So I was really tired last night. I’d been in northern Michigan snowboarding with a couple of my friends from high school, and if you’ve ever been skiing or snowboarding or just plain cold for more than 20 minutes you know what I mean when I say that I was kind of like the walking dead when I got home, only minus the drool. And when I’m tired, I have kind of ridiculous dreams.

Like this one dream I had over the summer. I was in Harry Potter, and I had to get Dumbledore’s help because I was hiding in a broom closet at my old grade school, which was headquarters for some secret spy organization, and we needed his help to keep Voldemort from getting in because the blue paint on our walls wasn’t magic enough.

And then I had to blog.

But this wasn’t just any blog. It was totally legit, with a really clever ending and it talked about Ford trucks and red necks and it was just a really good blog entry in general. But then I woke up and was totally creeped out by the fact that the blagosphere had actually invaded my sleep, and then I thought of this xkcd and a little part of me died.

Last night’s kind of took the cake, though, because I think my subconscious is officially way too emotionally invested in the interwebz.

So I was just sitting on this deck in the woods, minding my own business, right, when apparently a high school boyfriend’s mother decides to hold a birthday party for her dog. Problem is, she wants this 47 and three quarter foot oak tree cut down with my bare hands and moved to the middle of this big party tent. But then the tree kind of fell on the house, I made a break for it, and then I somehow got involved in a gang fight in a supermarket, after which I was arrested for not blogging enough.

(If you’re trying to follow the logical progression in that one, good luck. It’s my own brain and even I got lost somewhere around the fresh produce section.)

But anyways, the moral of the story is that I woke up this morning and thought, “you know, that’s kind of a good synopsis of last semester. That would make a good blog entry.”

Life at MIT does not make sense a lot of times, and this only really makes sense when you’ve been sitting at home watching House marathons for two weeks. There are the 5.112 psets that you will look at and think that the professor wrote them in Romanian or something, because whatever he’s asking you is certainly not anything you have any idea of how to do. And then you’ll spend 20 hours learning chemistry that weekend and still be looking at an all-nighter the night before that stupid assignment is due, but you’ll just keep chugging away because that’s all you really CAN do.

Friends at other schools won’t get this. A good friend of mine at Notre Dame didn’t believe me when I told him how hard our work was until we exchanged psets and his response was, roughly-ish verbatim, “I would’ve given up on question one.”

Or like this one time when I ran into a group of friends the Sunday before finals on my way to the library. We were just catching up, and when asked how I was doing my response went something like this: “I’m doing alright, 8.01 shouldn’t be too bad, 5.112 might rape me, but how are- man, I don’t think the Subway guy toasted my sandwich.” Total stream of consciousness. They were kind of confused, but the conversation just kept moving and that was that.

I’m not headed back to campus until Saturday, which is practically forever and a half away. Home is nice, and trust me, regardless of how much you people are ready to be gone right now, you will appreciate whatever time you can get to come home next year and just veg and be with the fam. But there comes a point at which you’ll realize that your little locus of friends has been quietly shifting from Anywhere, America to Cambridge, Massachusetts (or wherever it is you guys end up), and home will take on a bit more nebulous meaning.

My hometown friends are hilarious people that I love to death, but their reaction to the first dream would have been a laugh, and a “Shannon, you really need to get off the internet.” At MIT, my best friend’s reaction was “one, XKCD ftw! And speaking of which, we should totally paint the room blue.”

I better put Dumbledore on call.

Comments (Closed after 30 days to reduce spam)

I had the same thing, only with bio psets.

Posted by: First? on January 5, 2009

I once dreamed that I was a chocolate chip cookie and that my best friend was trying to eat me. I escaped by tricking her into thinking that I was a peanut butter cookie (she's allergic to peanuts).

xkcd rocks

Posted by: Kevin on January 5, 2009

I had a dream recently in which I tried to kill a stone. When that didn't happen, I went and kicked a football.
I amaze myself.

Posted by: Tree on January 5, 2009

I work at Subway...

Posted by: 0 on January 5, 2009

I have actually had several Harry Potter dreams. The frustrating part is that after I find out I am magic, I can only remember maybe one or two spells. The last dream was Lumos and Wingardium Leviosa. I wasn't very good at the levitation charm either, so I guess that means I would be a terrible wizard who would only excel in dark rooms.

Posted by: Bridger '13 on January 5, 2009

At least you don't say randomly awkward things in your sleep.

Posted by: Steph on January 5, 2009

Great post Shannon. Always an interesting read

Posted by: Jeremy '12 on January 5, 2009

They come in twos with hands of blue.

Or walls of blue...yeah, whatever.

Posted by: 0 on January 5, 2009

Shannon, you should try Lucid Dreaming. My friend told me about it, but I'm too much of a chicken to try it out. Who wants to look down at their hands and see 4 fingers?? Ugh. Kind of reminds me of Lost.

Posted by: Ngozi '13 on January 5, 2009

What does this have to do with getting mugged? Irrelevant title.

Posted by: Tristam on January 5, 2009

My Friends and me like to watch Harry Potter movies.
And one of my Friends loves Harry Potter too much she wants to marry him.

Posted by: Wael on January 5, 2009

umm saturday needs to hurry up so i can see your face

oh i promise i'm not a stalker

Posted by: shix on January 5, 2009

I thought I was weird for having dreams about Harry Potter. The last one I had was about how Harry, Hermione, Hagrid, and Ron came to my home and told me that I was a witch. I was really excited until my mom told them to leave. Dreams make no sense at all... :-D

Posted by: Kriti on January 5, 2009

irrelevant, and I know it's only been less than two days, but have the admissions officers already started looking at applications?

Posted by: deng on January 5, 2009

@Tristam-

"[...] and then I somehow got involved in a gang fight in a supermarket [...]"

Did you read the blog? :|

Posted by: Anon on January 5, 2009

@deng- I would think not, though Matt could give you a definite answer. They're still sorting through mail at this point, and when the post goes up letting everyone know that they've gotten through the piles of stuff currently in their office, it will be safe to assume that they're definitely reading files by then.

Also, you people are making me feel a lot better about the whole Harry Potter dream business. And that lucid dreaming stuff FREAKED ME OUT. Bad news bears.

Posted by: Shannon on January 5, 2009

I had a dream once that I magically flew to the lost city of Atlantis only to find that the natives were hostile. I had to convince them not to spear me down by telling them that their gene pool had been isolated for so long that they'd all end up with horrid genetic defects if they didn't let me live.

Posted by: Anonymous on January 5, 2009

Sadly, I knew exactly which xkcd strip you were talking about before clicking on the link. I spend way too much time reading that, and my fingers automatically type xkcd.com whenever I get online for the first time Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.

Posted by: Jacob '13 on January 5, 2009

@shannon
k, thanks

I've never really had dreams about harry potter, but I did have a dream that I was riding a flying motorcycle like hagrid's xD
and I remember having a dream where I went down an elevator at a pretty much empty mall, and then when I arrived at the floor I wanted, I had to follow monkey king down into this pool filled with moss and fungi. then somehow, when I got to the bottom of the pool, there wasn't anymore water... like coming up on shore, except the water was on top and air and civilization was on the bottom.

oh, and I actually wrote about a dream as one of the optional "essays" in app part 2

Posted by: deng on January 5, 2009

Oh GOD. Somebody tell the webmaster to install an image verification (or anything that could human proof visitors of this blog) requirement to post.

Posted by: 0 on January 6, 2009

^^^^^^spam^^^^^^
MIT people would rather look at robot and math equation pics anyways.

Posted by: Charlie on January 6, 2009

Cool Post! Really interesting... the title especially =]

Posted by: Banerjee on January 6, 2009

I hate toasted subs. Seriously, Shannon, I thought you had better taste than that.

Posted by: Paul on January 6, 2009

Nice post!
@Jacob
Haha, me too. Xkcd is way too memorable...

Posted by: Joey on January 7, 2009

I am in the 1st year of my college and thus I choose to apply as a transfer student.But my 1st term results won't be available till late March 2009 and the application requires my 1st term grades.What should I do?

Posted by: AK on January 9, 2009

I kinda have the same question as AK... I am a freshman in college who would like to transfer... I have my 1st term results, what I do not understand is how to get the 2nd term results... will it be sufficient that MIT Transfer has only 1 semester of results??
Also, can you please give me the e-mail address of MIT transfer?

Posted by: RJ on January 9, 2009

I apparently dream lucidly all the time, although I didn't know there was a special name for it. And I know the wikipedia has a really freakish entry on it, but it's not really like that. It's more like, hey, I'm dreaming! Then you can decide to fly, or whatever.

It's really a very empowering sense of abandon. You get to do whatever you want.

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