer. My goals have clearly shifted quite a bit. This is partially due to a year of research, during which I learned - among other worthwhile things - that ampicillin-resistant bacteria will not grow in a kanamycin-containing medium and that spending excessive amounts of time with petri dishes full of bacterial colonies makes me want to shoot myself in the face. (Speaking of my UROP, I was explaining the O'Connor Lab's work to my friend Adrian earlier today, though, and I was shocked when I realized that I could actually do so without sounding like an idiot. Who knew?)

I'll elaborate upon my new life plan in an upcoming post. Hint: it's teaching.

"So what, you went to MIT so you could teach?" you may ask. Of course not. I came here so I could learn (Hey! See what I did there?), and I think that's been working out pretty well. No one should be expected to skip off to college with a definitive plan for their lives at an age where they're barely trusted with adult privileges and responsibilities. At the very least, no one should have to be locked into whatever plans they may have; I had an awesome, well-thought-out plan, and look how that turned out.

Anyway, this all means it's about time for a new bio.

There are people at this school who are exceptional at everything they do: they get all As, cure diseases, bake amazing cookies for their friends all the time, and manage to look awesome every day when they show up (on time!) for class in the morning.

I am not one of those people.

My name is Keri Garel, class of 2010, and my life at MIT is not what you would expect. I fall up flights of stairs only just more frequently than I fall down them (which is often). I should really cut down on the amount of bacon I eat, lest I have a heart attack at age 30. I am known for making obscene faces in photographs on the rare occasion when I am in front of the camera instead of wielding it, and I will attempt to write the next paragraph without including the word "I," to compensate for its overuse in this one.

In my homeland, snow is only a myth. My fanatical, creepy-as-all-get-out love for brains means that people never fail to remember my major. The number of Sonic Youth albums in my music collection is a little ridiculous. My dorm is better than yours.

I love music, art, photography, dance, and theater. I'm still not quite sure why I go to a school for science and engineering, but I'm in good company here. ("Do you even go to this school?" "No, I just have a lot of feelings.") The future is terrifying, but if you don't ask me about it, then we won't discuss it. Deal? Deal.

My Neuroscience class had 17 students who are pretty much the best people ever. (Don't argue. I'm right.) I have fantastic evidence to back up my argument, too.

There's a video on CollegeHumor of some students playing mattress dominoes, which involves... well, you'll see it. My class made their own version of the video last week when I was away from the floor for approximately two seconds, and it's pretty great.

That's all I've got for you today. Back to the living and the learning and all that.

An Act of God, in this case, refers to one hell of a lightning storm in Fort Lauderdale, closing the runway for an extended period of time, causing my 6 AM flight to leave an hour late, and leading me to miss my connection to Chicago O'Hare by approximately two seconds. My luck in airports is notoriously crappy.

To celebrate, I went to pee - I'd been holding it during an all-out sprint across the terminal to, you know, not miss that connecting flight that I missed.

This post has nothing to do with the above.

I have been spending too much time on the 2013 Facebook group, which I knew would happen. (I'll leave you all alone soon, I promise - I've had nothing to do for the last two weeks, but that ends today when I start training for teachin' the kids IF I EVER GET TO CHICAGO RAWR RAWR RAWR.) There's a discussion topic called "Advice for Freshman," which is notable because of two things:

The latter point and everything related to it may confuse the living daylights out of you, but it's really not a problem, which I'll explain in a second. By now, you've heard that you should take 7.013 in the spring when the class is larger, unless you want to take 7.012 with the great and all-powerful Eric Lander, unless you want to take 7.014 because you're a huge fan of ecology and think that genetics can suck it, unless you want to pretend that biology doesn't exist for a semester or seven and take it in your last term at MIT. And now you're confused and don't know who's right and whether or not you'll make the right decision, because if you take the wrong biology class, you won't pass, you won't graduate, you won't get a job, no woman will ever love you, and you'll find yourself living in a cardboard box underneath the Longfellow Bridge.

And let's not even talk about 8.02, because physics is made of evil and you definitely won't pass that as a freshman.

....Oh, I'm sorry. Was that all a huge lie? I really should quit with the sarcasm over the Internets. It clogs the tubes and the point doesn't always get across.

By the way, all of the Introductory Biology classes cover genetics. You won't get out of it just by taking 7.014.

Sure, upperclassmen all over the place have been telling you that the classes are difficult. Sure, we all advise you to do different things, making it hard for you to decide which path to take. The good thing about having us around is that it informs you of the options you have, at which point you can decide what's best for you.

I know you're all getting a ton of stuff thrown at you now that you'll have to deal with in two months, but it's not as terrifying and life-altering as it seems. (Am I repeating myself? Oh hey, I totally am! I'm making an important point here!)

Or, to quote my post in the discussion yesterday:

"The only reason we all keep saying that MIT is hard is because it is. We know that many of you are coming in here after years of being told that you were the smartest, most amazing kid ever ever ever, and that a lot of what you've done so far may have come easily. We've been there, and we know it's a bit of a shock when you fail your first test and you can't answer half the questions on your first pset. All we're trying to say is that you're not alone - there are three thousand(ish) upperclassmen who have been in exactly the same position, and there are a thousand other people in your class who are experiencing the same thing that you are. As long as you realize that you don't have to (and shouldn't!) do everything alone and that you're in a collaborative rather than a competitive environment, you should be okay."

That's all. I'm getting off my soapbox and I'm going to stop yelling. My voice is getting hoarse, and everyone in the terminal around me is wondering what in blazes I'm shouting about.

I joined the MIT Class of 2013 facebook group.

Sophomores and juniors can attest to the fact that I spent ample amounts of time last summer and the summer before answering questions and debunking myths. But I'm a senior this year, and after three years of this stuff, I should be entitled to a month or two of just not caring whether or not you decide to do Terrascope or a freshman seminar. (Holy crap, I'm a senior. When did that happen?! Wasn't I posting obnoxious froshy comments on the blogs just two seconds ago?)

I have absolutely nothing better to do, though, so I'll be posting stuff like the points below:

-A four-inch memory foam mattress pad, though pretty damn comfortable, is really not necessary for your bed. In fact, I fear that it may swallow you in the middle of the night in January. You can't really trust anything that retains an imprint of your hand for that long, regardless of what those Tempur-Pedic informercials say.

-Where you are temped for REX is not that important. I ranked Baker first in my housing lottery three years ago (SERIOUSLY THIS CAN'T BE RIGHT I'M NOT OLD ENOUGH FOR THIS), got temped in New House, and after REX I moved to Senior Haus, which I love so much that I've been masochistic enough to run Steer Roast and be Haus president for a year. If you don't like where you're temped, you can move. Unless it's McCormick. Or Spanish House. Or Chocolate City. Or - no, that's it.

-It doesn't matter too much when you take 7.012/3/4/5(?) or which incarnation of the class you decide to take, so long as you pass it and graduate. This does not apply if your major requires it for a ton of classes or if you are really bad at bio, in which case you should take it as soon as possible, as Pass/No Record is kind of your BFF. No, I cannot tell you when I decided to take it, as I got a 5 on the AP Bio exam and got credit for the class. The class of 2010 was the last class for which this was allowed, so I like to rub it in a little bit every now and then.

I wrote a post on freshman scheduling two years ago (OH GOD I HAVE BEEN HERE TOO LONG ALREADY), which has a basic outline that doesn't need to be followed, as you can see in the comments at the end of the post.

-You do not need to bring your own fire extinguisher. Don't laugh. Someone asked this once.

-Yes, I'm this awesome all the time. Thank you. My hair just dries like this.

-That's actually a lie. I'm not very awesome at all. And my hair's a disaster when it dries.

Anyway, I suppose I'll be another one of the eleventy million current students answering questions and countering each other's advice in the Facebook group.

Moving on to more important information: a Japanese manufacturer recently unveiled its latest invention: a robot that cooks you pancakes for breakfast.

This would be the highlight of my life thus far, were it not for the fact that - good news, everyone! - Futurama just got uncanceled!

Better than pancakes: Y/N? Y. Definitely a Y.

And then I woke up this morning and my right hip was bothering me a lot - it's been a recurring issue in for the last couple of years, probably made worse by my inability to remain standing on my feet for more than a nanosecond without falling over them. Anyway, I've been limping around pathetically all day. Woo.

Oh, and I haven't showered since Saturday morning and I've been wearing the same shirt for three days.

But today I got back one of three exams I took last week, and since it is the best grade I've gotten on an exam since my first 5.12 test over two years ago, I stuck it up on my refrigerator with magnets.

I also asked around on my hall for a gold star sticker.

No, I do not think I am taking this too seriously.

Not today, kids. I had an exam yesterday, just got out of another exam, and have yet another one tomorrow morning. Since I'd actually like to write something other than "AGH MONKEYS WHY DO I FAIL AT LIFE," stories about what I've been doing with my life and which flights of stairs I've fallen down this term will just have to wait.

It's not like I'm leaving you out in the cold with nothing to read about, though. (Speaking of, why is it so friggin' cold here right now? Where I come from, we don't have things like cold and snow.) Here's a guest post from Sondy G on MIT's six independent living groups - they've been mentioned on the blogs before, but as none of the current or former bloggers have lived in ILGs, they haven't really been discussed in much detail. Sondy's post changes that, though. Read. Enjoy. I'm off to study for 7.05.

In response to not-so-recent posts by Paul, Snively, and Chris on fraternity life and lack thereof at MIT, here's a post on MIT Independent Living Groups (ILGs), another alternative to dormitory/Greek life. Independent Living Groups are cooperative houses of 20 to 40 MIT students living together, similar to fraternities or sororities. Most ILGs lack national organizations, meaning that most if not all decisions made by an ILG are made by its students and alumni members. Since none of the current bloggers live in ILGs, I'm appreciative of Keri's offer to host this entry. Thanks Keri!

I've visited a few of the other ILGs at MIT and some of their members were so kind as to include information about their houses, but the main focus of this entry will be pika since I live there. Hopefully other representatives of other ILGs will read this entry and can answer questions; if not, I can forward queries along to them. Comment early! Comment often!

Epsilon Theta

David '10 remarks that,

Epsilon Theta is a small and close-knit co-ed fraternity. We live in our beautiful house across from a pleasant public park in Brookline. Epsilon Theta is more than just a residence; it is a community of men and women who live with and depend on each other. One can always find members around the house playing a board game, working together on a pset, or eating a community homecooked meal. A recent pledge compares ET to other living groups stating "We're more awesome."

Fenway House

Fenway is home to 20 MIT students (and cats) in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood.

No. 6 House

Student House

Student house is a co-ed living space located at 111 Bay State, Boston MA--
right in the midst of MIT fraternities, BU dorms, Fenway Park, and Kenmore Square.
Shuttles (Boston Daytime, Boston West) run daily during the year and help many
of our 24 residents get to and from campus.

Though we live in one of the richer parts of Boston, we are actually the
cheapest option for MIT affiliated housing at $370 per month, which includes
dinner most nights. Students are responsible for most aspects of life at the
house, including house government, cooking, house chores, etc.

We've got a great mix of undergrads, exchange students, and a few masters
students this semester, so come check us out!

WILG

pika

the house.

The back porches/firepole/roofdeck


The treehouse (a good place to camp during the summer)

Owning Your Own House

What distinguishes pika from the dorms and Greek groups? First off, we own our house. We don't have a national organization, so our housebills go directly to house upkeep, food (I'll get to that later), paying for our two cats, and buying chocolate for study breaks. As soon as a pikan graduates or moves out of the house, they become a member of Housecorp, a body responsible for our mortgage and decisions regarding the grander physical plant of our 100-some-odd-year-old house in Cambridgeport.

Owning your own house means you can modify it as you see fit. Think that wall needs a mural? Want a rope ladder in your room? Sick of that wall between you and the closet? Bring out the Sawzall... okay, consult with your housemates first; sawing through live wires and plumbing generally is no fun.

Part of owning your own house is maintaining your house. Most other ILGs have some flavor of work periods throughout the year: pika is no different. In the fall we have a major Work Week where we build new parts of the house (roofdecks, lofts, bunkbeds) and thoroughly clean and fix anything else that's been neglected in the last year. We hold a smaller version, Work Weekend, at the beginning of spring semester. Local alumni show up, helping you bend steel with an oxyacetylene blowtorch or clean the kitchen after lunch. Work Week is a great time to get to know you housemates, whether they just moved in or if they've been living there for two years.

After completion of the roofdeck last fall, pikans celebrated with a human pyramid. From left to right: Top: Amber '10. Second row down: Susa '09, Liz '10. Third row: Fucheng G, Jason '10, Amelia '10. Bottom: Emily '10, Eric '10, Brian '08, Mark '08. Photo taken by Alex G

Ian '09.5 pledged pika last November, and while we were excited to have him be a member of the house, we suddenly faced an important question: "How the heck will he get his scooter inside?" Within a month we had a design for a ramp that would wrap around the side of the house, planned out by current residents and an architect alum. In three weeks over IAP, we built an entire ramp for Ian, some days working in subzero temperatures. Fellow pikan Spang '10 has more details on her blog here.

Food, Glorious Food!

Other ILGs have meal plans, ranging from having the kitchen stocked by a student elected to buy groceries to having a hired chef cook meals throughout the week. pika has a meal plan where everyone in the house takes turns cooking or cleaning once a week, ensuring home-cooked meals every night throughout the year. Speaking of preparing food, our kitchen is pretty awesome: a stove with six burners, two ovens, a sink big enough to bathe in, and more flour/cereal/fruit/sugar/rice/butter/milk/spices/whathaveyou than you can shake a stick at. Seriously. Come over and we'll show you how well-stocked the pantry is. (It even has an alarm that squawks at you to shut the door.) We also try to see how many people we can cram around our dining room tables: at last count we were around 20. Video here.

20-something pikans on and around our dining room table

I like pika's meal plan because it doesn't require you to know how to cook! Novice chefs can sign up to clean, buy groceries, or help more knowledgeable geniuses in the kitchen. A lot of people have walked into pika not knowing the difference between a teaspoon and a ladle and walked out being one of the most celebrated chefs in the house. The only drawback is that when you graduate and get a place of your own, it becomes difficult to cook for just one after years of cooking for 30.

Connection to MIT

Being part of MIT means we get our own SafeRide stop. If you're on campus past the last SafeRide run, Campus Police will give you a ride home. Some parents might worry about their son or daughter living so far away from campus and the infrastructure MIT provides. All ILGs are part of the FSILG Cooperative, which helps us pay bills, hire plumbers, pay our mortgages, and keep our houses running. In addition to having bureaucratic support, all ILGs are connected to the MIT network, meaning that we don't have to wrangle with Comcast or Verizon for Internet access. This year, MIT is paying for network upgrades in all of the FSILGs, improving our network connections to campus, in addition to upgrading our phone lines and alarm systems.

MIT also supports a residence advisor (RA) in each FSILG. The RA is effectively our GRT and makes sure that the various students in the ILG are doing well, whether academically or emotionally. The RA also receives money from MIT throughout the year for study breaks and house outings. Our last RA was a magician and regularly put on magic shows for the house as well as the neighborhood. The current RA runs a summer camp and teaches elementary school children during the rest of the year. He's developing a startup and is improving pika's composting system. Awesome!

Rush

Along with setting our own rules and policies, most ILGs have relatively relaxed rush schedules. For example, Epsilon Theta accepts pledges both in the fall and the spring. pika holds rush meetings throughout the year, so people can receive bids in September or July or January or really whenever the house decides we're excited about living with someone. Our bids are pretty unconventional: we give out physical objects to people that reflect the bidee's personality. Chenxia '10 received part of a washing machine that she helped disassemble. James '08, an AeroAstro major, received a little red biplane for his bid but couldn't figure out the best way to tell pika he wanted to move in the next term. Finally it came to him. He snuck into the house one night, hung the plane from the dining room ceiling, and spelled out "I PLEDGE" in flags behind its tail.

Rush is really a great excuse for the house to have fun! Some previous rush events have included making creme brulee with the oxy torch, beach trips, roofdeck campouts, frying pan ping pong, moonlight sailing expeditions, water fights... My personal favorite event in the last year was the Tesla coil made out of a ton of wire and two cake pans:

The Tesla coil, spewing 13,000 volt sparks into our basement (you should have seen the electric bill that month)

Community

The best thing about the ILGs, beyond the tasty food and the awesome digs, is the community that each house embodies. pika has 30 students ranging from sophomores to grad students, in a myriad of majors. I love coming home at night to a living room full of people debating control theory or finding the best way to sail on the Charles in a stockpot. Three-hour musical jam sessions spontaneously break out in the living room. If you need a shoulder to cry on or help differential equations, someone is around to lend an ear or last year's course notes.

People from pika go on to the Peace Corps, graduate school, or consulting gigs. Some start their own companies, volunteer in Africa, or just chainsaw firewood at sunset in an undisclosed location. Your roommate might be TAing the class that you're taking this term, or might be trying to change the way people think about automobiles in the world. Or learning Israeli dance. Or tie-dying t-shirts in the basement all night. Regardless of who you are and what you're doing, pika will accept you as you are, plus improve your cooking skills and handiness with a hammer by the time you graduate.

There's a great sense of pride you get once you've installed your first toilet or slept in a bed that you built. Being responsible for the upkeep of a house is a great life skill and goes along well with MIT's motto of "Menus et Manus" (Mind and Hand). Having practical experience taking care of yourself and your living arrangements is great practice for getting out into the real world after MIT.

For more information on ILGs at MIT, here's David '10's article on ILGs from the Tech and the Student Life website on ILGs.

When you come to campus, be it this spring or August, be sure to check out not only the dorms and Greek houses, but also your friendly neighborhood ILGs. We look forward to meeting you at either CPW or in the fall.

Thanks for reading!

Sondy ('07*... sorta) G

---

*Who is this graduate student and why is she writing about MIT like she knows something about the place? Though I didn't attend MIT as an undergrad, I attended a nearby college and was able to cross-register at MIT for four years. I took seven classes at MIT as an undergrad (ranging from humanities to Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier to Asteroids and Small Bodies), had a UROP to build sailboat tracking devices, lived on campus one summer, and spent a lot of time in various dorms, fraternities, and living groups. Now I'm a second-year graduate student in planetary science (go EAPS!) and I currently live at pika, thanks to the undergraduates who were gracious enough to let me dwell with them. Rock on!

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If the world operated on my sense of time, then the concept of "morning" would be applied to a time no earlier than 2 PM. Unfortunately for me, that will probably never happen. Even more unfortunately, I am a ridiculously heavy sleeper who could slumber through the initiation of a massive nuclear war. And now I somehow have to get up at 7:30 AM five days a week.

(If you are my stepdad, you are probably laughing so hard you just fell out of your chair. He spent four years waking me up at 5 AM for school, which is a truly Herculean task. Consider it retribution. Or payback. Or both.)

I've been taking the 8-9AM hour at desk every weekday morning for the last three weeks, since I'm pretty sure I won't get up in the morning unless I'm being paid to do so. When my alarm clock goes off in the morning and I'm tempted to cross the room and hit snooze, it's like a little voice in my head says, "I'll pay you $9.25 if you get out of bed right now." So far, the voice is compelling enough for me to immediately get up, shower, and dress. It's been working out nicely.

As I'm sure you can all understand, I was thoroughly looking forward to sleeping in last Saturday. I unplugged my alarm and pulled my window shade before going to bed at 3 AM, fully prepared to be knocked out until well into the day.

I woke up without any provocation at 7:15 AM.

Someone up there hates me.

I have been assigned exactly zero problem sets since December of 2007.

I realize that everyone and their grandmother thinks I am a lucky bastard. I hate psets - seriously, I really hate them - so the fact that I've been able to avoid them for so long means that even I belong to that party. I've passed on pset- and exam- heavy classes in favor of those with huge end-of-term papers and projects, hours upon hours of darkroom and Photoshop time, lab reports galore, and hundreds of pages of reading each night. Last semester, I had a total of one midterm and one final.

I find these projects and reading assignments far more conducive to my learning (and far more enjoyable to do) than psets and exams, so it all works out nicely.

This term, however, my luck has finally run out. 7.05, 9.22, 9.59, and 9.65 collectively have six problem sets, four papers, and thirteen exams. I also still have about 60-70 pages of reading per class per night.

As you can see, I got served.

If at any point in the upcoming months you find yourself wondering "Hey, where'd that Keri girl go?", I encourage you to read this post again and think about what I could be doing with my life right then. Don't spend too much time doing that, though. You could be off living your own instead.

I'm off to make myself a sandwich and read about protein folding.