This all being said, I should clarify: it’s not really the circus hosting that we look forward to. It’s the elephants. Specifically, the walking of the elephants from the train tracks behind Simmons down Massachusetts Avenue, straight in front of MIT, then down Memorial Drive in front of Killian Court on their way to the TD Gardens where the circus is actually held.

Rose ’14, a Simmons resident, has been excited about the coming of the elephants for over a month. So excited, in fact, that I came home after class last Friday to this lovely mural on my whiteboard.

I have a confession to make: I’ve never actually seen the elephants. I don’t think I even knew it was going on my freshman year and I had an exam or something equally unskippable last year. But this year, my schedule promised to accommodate the elephants perfectly: I was booked to be in my Science, Technology, and Society (STS) class from 1-2:30, at which point my friend Alex ’13 and I planned on booking it out of our class so we could catch the elephants walking down Mem Drive.

Until we got this text around 1:30. “The circus is here!!!!!!!”

I wish I had had a legit camera on me, because Alex’s face looked like someone had just told her that Santa not only didn’t exist, but that it was actually Dad stuck in the chimney. Our awesome professor, Ros, had been talking about how excited she was about the elephants, too, to the point where she had asked the construction workers outside our window to let us know if they came early, and consequently noticed Alex’s expression’s sudden shift from oh-the-transition-from-the-Neolithic-to-the-Holocene-is-indeed-the-most-interesting-thing-I’ve-thought-about-all-day to the-world-as-I-know-it-is-crumbling-around-me. After our explaining that we were about to miss the elephants as tipped off by a knowledgeable source stationed at Vassar and Mass Ave,

Ros packed up her laptop and told us to move from our room in building 2, quickly, lest we miss the elephants.

Alex ’13: “Frances. FRANCES. Did we miss them?”

We have an eclectic class. Ros, all packed up and ready for the elephants as Alex tries to get some front shots of the elephants.

Oh hey, don’t mind me, I’m just an elephant strollin’ down Mem Drive, holdin’ my buddy’s tail.

Elephant, elephant, elephant,

not elephant.

And then we headed back inside to discuss the extinction of large mammals and animal domestication during the early Holocene. Best relevant field trip ever? I think so.

I’m UROPing in the Doyle lab in the basement of building 66 (which is the ChemE building), I actually have time to shop at Trader Joe’s at least once a week, and my life is awesome.

Case in point. During the school year, it’s really easy to forget that you actually go to school in Boston. Freshman year, I could literally lie in bed and know whether or not the Sox had a home game based on if lights were on in Fenway. Even then, though, I was lucky to make it into Boston (and I’m excluding visiting the numerous fraternities who have houses in Boston, because those aren’t exactly representative of the city itself) once a weekend. Honestly, the activation energy required to get across the bridge, even if you take Saferide, is sometimes just too great to overcome when you can just stay Cambridge-side instead and conserve your energy for other things (like studying… and hanging out and other not-so-nerdy things). And truly, there’s so much to do in the MIT/Cambridge area that this isn’t a bad thing at all.

BUT. In the summer, there is no studying (unless you’re taking the GRE or MCATs, in which case your summertime life is just unfortunate anyways). In fact, there is sometimes so much free time after you get out of your UROP/internship/volunteering or on the weekends that we crusty upperclassmen who are so accustomed to filling EVERY SINGLE MOMENT of EVERY SINGLE DAY with MAXIMUM PRODUCTIVITY just don’t know what to do with ourselves.

So we actually get to experience Boston. And it is awesome.

Real life example: my 4th of July weekend.

SATURDAY, THE 3RD

There are 20 girls living in our sorority house this summer, and with the whole being-sisters thing, we understandably like to hang out. Couple this with a bunch of our sisters visiting Boston for the holiday weekend, and Jen ’13 came up with the awesome idea of kayaking on the Charles. It’s very touristy, I know, but when you’ve walked around Boston along the Charles more times than you can count, it’s really cool to see the city from a little kayak.

The place that rents out these kayaks, though, is on a first come first serve basis, so we dragged ourselves out of bed at the ungodly hour of 9:30 so that we could get over to Kendall Square and reserve enough boats for everyone. And that we did, spending an hour making references to being on a boat and splashing each other and getting yelled at by the Sheriff for being too close to the fireworks barge. It was rousing good time.

Whattup racial diversity and million dollar views. THE Jen ’13, Rachel ’11 (who you will be hearing a lot about), Kathy ’12, and Marianna ’13.

That’s our house, that you can kind of see through the trees on the left. As for the hand thing… every sorority or fraternity has some sort of symbol, and ours is the kite.

See it? Good.

Like popsicles and political terms and everything in between, even the best of urban kayaking excursions must come to an end. So after our hour on the water, we grabbed bubble tea at Leisure Station (which, by the way, offers free delivery for orders of two drinks or more—use this information wisely), and headed home to shower up.

Because remember these fools that I roomed with freshman year?

Thought you would. Robin, the one in the bear(?) hat on the right, lives in Brookline and invited Sam and I over to her place for some afternoon tea and sandwiches and just catching up. Robin took a year off last year and went to Paris for a semester, and then took classes at the Harvard extension school; Samantha is in another sorority (APhi, the same as Alina) and heavily involved in MIT’s DanceTroupe. Needless to say, the three of us don’t really run into each other all that much on campus.

So we spent a lovely afternoon on her front porch catching up and eating a whole tub of honey-lavender infused goat cheese with incredible bread and delicious curry chicken sandwiches from Whole Foods (I am including this only because I know my fellow Midwesterners have probably never heard of this store, which is a pity). It was fun, we all ate too much, but by 6:30 or so Sam and I both needed to head back home.

Robin lives within walking distance of the Green Line of the T, which is uber-convenient given that both of us needed to get off on stops along that line further into the city (“Inbound,” for those of you following along at home). Sam is living at her sorority, which is just off the Kenmore stop, and I was heading to meet up with some of my sisters at the Boston Pops rehearsal concert in the Hatch Shell, which is just a short walk from the Arlington stop.

Just as we’re getting onto the train, though, I get a call from my sister, Elli ’11, who’s currently at said Hatch Shell and tells me in not-so-many words to get there as soon as humanly possible because they’re starting to cut off the line to get in. Ruh roh.

But no worries, this entry would not be as interesting if I hadn’t made it and gotten a wristband from someone quasi-legally and managed to get through security and into the main oval for the show. Which I did.

We had an hour and a half to kill before the actual show started, so Rachel and Elli did what Thetas do best… eat. And take pictures.

Not a wristband, wristband, wristband, wristband... and cross-apply that kite stuff I explained earlier. It’s kind of a big deal.

And it begins. SO. MANY. PEOPLE.

And after a full program of patriotic hoo-rah music,

the 1812 overture was played, there were real live cannons (!!) to the left of the Shell,

confetti was released,

and then we and 50,000 other people tried to get back home. Needless to say, we just walked.

SUNDAY, THE 4TH OF JULY (happy birthday, Amurica!)

Well hellooooo 95 degrees. After our fun-filled 3rd, the 4th got off to a relatively slow start. Rachel, Elli and I started out the day at a leisurely hour of noon with a trip across the river for Starbucks and Trader Joe’s, as documented in this flattering picture,

with a small side of window shopping along Newbury street, during which I risked my life to take this picture for you fools.

On our way back to the house at 1pm, boats were already anchored out claiming spots for the fireworks.

So Rachel goes for a run, Elli and I hide in the air conditioning, and later that afternoon we decide that, for our own pop culture edification, we should go see the new Twilight movie. It was terrible. Don’t go see it unless it’s boiling outside and you get matinee tickets. And even then… don’t go see it. We actually burst out laughing when some key character died, which the teenage girls behind us did not seem to appreciate, but whatever. Apologies to the few of you Twilight fans out there who actually read the MIT admissions blogs. (Also, for the record, though this should not be seen as my endorsement of the “films”/”novels”: Team Jacob.)

Anyways, this was all made up for by the fact that right outside our theater were stand-up blow-up dolls for that new movie Despicable Me.

Elli: Wait, can we get these for the house? Can you imagine how awesome these would be during exams?

Now, I should also explain something about how Greeks (that is, people who are in sororities and fraternities) view the 4th of July.

For many fraternity men, it goes like this: I am going to watch the fireworks from my beautiful brownstone mansion’s roof deck and invite over all my friends and grill potentially massive amounts of food with my brothers.

For many sorority women, our thought process goes along the lines of: Which fraternity (that I have friends at) has the best view of the fireworks? Best food? Where are my sisters going? For us, the 4th of July is not a one-stop deal. It’s an optimization problem of eating, socialization, and fireworks viewing, with potentially multiple stops spaced out throughout the day. We’re women. Did you expect this to be simple?

By the time we get out of our $9.50 pop culture lesson, it’s 6:30 and time to eat. Elli gets a call from a friend at a fraternity along Bay Street, which is on our way back to Theta from the Boston Commons Loews Theater (the easiest movie theater to get to from MIT). We stop there for a bite to eat, during which Rachel and I quickly realize that we don’t really know anyone from this fraternity, and decide to bounce and grab some Sweet cupcakes (I wasn’t kidding about this being a true Boston weekend) on our way back to campus.

Rachel tried the Lemon Raspberry,

while I stuck to a more patriotic Strawberry Shortcake. Yes, it did taste as good as it looks.

Also tried and true: the Red Velvet cupcake, if you’re into that. Literally the best red velvet anything that I’ve ever had. Amazing. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

At this point, though, it’s 7:30, and time to claim a spot to watch the fireworks. We narrow our choices to Killian Court or another fraternity on campus, and start heading back down Massachusetts Avenue towards home.

Halfway across the bridge, we unexpectedly run into our sisters Sumi ’12 and Anila ’10, who are actually legit biological sisters and are in town from New Hampshire for the day with their parents. They have enough space staked out for a family of 10, and in a primo location, so we decide to just go back to our house, grab some blankets to sit on, and come back and join them.

Flyover!

Fatal flaw in this plan, though: our TV room has air conditioning. And someone had left the Boston Pops AND the AC on when they left. Needless to say, we got comfortably sidetracked after all that walking…

until the fireworks that accompany the 1812 overture (aka, not the real fireworks display) started and we ran out of the house, convinced we’d missed the entire thing.

We didn’t.

Now the bridge is closed off to any more people, though, meaning that our original viewing plan is foiled. Halfway to Killian Court, we decide to just watch them from there for a true MIT fourth of July rather than backtracking to the frat.

And with that, the 4th ended.

MONDAY, THE 5TH OF JULY (... and this is when all of you suddenly get the title of this entry.)

Monday is notable for one reason, and one reason only: Flour.

Flour is perhaps the best bakery ever. It used to only have two locations, one in Fort Point and another in the South End, the latter of which was a kind of destination location for MIT students, as it was just close enough to be reachable on a sleepy weekend morning but far enough away that it remained a special treat.

This all changed 3 weeks ago when Flour opened up a third location: Central Square.

Central Square doesn’t really even describe its location. Formally, it’s actually closer to MIT than Central Square, as in, it is roughly 2 short blocks from 77 Massachusetts Avenue (MIT’s mailing address, and it main entrance). This is dangerous. Oh, so dangerous. I’m on a self-imposed once-a-month ration to keep myself from eating too many of their delicious sticky buns.

It’s half for my health and half for my wallet. Their sticky buns will run you $2.95, and sandwiches are $7.50? if I recall correctly. They have enough different pastries to satisfy an 8 year old, and enough incredible entr√©e-type food to satisfy you or your food-snob aunt. It’s great. So much so that there were no less than 3 independent groups of Thetas there for brunch at the same time. Rachel and Courtney ’10 left before I remembered I had my camera on me, but from top right are Kathy ’13, Nancy ’13, Nancy’s French Toast, Marianna ‘13’s sandwich of some sort, Marianna, and Camilla ’13.

After Flour, I just went back and enjoyed my river view single and put my feet up. Because, hey, it’s summertime in Boston, but sometimes it’s just nice to stay at home in Cambridge.

So if you really want an unedited look at what life is like as an MIT student... here is cross section of my semester in screen shots.

1) I hit exactly $0.00 on my TechCash account. Do you realize how hard this is? This is like actually using up all the change in your wallet before you can accumulate any more. This just does not happen.

2) There were once only 24 HOURS UNTIL RING PREMIERE.

3) Three of our Theta freshmen discovered gchat emoticons... and then got half the chapter to start sending me lobsters, after they got a hold of my laptop and started sending even more lobsters out to other people from my gmail. Fun fact: you can only have 5 gchat windows open at once on a 13 inch MacBook screen.

4a) My own mother threatened to defriend me on facebook after I posted a TextFromLastNight (about Bill Nye, of all things) as my facebook status. (warning: site is definitely nsfw)

4b) ... I was also really busy.

5) For the amount of insane integrating it has saved me in 10.213 (that's Chemical and Biological Engineering Thermodynamics to you prefrosh), I owe Wolfram Alpha my first 2 and a half children. This screen shot, given the amazing feats Wolfram Alpha has accomplished over the course of this semester, is rather anticlimactic, but apparently I had needed to take it to show someone some calculation for some pset.

6) A nearly lost calculator almost had a grown man in tears... and we all felt his pain.

7) There are the days when the randomness of the email sent out to my sorority's spam list is just absurd. Sample range from the last few days: Justin Bieber Injuries to Biological Engineering Research Prizes.

8) There was the study break that turned into a let's-mock-Shannon-because-she-can't-tell-Asian-ethnicities-apart break, which was great.

9) I was skyping my friend Marianna (one of the lobster freshmen) while she was at home over IAP, and for some reason our connection froze, then restarted, then froze again. And I was left with this lovely face stuck on my screen.

10) But time to post this entry and get back to ordering the Indian food I have open in another tab. Peace out, cub scouts.

---------- 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.

FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS IS GOING TO BE IN BOSTON ON APRIL 17. OH MY GOD.

Also, to continue the in-cases, (I don't think I'm Englishly allowed to say that, but whatever), in case you haven't been on Facebook in like, the last month, there's this thing going on where you write 25 things about yourself, and then inflict this upon others, and... okay, I'm just going to let this chain letter ridiculousness explain itself.

"Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you."

Basically, let's have fun with this. I'm doing this now, and now you have to post 25 things about yourself in the comments. HA. I'm enabling your high school procrastination. Yes, I am a terrible person.

1. I am not the person today that I thought I would be. I thought I'd never be an engineer, never seriously be premed, never join a sorority (much less one that would quite honestly be the reason I got through first semester), and would never actually find a pair of skinny jeans that fit. Oh, how things change.
2. I am becoming my mother, down to the hazelnut flavored coffee. I'm okay with this.
3. I only just started wearing socks again.
4. I went to three finals in a row in the exact same set of clothing. Make your own assumptions regarding personal hygiene during that period.
5. I'd really love to run a marathon. Personal goal.
6. I have oatmeal for breakfast almost every day.
7. I like being sore after workouts.
8. I had never had guacamole before this year.
9. My childhood goal was to be quarterback for the Detroit Lions. This didn't work out.
10. I want to be fluent in at least 3 languages some day. An Asian language would be cool.
11. Things that I really like I am not necessarily good at, and things that I am really good at I don't necessarily like. This tends to disappoint a lot of people.
12. If I could eat only one food for the rest of my life, it would probably be Nature Valley bars. But preferably in a variety pack.
13. I hate going out in sweatpants.
14. My nose currently itches.
15. I have only fallen out of bed once, and I got an ambulance ride out of it. (This was recent.)
16. My mom once dropped me down the stairs and broke my femur. This sounds awful when taken out of context.
17. It takes a lot to make me cry. Like, even the falling-out-of-bed-extravaganza was dry eyed. I also was asleep, but whatever, details.
18. I am never not in the mood for chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.
19. I have called 4 dead people at work so far with the Alumni Association... and counting. It's a little awkward.
20. I would really like some milk right now.
21. I just realized that I have had 5 facts about food already. This was completely unintentional.
22. Fall is my favorite season. That 50 to 60 degree range is pretty ace.
23. I recently purchased my first pair of rainboots. They're bright yellow. I was excited.
24. I am about to be late to signing your guys' Valentine Day cards.
25. And fun fact- Samantha '12 in that entry is currently my roommate. :)

Have fun with this, kids.

But seriously, I’m from Michigan, so Boston cold is still no big deal. To be honest, if it starts getting cold you will probably see a noticeable change in my personal enthusiasm levels inversely proportional to the temperature, though this kind of breaks down once it gets below 0, because I kind of like to pretend that temperatures like that don’t exist.

Anyways.

The point of all this is that when it’s cold, it snows, which is pretty much the best. So while heading to Chinatown last weekend with my friends Sumi and Steph,

we were walking by the moat of the MIT chapel, which is just an empty concrete pit filled with snow during the winter. Like this.

So we’re just joking around and whatnot, and I’m all “hey, wouldn’t it be awesome to make a drowning snowman in the moat?” And we laugh, agree that it would probably one of the more epic things we’d done in a while, and proceed to gorge ourselves in Chinatown and forget about it.

This isn’t over, though. I was legitimately serious about the snowman thing, because, you know, I like snow. And my friend Steph is from California and clearly needed to be taught how to make a snowman, which I feel is some essential life skill.

So first we tried packing the snow, which failed because it was too cold.

But clearly, this was way too good of an idea to abandon, so we went ice chunk hunting and let Steph use her newly-found PE Taekwondo mad kicking skillz to cut them down into manageable sizes.

… though we still had trouble actually lifting them.

After some creative lifting though (mainly, me just lifting it and making the two of them feel bad), we managed to get the chunks into the moat, grabbed a few branches from the surrounding bushes, stole a few buttons from the McCormick sewing room and voila, we had a snowman doing backstroke.

This was clearly not enough, though. So we run back to McCormick, print off a NO SWIMMING sign, run around mine and Sumi's sorority looking for clear packing tape for lamination purposes, and run back to the moat to put it up.

Throw in a chunk of ice for a shark fin, snow angels, and you have yourself one of the most impressive things I’ve done in a while. :)

Coolest moment of IAP: sitting in the student center and hearing someone remark as they walked by, “hey, did you see that snowman in the moat? Isn’t that hilarious?”

Why yes, it is my 19th birthday. How’d you know?

While true, that’s not really a national holiday or anything, though, I mean, it probably should be. For those of you living under a rock the last year, or just living with a faulty internet connection, today is the inauguration of 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. This is kind of a big deal.

So big, in fact, that the following email was sent out to the MIT community from Chancellor Clay last week:

Dear MIT Community,

In response to employee requests, and due to the historic nature of this presidential inauguration, on Tuesday, January 20, cable viewingof the inaugural swearing-in and speech will be available in rooms 10-250, 3-270, 4-270, 32-123 and E51-151.

We request that supervisors and managers be flexible in allowing employees to use their lunch breaks to watch the inaugural swearing-in and speech. In addition, for those who wish to watch more of the inauguration than their lunch breaks allow, or whose lunch breaks do not coincide with the time of the inauguration, the Institute will allow employees to supplement their lunch breaks with release time of no more than 1 1/2 hours, between 11:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m..

(For those of you just living somewhere not-at-MIT, those hyphenated numbers are actually lecture halls. First number is building, second is room. Not really important, but just fun fact.)

Even the hacking community chimed in.

Closer.

Even closer.

Yeah, this is cool. Go watch. This is history in the making. Any thoughts on the next 4 years?

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.

‘Twas the night before finals, and all through the ‘tute,
You would think that the students had all become mute.
The freshmen were nestled all snug at their desks,
While hoping for at least one 5 AM rest;
And I with my physics, roommates with their chem,
Had just settled down for some quick SHM,
When out on the ‘net there arose such a clatter,
I sprang to my Mac to see what was the matter.
“I’m going to fail physics!” I saw one frosh yell.
“Is torque in or out? There’s just no way to tell!”
The seniors all clammered, “There’s no need to stress,
You’re on pass/no record, and it’s just one test!”
(“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be6jlCuMvVQ,”
Was what I replied, adding my two cents, too.)
Though after a bit, that commotion died down,
And I went back to physics and tried not to drown.
But if you’re like me, your attention span’s shot,
So I went to the kitchen to make something hot.
Well, it turns out our suite had some Chinese around,
And MIT moral code says to free food I’m bound,
So armed with some chicken, to work I returned,
But facebook then beckoned (you think I’d have learned…)
‘Bout two hours later, my status updated,
My procrastination seemed slightly abated.
So I went back to physics- attempt number three!
And this brings us to now, about 1:23.
My review sheet is awesome, my psets are read,
My exams are all studied, and I am in bed.
In just a few hours, fiziks will be done,
And I will have finished exam number one.
It’s hard to believe that just one year ago,
I was just one of you- yeah, I still didn’t know!
So while I wait for finals, and you for decisions,
Here’s something to think about during admissions:
Early admits, in one year you, too, could be,
Freshmen learning the truth in: "IHTFP!"

Outside Café 4 yesterday:
Me: Hey, how are you doing?
May '11 (grinning): Hiii. I haven’t slept in 2 days. So last night, I had 3 Monsters, and I just sort of wandered around the floor for a while trying to work some of it off.
All present: May, you need some sleep.
May: But my paper’s on The Lion King!
All: May. SLEEP.

You get the point. It’s been a little rough here lately.

But it’s not like we’ve just been working. With the end of the semester comes the end of some fantastic classes. Yan blogged about Eric Lander’s last lecture in 7.012 (that man is fantastic- TAKE THAT CLASS), and I am officially done with 8.01 TEAL as of yesterday. My sentiments regarding TEAL will have to wait for another entry, though, I think.

On Tuesday, though, was an equally important last lecture- Professor Auroux, perhaps the cutest little brilliant French man I have ever laid eyes on, had our last review lecture for 18.02, Multivariable Calculus. In the interest of full disclosure, I have had a mild crush on him since my second lecture in attendance. My first was spent fascinated with his accent, and then I went home and found out that he’s only 31 and plays the piano fantastically and he won me over entirely. I mean all this in the least creepy way possible.

But EVERYONE loves Professor Auroux-not only are his lectures good, which is enough to win most people over, but he’s also adorable. And when people love a professor, things are bound to be done to inform that professor of their love.

The class of 2010, for instance, opted for a more, uh, explicit declaration of their love of Auroux. Literally.

Our class, however, staged quite possibly the nerdiest, most MIT thank you anyone could ever have thought up. And it was epic… also literally.

So Professor Auroux: je t'aime.

(And if you could pass me, too, that’d be great.)

I am not Jewish.

I’m from the Midwest- I had a Jewish neighbor. Once. And that pretty much constitutes the entirety of my previous exposure to Judaism prior to MIT. Consequently, it never even occurred to me that I’d be living with Kosher keeping people, much less on a floor with a lot of them. I didn’t even know what being Kosher entailed besides no bacon, which was pretty much all I needed to know to be convinced that I could never be a good Jew in the case I decided to spontaneously convert. (Lack of bacon creates a positive ΔG in the reaction of my becoming Jewish? Whoa, okay, it’s offish, I’ve had too much 5.112.)

Why does this have anything to do with Thanksgiving? Well, okay, a few things you should know about Kosher, if you’re like me three months ago and know nothing about it:

1. Meat and dairy can’t be eaten together.
2. Oh, and on top of that, you can’t use the same utensils to cook the two, either.

This isn’t a big deal in normal life- I mean, you just exercise a little more caution with what spoon you’re eating your cereal with in the morning and everyone’s happy.

But let’s think about this. Every year, we have a Burton Jew Thanksgiving for the entire floor- turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, other dishes liable to clog your arteries… and half of these have to be Kosher. The result is a weekend extravaganza of musical ovens in which Kosher things (like Ida, the kosher turkey) are cooked in Kosher ovens while non-kosher things (like Colonel Fitzsimmons, our non-kosher turkey)

are cooked in the other ovens on the floor. (Right, we have kitchens. I probably should have said that three paragraphs ago.)

Musical ovens can be dangerous.

But no worries, here at MIT we take safety first and everyone made it to dinner in one piece, with the notable exceptions of Ida and Colonel Fitzsimmons.

And as the females of the floor nursed our food triplets (wow, no pun intended…)

the dinner was deemed a success. Good food and good friends- there’s not much else to give thanks for. Happy Thanksgiving from MIT!

So my immune system’s always been a bit shoddy. Like, I had walking pneumonia at least twice in high school, have managed to be ridiculously sick on several major holidays throughout my life, and once caught a cold in 90 degree weather. I’m still not sure how that last one happened. But consequently, I’ve decided that I am likely down to a single white blood cell, lovingly known as Theodore.

(Actual text from a friend a few weeks ago during a different contamination: Hey, how’s Theo doing? Does he need more orange juice or soup or anything?)

To put it lightly, Theo’s been putting in some major overtime this semester. I mean, not to blame him or anything, he’s been doing a great job considering how understaffed he is, but I’ve been sick pretty much every other week since I got here with some mild case of the plague or another. That, plus MIT being about 11 on my buddy Mohs' scale plus Sailing practice just wrapping up last Thursday has contributed to the lack of bloggage. For that, I mildly apologize. Ish.

But seriously, so many bloggable things are happening this week that it’s fantastic. Like a Burton Jew Thanksgiving tomorrow with these two weirdos that I live with:

Yeah, that’s right. Get excited. I’m back, and I’ve got orange juice.

(I kid you not, a friend of mine actually kept a calendar of free food events like this. During her class breaks, she would walk up and down the hallways taking note of club meetings, where they were, and what food they were having. She didn’t have to cook for like, 2 solid weeks.)

Following this trend, then, it shouldn’t be surprising that food is in large part responsible for getting me involved in GPI.

GPI is the Global Poverty Initiative- I had heard about it through my sorority (more on that topic later, FYI), as a lot of sisters are involved with it, and knew I wanted to get into it, too, but honestly wasn’t sure how much time I’d have. Because, you know, I was like 4 weeks younger then and hadn’t fully embraced pass / no record yet.

But they had ice cream. So clearly, I had to go.

GPI operates under the goal that WE can be the generation that eliminates poverty. We have the resources, and we have the ambition- if we mobilize our generation, we can see it done. Last March GPI hosted the Millennium Campus Conference, which drew over 1,000 people from all over the world to MIT and keynote speakers such as Henrietta Fore (Administrator of USAID) and Senator John Edwards. That’s impressive. Let’s be honest.

This semester, our main project is Poverty Week (October 18-24! Get excited!), which is designed to promote poverty awareness and promote community involvement. Basically, we run all over campus trying to tell people that there is indeed a world outside of MIT and you should be concerned about it. A friend and I are going to be chalking the sidewalks with poverty facts, and I’m involved in the Action Challenge, which is a challenge to only drink water for a week. I mean, eat, please, but think of how much you spend on pop, or morning coffee, or that Starbucks Venti Grande Lo-Carb Triple Chocolate Mocha thing you can’t go without every afternoon. What if you pinkie-swore to donate the money that you would have spent on drinks to people who could actually use that money just to fulfill their basic necessities? That’s the gist behind the Action Challenge. (So sign up! Once the registration form goes live, I mean. Which will ideally be sooner than later.)

But those are only two parts of poverty week, though, out of some number n>>2. The preliminary calendar of events is here, and I have a feeling it will start to get more detailed as the week gets closer.

Some cool events of note, though:

Stand Up Against Poverty 2008- Sponsored by the Millennium Campus Network (basically, intercollegiate GPI is one way of looking at it), the Stand Up Rally is at Harvard at 7pm this Friday. There’ll be talks from people involved, booths from organizations such as Oxfam International, lots of people who are interested in making a change. Unfortunately, I won’t be at this, so no blog for you.

Eat So They Can Dinner- The basic gist is this- instead of going out to dinner, we’ll feed you and then you donate what you would have paid had you gone out, and the money goes towards feeding children in Africa. Cool, right? We’re working to get local restaurants to either donate food or give us discounts, and crafts that students bring back from their D-Lab countries will also be sold at the dinner as a fundraiser for both Eat So They Can and D-Lab itself. MIT Students: Saturday the 18th, 5-7pm, in location TBD. Be there or b².

Study Breaks!- Food + Discussions about poverty = Awesome. Clearly. Right now I think there's 4 scheduled study breaks at various dorms throughout the week. And you have no idea how much MIT students look forward to study breaks.

So even though we all talk about how hosed we are and how much we may HTFP some days, MIT students actually do care about the world outside of campus and have the resources to do something to change it, which we do to the best of our ability. People here know we have the power to make a change- not only that, but we WANT to.

Though free food as an incentive always helps.

Hence the not-having-written-anything-yet.

So hi, my name’s Shannon. I’m from Grand Rapids, Michigan, Furniture Capital of the World and proud birthplace of both the Holland Tulip Time Festival and the Christian Reformed Church (though I was technically born in Detroit, the not-so-proud hometown of Kwame Kilpatrick… yeah). I enjoy long walks on the beach, though only on the hard sand because I get tired easily on the soft stuff. If I were a Crayola crayon, I would totally be Dandelion- it’s clearly the best color in the box. From the ages of 3-10, my life goal was to be quarterback for the Detroit Lions, though I was eventually was forced to give this up and decided that being an astrophysicist was an acceptable alternative. Two of my favorite times are 10:23 and 10:24, particularly because they come one right after another.

I happen to be a bit of a nerd.

I know almost the entire script of The Lion King, which is by far my favorite Disney movie of all time- I will not budge on this point. I make some ridiculously good chocolate chip cookies, once walked from Harvard to MIT entirely barefoot due to a massive blister, and have a tendency to laugh when people get really mad at me. I’ve wanted to go to MIT since middle school, and now that I’m here I practically have to pinch myself when I wake up in the morning because I can hardly believe that I’m at this school. That, and I have trouble waking up to alarms.

So this blog is for those of you who love this school already and for those of you who don’t (though I suppose that covers everyone). With the ridiculousness that tends to be the story of my life, though, the ride should at least be entertaining.

*"Vermonster- A monster of a sundae - 20 scoops of ice cream, hot fudge, banana, cookies, brownies, and all of your favorite toppings." In English: don't try this at home, kids.