Apr 30 2013

Random Ceiling Tiles

Posted in: Miscellaneous, Life & Culture

Some of you have to make a decision to come here (or not) by 23:59 tomorrow. If you're on the fence, I have one small bid to make you fall in love. I came to MIT for the people here. I've had wonderful experiences with my professors and friends, but I found a home and a second family in Random Hall. Each dorm at MIT has a personality, and I think ours is at least partly captured in our ceiling tiles. Below are the ceiling tiles in the seven of eight floors that have colorful ceilings, separated by floor.

I also wrote you a blog post a year ago. What I said there was true a year ago and it is equally true now. Specifically, I want to share this part:

I hope you choose MIT, obviously. This place is amazing. If you got in, it’s because you can handle it, and because you’re the kind of person who might love it. Life moves fast here: there are many more opportunities—for fun, for work, or both—than you have time for, even if you don’t sleep. But whether you choose MIT or not, own... read the post »

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Apr 27 2013

Hope for the Axolotl: On the Amphibian Extinction Crisis

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Today is the fifth annual Save The Frogs Day, a day to spread awareness about the amphibian extinction crisis. When I was in high school I used to spend this day at my little brother's elementary school with my pet frogs and a powerpoint presentation. This year I'm sharing with you an essay I wrote two years ago. Some research has happened since then, and I encourage you to Google and PubMed for updates (and please post what you found in the comments for the rest of us to see). I hope you enjoy and I hope you learn something new.

One of the strangest, most opportune gifts I've gotten was a small plastic aquarium, from one of my best friends, on my sixth birthday. Misha had scrawled his name on the card, but you could tell it was one of those disappointing educational gifts that was actually picked out by the parents.

I found it almost a year later in my closet, full of beads and wrapped in a pink feather boa. In a bout of the haphazard enthusiasm characteristic of that age, I... read the post »

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Apr 13 2013

Fantasy Feast

Posted in: Miscellaneous, Visit, Life & Culture

Yesterday evening Random Hall residents prepared a CPW fantasy feast. Below are some of my beautiful costumed friends and some of the food they prepared, photographed by the amazing YQ ‘16.

The foods highlighted in the six photos immediately below are apple swans, treacle tart, almond honey cake, deviled eggs, onigiri, and pork stew. The strawberry kiwi punch is HP potion. The blue Hawaiian punch is mana.

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Apr 11 2013

CPW at Random Hall!

Posted in: Visit, Life & Culture

Freshly minted prefrosh! Three years ago I was in your comparatively less soggy shoes, battling a CPW-long downpour over and under rooftops without my future dark green double-canopy umbrella. I got lost in the Infinite Corridor. I used a power drill. I got my arm signed by Chris M. '12. I even did my differential equations homework in close proximity to real MIT students doing their own differential equations homework. Very exciting.

My advice to you—
If you brought homework, don’t do it. Meet people. Visit every dorm. Talk to fellow incoming freshmen and talk to upperclassmen. Don’t watch fun from a corner like I sometimes did. Finally, Random Hall has a step at the entrance. Don’t trip over it.

Tomorrow you should come to Meet the Bloggers so that you can meet us, the bloggers, and you should also come to Random Hall so that you can meet us, the Randomites. Next fall you might find yourself wanting to be a Randomite (or an honorary Randomite), too.

Also, someone who... read the post »

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Mar 12 2013

Admissions Decisions and Mystery Hunt

Posted in: Miscellaneous, Freshman Applicants, Life & Culture

Two years and 363 days ago I was on a plane home from Tenerife, two days after my eighteenth birthday and a few hours after MIT decisions were released. On the drive home I considered calling someone to check my decision for me and I might have hunted for wifi at intersections. When we got home I brought some luggage in to delay the inevitable, or maybe I didn’t, carried my laptop up to my room, checked either my MIT or Caltech decision, ran downstairs to tell my parents I got in, ran back upstairs, ran back downstairs to tell them I got in to the other. The feeling was relief and triumph, like when you find your phone in the washer and it still works. I felt that I had passed a crossroads.

For about six years MIT was my dream. I’d never been to MIT and my only link to MIT was the blogs, but I knew that if I got into MIT I would be happy, and I knew that if I got into MIT I would be the person I wanted to be.

That’s not true. Happiness is not a place.

In the following months I... read the post »

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