After a lot of searching, I’ve discovered a video on YouTube that is pretty much the perfect metaphor for what MIT has been like for me thus far.

It starts out really exciting! You get accepted, everybody cheers for you, and then they give you all sorts of free stuff as they prepare you for what’s to come. Then, before you know it, blasted in the face by the world’s largest fire hose . . . ever . . . in the world . . . /universe.

Hello, my name is Snively, and I’m about to get hit in the face with a fire hose.

As you may have read, I was selected to be an admissions blogger, but I have to wait for either Laura, Evan, or Jess to move out of Burton Conner. Recognizing my desire to blog a bit before then, Laura rushed to help by giving me a chance to guest blog for her, which is what you’re reading now.

I got to MIT on August 19th and have been living it up! Of all the food I’ve been eating, 78% has been free. Of all the t-shirts I have, 50% were free. That’s not to mention the 2 water bottles, 2 backpacks, 2 rubber ducks, 2 cacti, 2 spiral bound notebooks, paintballing, six flags, seat cushion, and a lot of pens. Unfortunately, there’s an end to all the free, and I think I’m approaching that end. Today there was no free food and there were no free shirts. Instead, there was a realization: This is all about get really hard really fast. I consolidated all of my important due dates for projects next week (the second full week of school) and this is what it looks like:

>> Essay due Tuesday the 18th
>> Chemistry Quiz on Tuesday the 18th
>> Physics PSET due on Wednesday the 19th
>> Math PSET due on Thursday the 20th
>> Quiz, testing memorization of periodic table on Thursday the 20th
>> Math Test on Friday the 21st

This also doesn’t take into account that my UROP starts tomorrow and I have pistol every night from 5 to 7. OK, YOU READY?! OPEN WIDE!

So, like any good MIT student, I’ve decided to punt all this work as far away from now as possible.

(As you may or may not have realized by now, I’m going to make this entry as long as I necessary because it may be the only chance I get to blog for MIT until junior year)

Now, the question stands, what does one do while punting? Well, just for future reference all you prospective class of 2012 freshmen, here’s what I’ve been doing whilst avoiding homework:

Guitar Hero
Blogging
Playing with Balloons
Eating Chinese Food (that wasn’t free)
Cooking bacon (also not free)
Finding art to hang in my room
Figuring out how to get my computer to print to our dorm’s printer (Affectionately named “Stumpgrinder”)
Playing “The Impossible Quiz Two”
Have Pillow Fights

Punting is an art ladies and gentlemen, and I’m proud to admit that it’s not an art I’ve yet mastered, but I’m making progress by leaps and bounds. Hopefully by the end of these four year I will have found a way to not only invent some humanity-saving wonder-[noun], but I will have also enjoyed my time doing it. MIT is about having fun, I still hold true to that, despite my ridiculous week coming up.

To wrap things up, I’d like to have a contest to win one of two completely useless bits of MIT memorabilia. The first is known as an “Athena Header Sheet,” which is printed along with every job you print from an MIT computer. It has my name on it and some graph paper, as well as a nifty logo containing an owl.

This goes to whomever gets first post (make sure you put your e-mail address in the “e-mail” field when leaving your comment so I can get a hold of you).

The next useless bit of MIT memorabilia is a poster drawn by Laura that my roommate and I rescued from an inevitable death-by-trashcan. It depicts an insane freshman and is signed by the author, with a personal message reading “To Snively – Don’t let this be you!”

This goes to whoever can most accurately guess the total cost of my text books, all 6 of them.

Comments (Closed after 30 days to reduce spam)

Did I get first?

Posted by: Hudson A on September 13, 2007

aah..wrth a try...hope hudson didn't fill in his email id!..price...$300??

Posted by: ronald on September 13, 2007

I have so many comments about this post that I'm not even gonna bother until I see you in Chem tomorrow/Laura later tomorrow. By the way, for those of you playing the "Win Laura's Sketchy Crap" game, the answer is >$160.

Posted by: Harrison on September 14, 2007

Around $830 for the textbooks.

Posted by: Claire on September 14, 2007

I am waiting 2 hear some really interestin stuff frm u....this is awesome!!!!!!!!
Go snively~!!!!!!~

Posted by: Aakriti on September 14, 2007

And ur textbooks..hmm...$450-$550??????????????





I won?I won?




THNXXXXXXX

Posted by: Aakriti on September 14, 2007

hmm... maybe $450. My sister got all 4 of her books for only $150, but she is generally lucky with deals(with my luck college will cost me my soul).

Its nice to hear from you, too bad you can't be an MIT blogger sooner.

Posted by: Lotte on September 14, 2007

Er, about the sheet, is there one for far away prospectives ^^' ?
Wow you HAVE to learn the periodic table ? I thought we didn't have to and it's always given in tests ? Well I better start now !

Posted by: Isshak on September 14, 2007

$600??

Posted by: 0 on September 14, 2007

You have to memorise the periodic table???? why??

and $ 1000

Ankit Chandra
Gaborone, Botswana

Posted by: Ankit Chadra on September 14, 2007

$378 for the books (Because 378 = 420 - 42).

Posted by: Vihang on September 14, 2007

judging by second hand book prices at my school you probably shouldn't have paid more then $50 :D which chem class are you taking? i really don't wanna even try to memorize the periodic table :p

Posted by: Sh1fty on September 14, 2007

$680

Posted by: Michael on September 14, 2007

$375?

And yay for Snively-blogging So what's your UROP? Was it you that said you want to work in the Media lab (aka coolest place at MIT)?

Posted by: Star on September 14, 2007

No guess about anything, just a question I wanna know which song have you used as backround music in the baloon video

Posted by: Sanja on September 14, 2007

$720- MIT '12

Posted by: Leko on September 14, 2007

"UHF" pic? nice. that movie rocks

Posted by: Leko on September 14, 2007

@ Sanja

It's a song from the 80's by Nena called "99 Luftballons." Obviously this version is in German, there are english arrangements as well though.

Posted by: Snively on September 14, 2007

Coversheets are aweseom, but learn the lpr -Pprinter2 -h command. Last year there was this renegade group that went around and found coversheets that people left in printers, and then they wrote "DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN PRINT WITHOUT A COVERSHEET? SAVE PAPER!" on them, and then posted them around the infinite corridor. One of mine got posted, which really made me mad because I print out coversheets about 1% of the time, and this was one of the times I legitimately needed one to find my problem set on a high-traffic printer in the middle of the day. Anyway, I just wanted to comment to say that I think whoever made those coversheet posters is stupid.

Posted by: Sam on September 14, 2007

Oh, and I still have this folder from Freshman year that just says ATHENA on the cover, which contains about 120 coversheets. It's from when I was planning to wallpaper my entire room in my own athena coversheets. That was before I learned the -h command.

Posted by: Sam on September 14, 2007

I've been here for three months already, and I have never ever printed something from an Athena cluster. Never. I actually went to a cluster for the first time about two weeks ago. All because...

...I don't know how to print from an Athena cluster.

Now, you might be shocked to know this, considering I took the Athena tutorial thing twice, but computers and I don't get along (that's why I LOVE the simplicity and straight-forwardness of macs! yay enthusiasm! *insert mac vs. PC ad here*).

So! Moral of the story! Um... do what upperclassmen/TA's/profs say and ask for help! Or otherwise you'll be deeply embarrassed by your peers, missing out on the wonderfulness (is that a word?) of coversheets- they're great for graphing stuff!- and not to mention, stuck buying excessive amounts of paper and ink for you handy-dandy printer back in your room (that is, if you have one- I got a free one when I bought my mac). Paying for that out of a ramen-noodle-for-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner budget is an art I've yet to master, and I have a feeling I won't get around to that soon enough.

Sidenote: Apple does not pay me to go around extolling the virtues of macs! (But it would be nice if they did.)

Posted by: milena '11 on September 14, 2007

Snively I want a cut of that if you sell that poster, because I was so a co-mastermind of jacking it from TechTV.

Posted by: Jon on September 14, 2007

The firehose is out for my blood =P

And I recently got addicted to the first Impossible Quiz. It is AWESOME! I've gotten to.. 97?

Posted by: Hunter '11 on September 14, 2007

very nice michael =)

Posted by: Saraaaa '11 on September 14, 2007

Hey, the Impossible Quiz is really fun. I'm playing it now but I can't get question no. 7 right???? "USE THE RIGHT KEY".. Can someone please tell me the answer and why lol? I don't get it... >.Hey, the Impossible Quiz is really fun. I'm playing it now but I can't get question no. 7 right???? "USE THE RIGHT KEY".. Can someone please tell me the answer and why lol? I don't get it... >.< By the way, why is earth the largest!??!? (yes, as you can probably tell, I'm not a native English speaker lol. I'm from Hong Kong btw)

Posted by: HungYee on September 14, 2007

By the way,why is earth the largest??? (yes, as you can probably tell, I'm not a native English speaker lol. I'm from Hong Kong btw)

Posted by: HungYee on September 14, 2007

Hi

Very interesting information! Thanks!

G'night

Posted by: hiutopor on September 15, 2007

*blink blink*

Um, is that legible to anybody?

Posted by: 0 on September 15, 2007

Oh yeah, it is legible, it's just a matter of understanding what it says. Just a bunch of random letters to me.

Posted by: milena '11 on September 15, 2007

So memorizing the periodic table...what does that entail? Atomic number would be not too hard, but do you need anything else memorized?

Posted by: Hudson A on September 15, 2007

I had to memorize the periodic table for my High School Advanced Chem class for a test last Friday. It really helped me to make mnemonic tools for each column (e.g. "Head LIce (are) NAsty. Kill (those) ReBel CritterS FReely" for H, Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs, and Fr). Good luck with your test and at MIT!

Posted by: Ben P. on September 15, 2007

$1251 - six textbooks

Posted by: Mark Stothers on September 15, 2007

@ HungYee

You have to hit the right arrow key on your keyboard.

Posted by: Michelle '11 on September 16, 2007

$1020

Posted by: John R on September 16, 2007

is snively your real name?

Posted by: 0 on September 16, 2007

Yes, Snively is my real name, albeit my last name. My first name is Michael, but there are too many Michaels around, so I go by Snively (rhymes with lively). That, and I've been told I look more like a Snively than a Michael.

Posted by: Snively on September 16, 2007

@Michelle
Thanks a lot! =]

@Snively
It seems that you like your lastname very much lol. Micheal...Mikey..Mikey Snively.. sounds cute lol

Posted by: HungYee on September 17, 2007

W0W, spam sucks!

Ok, the total cost of all my books was $575, meaning "Anonymous" was closest with $600. Unfortunately, guessing as "Anonymous" is a fairly stupid idea and I can't actually tell who you are, so the next closest is Michael with $680. Tell me how to get in touch with you and I'll get you your poster.

Snively [at] mit.ed u

Posted by: Snively on September 24, 2007

Add a comment

Commenting is not available in this channel entry.