---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Emma
Subject: BEST DESK CALL EVER
To: bmf

me: hello, Bexley Desk
guy: hi, is this MIT?
me: this is a dorm at MIT.
guy: can you connect me to the science department?
me: this is a dorm, I don't really know how to do that. MIT has multiple science departments, so you'd need to call the main number and be more specific.
guy: well, i was calling to settle a bet between me and my stepdaughter. We wanted to know if the moon is a planet or not.
me: well, the moon is a satellite of the planet earth, not a planet itself. it's a natural satellite.
guy: are you an MIT student?
me: yes.
guy: ok thanks. well, you just cost me money.

The Brass Rat is MIT's class ring, which is earned at the end of sophomore year but premiered early during spring semester. It's one of the most recognizable rings in the world, based on shape and the prominent beaver on its bezel, but the specific details of each class's Rat are chosen by a Ring Committee, or "RingComm," a group of 12 people chosen at the end of freshman year to represent the class in designing the class ring (and plan Ring Delivery, but first things first).

There's an extensive entry on Wikipedia; I would link to all the entries about the Brass Rat and Premiere/Delivery, but I think I'm just going to tell you to go here instead and start reading. Back when she was at MIT, Mitra '07 was a member of her class's RingComm. It's all kind of a big deal around these parts, and wouldn't you know, it happens to be the start of our sophomore spring semester...

That said, these fools and I make up the 2012 RingComm.

We have been seeing each other a lot, lately.

We haven't really slept much.

We've kind of been obsessed with other peoples' Brass Rats. ("Wait, Alice, can I try on your ring? I'm deciding which size bezel I want. Geez, the 2011 rings are uggg... oh, come onnn, I was just trying it on.")

... And we're really excited for tomorrow. Because tomorrow is the Class of 2012's Ring Premiere, and we'll be premiering the final product of 10 months of work-- the best Brass Rat MIT has ever seen.

OUR Brass Rat.

I AM SO EXCITED EXCLAMATION POINTS CANNOT DO IT JUSTICE.
http://twentytwelve.mit.edu/ring/

IAP is a wonderful, wonderful time. While all my hometown friends are back at school and already a week into their second semesters, I’m cooling my heels wondering if I should bake a batch of cookies tonight or wait until tomorrow when more people get back to the house. Last year, I did nothing but eat, hang out with my suite (+ friends) in Burton Conner, work a few hours at night calling alumni and asking for money, and hang out some more with the 254 (Burton Conner suites are all numbered, so the rooms in a suite will be 254A-254E, in our case.). And made snowmen in the moat of the chapel. We celebrated my birthday/inauguration day for 4 or 5 nights in a row, and one of my roommates' birthday stretched out over a week earlier in the month. It was epic- some of the Bluth family’s better parties. You can do these sorts of things when you don’t have real school for a month.

I kid you not, though; I basically did nothing else for like, 3 weeks. It was wonderful.

(Proof. I think all of us in this picture might be wearing sweats.)

(Why yes, that would be live Mario Kart in the halls of Burton Conner, and why yes, that would be my now-roommate and bad-ass former blog star that I’m pushing.)

This was not exactly the most productive use of my time, though (despite the fact that it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had), so this IAP I figured I need to actually do something constructive. Those of you in AP Lit, though, should be familiar with the following:

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley.” - Robert Burns, To a Mouse

And so it’s been with my IAP plans so far.

I got back to campus the Tuesday afternoon after New Year's and promptly ran into (almost literally) my big sister (not biological, just to clarify... read the link), Alice '11, who I hadn't seen in 4 months since she abandoned us and went to study abroad at Hong Kong University for the fall semester and then travel across Southeast Asia. nbd. So she and I were planning on taking the aforementioned design class, 2.97, with several other Thetas, which would have been great because it's a group based project class and we all could have worked on the same project. That was a long sentence.

IAP fail, #1, though: So Alice and I are catching up, oh, how was Asia, it's been a while, yeah, 4 months, and all that, and she mentions that basically everyone has decided not to take this class and do other things instead, save for a few very artsy people we know. Now, I'm the antithesis of artsy- I think I peaked at 7 when I won a first grade drawing contest- so now I'm a little worried about this class. We weigh the pros and cons, I decide that, you know what, I should probably spend that time on my UROP anyways, and I decide to drop the class, too.

So I go and unpack, get a hold of MY little sister, Srav '13, and make dinner plans with the two of us and Alice.

Problem, though, which leads us to IAP fail, #2: I have my first PE step class at 6. Don't laugh- I need 4 more PE credits (which translates to 2 more classes, for those of you wondering), and my other option was Latin Dance, or something equally unappealing to someone with two left feet.

The three of us decide to visit The Friendly Toast, an awesome breakfast place (that's apparently equally good for dinner) over near Kendall Square (from West Campus, where we all live, that's a 10-15 minute walk).

But by awesome, I mean ohmygod good. I order french toast for breakfast basically no matter where I go, and The Friendly Toast's, go figure, is some of the best, though not quite as good as Toscanini's or Trident's. Much better (and cheaper) than Sunny's, another popular breakfast place among the MIT crowd.

Anyways, I can write a whole entry on french toast in the greater Boston area some other time, though. The point is that, despite our best efforts, we meet up and head over to TFT too late, and breakfast can only be cooked and consumed so fast, so by the time I got back to the house and was running out the door with my shoes untied, it was already 6:08 and I had lost my spot in the class.

So within 6 hours of being on campus, I had eliminated 2 of the reasons I had for coming back.

But you know what? That's what IAP is for, and that's why IAP is so great. You don't HAVE to take classes, or even be back at MIT- more friends than I can count are just chilling at home, or traveling, or visiting family abroad. This place is tough enough during the semester that IAP is perfect- 2 weeks in December wouldn't be nearly enough to unwind, but 6 weeks is enough to get people excited for classes to start up again. And if you just want to work on a UROP, like me, you can, without worrying about classes or clubs or the like.

Now if you'll excuse me, though, I have people to hang out with and some cookies to bake.

Have no fear, though! Because here is what you should do this week in 3 easy steps (results not guaranteed, though they turned out alright for me):

1) Finish (or start…) your essays/"short written responses"/whatever they’re calling them these days- This sounds like common sense, but considering I wrote my entire main essay for UChicago the night it was due, I figure a few of you might need this reminder. You need to actually do the essays first before you can edit them. Just throwing that one out there.

2) Pretend you’re not you- This sounds counterintuitive, I know, especially because you’ve just spent hours crafting essays that perfectly depict who you are. The thing is, after all this, you really, really know yourself, to the point that if you keep reading over your own essays, you’ll just fill in the gaps of information that someone else might need to make sense of the essay. Like, you might know that your brother is only a year younger than you, but if you reference your baby brother’s first girlfriend or something you might need to clarify a bit.

So this is knowing yourself business is no longer super helpful. Ideally, you have someone else who doesn’t mind reading over multiple drafts of your essays to do this for you, but it doesn’t hurt to do it yourself, too. Take a step back, and while reading your essay, try to answer the question: If I didn’t know myself, what would I think of the person writing this essay? If that person isn’t the part of you that you were trying to get across, then you need to fix something. If you don’t like the person who came across but it was an honest essay… you have larger problems that it is not in my job description to deal with.

3) Read over your entire application as the you-who-isn’t-you-from-number-2- What does it say about you? Does each part contribute to the bigger picture of you that you’re trying to get across? Would you want to admit yourself? Do you have typos? Did you spell your name right? (true story: I almost submitted my Common App as Shanon).

The best analogy that I’ve ever heard regarding college apps is this: your college application should read like a story, with each part building upon the next. You don’t want it to get repetitive, but it should have some organic unity and a few general themes running through it. Remember that your application is your only voice to the admissions officers—make that voice count. Your teachers and interviewer will vouch for you, but your application is your only real chance to speak to the admissions officers and tell them who you are, what’s important to you, what your dreams are. Don’t blow it off and assume you’ll get in anywhere because you have a 2400. It doesn’t work like that.

… And that’s that. At this point, you can’t change the grades you’ve earned or the scores you got. All you can do is put your best foot forward and hope for the best—things have a crazy habit of working out in the end in world of college admissions.

So when you wrap up your applications and hit submit, just breathe. It’ll all be ok.

And puppies make everything better!

(The older younger brother and my actual puppy. This is what I'm missing at home).

So a few weeks ago, I was heading over to my sorority house to study one Friday night when I ran into a couple of my sisters.

Them: Where are you going?
me: Back to the house… to study….
Them: False. You’re coming with us. We haven’t seen you all week.
me: I mean… okay.

I am not a hard sell on the let’s-do-something-besides-work front.

Anyways, the problem with this is that I am literally in a pair of free Crocs I got at Notre Dame one time, powder blue men’s basketball shorts, and a navy BoSox hat with my usual black North Face. (No, I do not usually go out in public like this. It was a bad week.) Needless to say, I am not about to walk around Boston in this outfit, so I borrow one person’s jeans and get a shirt from someone else and we’re on our merry way.

… and in true MIT fashion, come home a few hours later and camp out in the basement of our house to work.

This is not the point of the story, though. The point is that a week or so later, I get the following text from my friend Sarah.

Sarah: hey, do you still have my genes? could I get them back sometime?
me: i mean, I have like 99.99% of your genes…
Sarah: crap. i definitely did not even catch that. i meant jeans.

So I give her hard time and promise to drop off the pants at Baker when I get a chance.

Fast forward to last night, when the nerdiest, most MIT text exchange I have ever had occurs. And this is why I love MIT.

Sarah: Genes?
me: crap, I keep falling asleep before I make it back to baker. Will return your genes later tonight… oo la la.
Sarah: can I have a copy of reverse transcriptase with that too? I would like to make some cdna… you can be my virus lol
me: I’ll do what I can, but remember that you’ll need some dna helicase to unzip these genes.
Sarah: as long as you bring ligase… its getting hot in here and something needs to piece me back together.
me: no worries, I’m on it. I’ll even bring some primer over to get things started.
me: and while this might be the weirdest conversation I have ever had, the good news is that you totally sound ready for 7.013. and I do have your jeans.

And yes, this is a conversation between two sorority sisters… only at MIT.

But that’s old news to me, because it seriously feels like I was a senior a decade ago. I was burning time on facebook the other day going through high school pictures and was like, “wow, that was not a good hair d- was that just last year? THAT WAS LAST YEAR?” And I suddenly felt very old.

To add to this, I have to declare a major by April 17th. Yes, that means that while you’re all on campus not sleeping and eating more sugar than you’ve consumed ever and figuring out how you will fit your 7 free t-shirts back into your luggage post-CPW, I will be declaring what I tentatively want to do with my life.

This is terrifying. I have ~54% no idea what I want to with my life. Last week, I pretended I was a mechanical engineer, and it was pretty fun, but then I realized I didn’t actually want to engineer things forever. I was course 7 and 18 for about two weeks at the beginning of this year until MIT was like, “yo, Shannon, math is hard” and was like “whoa, you are definitely right” and promptly retreated from uber-1337 18.022 to the nice, cozy mathiness of 18.02. Currently, I’m telling people that I’m course 5, and I’m kind of liking it. It’s like dress up. Only… with… your life.

And this is where you come in. Decide my fate! Vote what major Shannon should choose next week when she meets with her advisor!

THE CONTENDERS:

Course 2 (Mechanical Engineering)- So I’m in this class called “Wheelchair Design in Developing Countries,” which is incredible. I’m currently part of a team that’s working on a tricycle attachment for wheelchairs that will allow wheelchair users in Kenya (our current market) to travel the long distances (30 km, in some cases!) to work, a task made difficult by non-handicap accessible public transportation and current wheelchair designs. ANYWAYS. I really like getting my hands dirty and designing things. It’s pretty cool to look at a design and be like, “I made that. And it will change someone’s life.”

Like Fatuma, one of our partners in Uganda who came to visit and give us feedback on our designs:

My thoughts on majoring in MechE is that I would likely use it for biology or international development.

Course 5 (Chemistry)- My major du jour. I’m really enjoying being a pretend chemistry major. I LOVE 5.12, and I really like learning about biology from a chemical standpoint. I also took 5.112 in the fall, the hardest version of freshmen chemistry- it’s recommended for students with an “exceptionally strong background in chemistry,” which did not describe me AT ALL. But I was all “hey, I want a challenge, BRING IT.” And it did bring it. I quite literally failed the first exam (the ranges were A, B, C, Cause for Concern, and In Trouble, and yours truly made the honorable last category), but I was actually doing really well by the end and ended up learning a ton from the class. Best and worst decision I have made at MIT.

ANYWAYS.

I like chemistry, which is funny, because I abhorred chem in high school. However, these shirts alone might just be enough to sway me 5. AND we get them for free when we declare.

Course 7 (Biology)- I came in as a hard-core Biology major. And when I mean hardcore, I mean there-is-no-way-I-will-ever-consider-anything-else hardcore. I had done Bio research in high school, had done the USABO, the whole works. It was my thing. As in, this was my response to the “what major do you want to be?” question:

I blame my love of biology on my feet.

Looking for something “alive, or that had been living” around my house, my 1st grade self sat down, peeled some dead skin off my foot, and brought it into school the next day to look at under a microscope. Watching my very own cells come into focus, I fell in love with a world outside my field of view.

A first grade amazement turned into a middle school obsession with enzymes, and by high school had morphed into an interest so deep that introductory college textbooks were far too broad for my interests. I began pouring through research journals and found myself happily studying transcription factors the summer after junior year, once working in lab everyday for over 4 weeks straight. I’d wake up every morning excited to leave my dorm, and would come home to argue the merits of biology versus chemistry with my dorm mates and sit in the lounge until late at night reading the latest scientific literature.

I’ve been a Course 7 major since the age of 6- who said young love never lasts?

Hardcore. I told you. Realistically, I still want to do bio research after I graduate- which path I want to take to that is an entirely different matter. (hence the having 5 options for my potential major)

Course 10B (Chemical Engineering with biology)- Like 5, only more engineering and biology- this is looking like a good way to potentially mesh the two.

Course 20 (Biological Engineering)- Now, this seems like the logical choice given all the above, but freshmen can’t actually declare course 20- you have to apply sophomore year, and acceptance to the program is based on your completion of the prereqs to that point. But we’ll include this in the voting, because if I’m going to go course 20, I should know sooner than later.

Alright, so here’s the ballot. Feel free to add your comments and/or lobby for your choice of major in the comments. If you offer to bring me cookies at CPW, I may or may not lend more credence to your vote*.

*Emphasis on the may not.

And in officially less than 4 days (OHMYGODDECISIONZ), over a 1000 of you will be right there with year-ago-me. Yay, you now know where you're going to college (MIT, clearly), your teachers have given up on trying to make you work, and life is good.

But in the meantime, you probably want to do anything but work, so that is why I propose the following: an MIT Admissions Blogs wide game of Funny Farm.

It is pretty much impossible to solve this by yourself, though I wouldn't put it past an MIT applicant to actually be able to do it. The game is pretty self-explanatory: you start with the phrase "On A Farm," which is connected to a bunch of boxes. Those connecting lines indicate that the general idea of the connected box is along the lines of the original, and the number of dots is the number of letters in the word. Okay, in case I'm not making sense, here's the game with a couple of solutions in it:

Following? Okay, the clincher here is you can actually save the game AND just post the link they give you anywhere. Meaning, we can all work on this together and keep posting what progress we've made on the game in the comments. Even better, you can actually merge games, too, so if someone posts a new link you can just add their answers to the game you're working on.

So have at it, MIT applicants. Here's the link to the game I just started above. :)

from: Shannon
to: Theta
date: Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 8:10 AM
subject: Snow snow snow.

So I'm from West Michigan, which gets some of the most snow in the US, right? Our standards for getting school off were really high- and even WE would have had a snow day today. Current tally:

OFF- BU, Northeastern, Berklee, Tufts
DELAYED- BC, the Harv
BUSINESS AS USH: MIT

fml.

View from my window onto a main thoroughfare this morning when I woke up at 7:30:

I am seriously going to drown in snow on my way to class. If I never post again, you now know why.

EDIT1, 8:37am: Burton Conner's fire alarm just went off. Seriously, now.

EDIT2, 9:09am: http://wbztv.com/schoolclosings#College Really?

But without further ado, let's roll out the red carpet for our first 3 respondents.

We start with Narce '13, a proud 13-er (one of the 13(37)? okay, bad joke.) who may or may not like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain, I didn't ask. He maintains that he is in fact NOT making a peace sign, but, and I quote, "as an otaku, that can only be 'V for Victory!'"

The acute observer will note the Class of 2013 poster in the background and fantastically nerdy t-shirt, an excellent choice of attire. Kudos, Narce.

Next up is Nathan '13 of Ponte Vedra, FL, who is actually one of my neighbors' cousins. We've never met. We actually just found this out. Fun fact.

Anyways, Nathan goes for inquisitive look. Nathan, keep practicing. You will be making this face a lot next year at psets.

And finally we come to Sheila '13 of Connecticut, who opts for separate pictures of the tube and card. Probably because they came at different times, but we'll pretend that artistic emphasis was the goal. Clearly.

So send me your pictures and I'll keep adding them to the post! Happy Valentine's Day from MIT!

EDIT:

Oh, but wait! There's more!

First off in round two, we have Richard '13 from Brawley, CA, and "if you don't know where that is, it's ok (99.9999% of the population doesn't)." I didn't. I had to look it up on a map. I also tend to know nothing about geography west of Wisconsin, though.

Also, please note that his beaver says Tim. That is awesome.

Next up is Paula '13 from Coconut Creek, FL, wearing yet another awesomely-nerdy-shirt-from-the-COOP-that-I-wish-I-owned.

And finally we have Maria '13 from Cleveland, OH (where I actually lived for a year or so, fun fact) sporting the classic tube-card-card pose. Solid choice.

Alright, guys, unless you get me a picture in the next 34 minutes, you have missed your chance for a moment of fame on the MITty blogs. Hope you had a great Valentine's Day!

EDIT #2:

Okay, Alex '13 brought up a good point in that it'll be Valentine's Day for three hours longer in California than Boston in the EST. So I'm not really being fair in cutting off your picture submits. So just keeping sending them. It's not like I'll be asleep.

So speaking of Alex, he's from Colton, California (I know where that is! yay Google maps.) and will likely be in for a surprise this time next year. Surprise! Boston is cold. Sorry to spoil it for you.

And Happy Valentine's Day, again. Let's see who can be the last person to get their picture in before Valentine's Day officially ends. A contest to be last. That should be a new one for you guys.

First, and most importantly: BEN FOLDS IS COMING TO MIT.

So every year we have this thing called Spring Weekend (the link is to last year's site), which this year falls around Drop Date, the last day to drop classes and have them disappear from your transcript (April 23); AXO Lip Sync, which Snively has blogged about (April 24, and formally Alpha Chi Omega, by the dubs, shortened to A Chi O); and Greek Week, which is this week long celebration of Greek life on campus, which is kind of a big deal- last I checked, 50% of men are in frats, and a little less than 25% of women are in sororities (April 26 through May 2, in case you were curious). Paul, Chris, and I are all Greek, but that is an entirely different topic.

What's most important, is that right there in the middle of all that awesomeness is the awesomeness that is Ben Folds on April 25. Christmas come 8 months early. Literally. I am so exited beyond belief right now.

But okay, so that was exciting news today on campus, but, you know, Ben Folds only got the thumbs up from 70% of the student population, no big deal. Today being the day before Valentine's Day meant that the different a cappella groups on campus (plus the fabulous, never imitated, very charismatic and definitely shameless marching band) were all selling serenades- for a mere 10 to 20 dollars, you could chose from a list of songs and have them sung to your sweet heart/friend/sorority sister you really wanted to embarrass (uh...) in the middle of class.

By far the most adorable of the groups doing this, though, was the Logs (short for Logarhythms), who are our all-male a cappella group and kind of the heart throb of more than one female I know.

To get a taste of this, here's them at our CPW closing ceremonies last year, though the quality is kind of eh. If you really need to procrastinate, just youtube "MIT Logarhythms" and you can lose a few hours of your life.

So in the middle of our 18.03 (Differential equations) lecture, a bunch of guys in shirts and ties ran into 10-250, yelled out a girl's name, and went running up to serenade her. To give you some sense of how middle of everything this was, here's the end of the song and them literally just running past our very bewildered professor.

And the song they sang to her, as sung at their concert back in December.

They're pretty awesome.

What's ALSO awesome (oh, slick transition WHAT) are the Valentine's Day cards we sent you kids earlier this week. So. Following last year's tradition, send me an email with a picture of you and your card (and tubes and Holiday cards, if you're feeling particularly awesome) and I'll put all of them up tomorrow in an awesome collage. It'll be awesome.

And before I use the word awesome again, I should probably end this entry. Alright. GO EMAIL GO.