Auditions for the Spring musical rolled around in February - the Musical Theatre Guild was putting on "Urinetown", which I had never heard of, and wasn't particularly keen on hearing more about, given that title. 

So, of course, my friend managed to persuade me to print some sheet music and go to auditions. 

-------------

On Friday, I got all four of my wisdom teeth taken out. Five minutes before the surgery, I lay in the dentist chair and looked at the window, trying to concentrate on something other than the IV sticking into my arm. I noticed a particularly lovely cherry blossom tree. Two squirrels. 

One oral surgeon. He whooshed into the room with a cheery "hello!", pulling on a pair of gloves. He looked bizarrely like the father of one of my best friends from High School, which freaked me out a bit. "How are you doing?"

Well, I thought, it's the first day of my spring break, I have an IV sticking out of my arm, I will soon be able to eat nothing but baby food, and I have more work to do between now and next Sunday than I have ever had in one week, ever. 

"Great!" I replied, flashing him my toothiest smile (to communicate HEY! I HAVE NICE TEETH. DON'T MESS THEM UP.) With that, a nurse pulled a little cap over my face, explaining that I would be receiving nitrous oxide: laughing gas. This would, apparently, help to keep me calm and happy. 

I have no recollection of being warned that the sedative was on its way. I remember starting to giggle - and then my eyes were closed and I was in a bizarre half-conscious state. Events unfolded at about ten times normal speed. I was totally aware that I was in surgery. I could hear the surgeon and the nurses talking, although it sounded like their conversation was being played on fast-forward. It felt like my teeth were rearranging themselves inside my mouth, and I remember thinking "wow, this is fascinating!" At the same time, I dreamed that I was running through a series of tunnels and that people I knew were holding doors open to ease my passage.

And then someone asked me how I was doing. I opened my eyes, saw four identical copies of one nurse, and shut them again. The room spun for a while. Eventually, I stopped seeing quadruple and the room seemed still enough, so I rolled out of the chair and staggered into the waiting area with two ice packs strapped to my face.

Lovely. 

Since then, I've been on a combination of Percocet and Ibuprofen, and am proud to say that today I graduated to eating an entire stick of string cheese. It's just as well, because I need fuel for the TRULY OBSCENE AMOUNT OF WORK I HAVE TO DO OVER SPRING BREAK. This is a nice introduction to what I have going on this semester. Hold onto your hats (or your teeth - whichever are more likely to detach themselves from your body) -

8.04 Problem Set

8.04 is Quantum Mechanics I, usually taken by sophomore physics majors. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, quantum tunneling, Dirac notation, probability distributions...and an exceptional teaching staff.

The professor: Allan Adams. A legend. It honestly seems like there is nowhere he would rather be than in our lecture hall, filling chalkboard after chalkboard with wavefunctions. I quote: "My job is to convince you that the SINGLE MOST INTERESTING THING you could do upon leaving lecture is the problem set." I also quote: "fourteen invisible monkeys." He replies to every question with "that's a great question!" and never makes you feel stupid.

My TA (recitation instructor): Adrian Liu. My TA. An astrophysicist and a post-doc who has won pretty much every teaching award available at MIT. He gets up at 6am because he "likes to swim before work"...I'm not sure if he realizes that a significant fraction of his students are doing pretty well if they get up before class starts. His explanations are clear, and if they're not clear, he delivers them again in a different way. At the end of each session, he has us fill out these little anonymous feedback forms, and that evening writes up detailed answers to all of our questions. His office hours are packed and one of my friends reported that he never seems to take longer than 20 minutes to answer an e-mail. This guy is incredibly busy, but his recitation sections are high on his priority list :) 

8.044 Problem Set

8.044 is Statistical Physics: an introduction to probability and statistical mechanics. It's usually taken concurrently with 8.04 by sophomore physics majors. The professor is John McGreevy, who has a toy unicorn in his office (apparently it represents a magnetic monopole: there's no good reason why it shouldn't exist, but it doesn't) and used to be in a rock band. I had a totally bizarre conversation with him earlier this week, about his research:

8.282 Problem Set

8.282 is Introduction to Astronomy: a survey of galaxies, stars, planets, all that good stuff. The professor is Anna Frebel, who arrived this year from Harvard. She's also my UROP supervisor - 

UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program) 

With Anna Frebel, I'm studying metal-poor stars: because most of the heavier elements were produced in supernovae, metal-poor stars are usually the oldest stars in the universe. However, we have to distinguish between stars that are metal-poor because of their age, and stars that are metal-poor because they've been shedding off metal to a neighbor. Right now, we're in phase one: I'm looking at stellar spectra and measuring the wavelength shift of hydrogen, sodium, calcium, and magnesium. Based on that, I calculate the radial velocity of the star. Calculate the radial velocity of the star! By looking at its spectra, which live on my computer. A real star. AHHHHH IT'S SO COOL. 

16.68 Research Paper

16.68 is "Modern Space Science and Engineering": a 6-unit seminar in the Aero/Astro department. One of the professors is Jeff Hoffman, an ex-astronaut. I confess that I spend a borderline-creepy amount of lecture time looking at him and thinking "WOAH. THAT GUY WAS IN SPACE." 

The class hosts a different lecturer every week, to present on topics ranging from neuroscience (sleep patterns and circadian rhythms, as relevant to astronauts) to chemical propulsion to GPS systems to extravehicular activity (EVA). This break, I have a big paper to write for the class. We were allowed to pick any topic we wanted, and I chose "papillary edemas": basically, astronauts often suffer visual problems due to folding retinas. I have a book called "Neuroscience in Space" to use. Neuroscience in space. SPACE AND BRAINS! My two favorite things. 

21L.703 Paper Revision(s)

21L.703 is "Studies in Drama: Stoppard and Company." It's a CI-M in the literature department, which means that it "teaches the specific forms of communication common to the field's professional and academic culture". In other words, we do a lot of oral and written work. In addition to essays, we take turns leading discussion sections and delivering presentations on topics relevant to the play at hand (ex. Karl Marx, feminism in Britain under Margaret Thatcher). The class is sort of a broad sweep of politics, history, and art, which I appreciate - one emerges feeling like a better human being.

Memorize my lines for the musical

Yeah, I'm doing another musical. See what can come from being a little spontaneous? This semester, the Musical Theatre Guild is putting on Urinetown. For those of you that are familiar with it, I'm playing Little Sally.

Lesson plan for an Introduction to Cosmology class

My friend Eric G. '14 and I are teaching an Introduction to Cosmology class for High School kids through MIT's Educational Studies Program: it lasts for two hours every Saturday over eight weeks. We've talked about redshifts, expansion, grand unification, fundamental forces, metrics and geodesics, but by far my favorite session was when we introduced them to Quantum Mechanics. One of them yelled "AHHH MY MIND IS BLOWN!!!!" It's refreshing to introduce concepts to kids - concepts that might be old news to us - and watch their understanding of the world be totally transformed. 

Schedule the Intramural Ultimate Frisbee season

MIT has a healthy active intramural sports program, which I should really write an entire blog post about at some point. This spring, options range from Ultimate Frisbee to tennis to bowling to octathon to waterpolo to unihoc. I'm the manager for the Ultimate Frisbee leagues (YAY ULTIMATE FRISBEE!) which means that I get all the captains on board with what they need to do, schedule games, and troubleshoot when things go wrong. 

Figure out the most efficient way to respond to a gajillion small children

The MIT Museum runs a program called "The Curiosity Challenge." In a nutshell, kids submit questions or essays or drawings expressing what they are curious about. I met with the lady who runs the program, and found out that none of the kids get answers to their fabulous questions (ex. why are wood fires red and gas fires blue? how many cells are in a panda? why do dogs chase cats? why do people make mistakes? if there is other life out there, would they call us aliens?)

I was horrified, and asked for the opportunity to compose responses. The MIT Museum staff delivered the entries to my dorm, and I now have three GIGANTIC bags sitting in my room, filled to the brim with submissions. There are easily five hundred of them. I'm a little intimidated, but am determined to make this happen. It'll happen, whether it means I have to clump all the entries together into broader topics, or digitize all of them and get people to respond online. 

It'll happen, because it has to happen, because it would be a travesty for these kids to send their questions off and never receive responses. It'll happen, just like all this other work will happen, because it has to. I will get this all done. I will also be able to eat solid food soon, because, let's be honest, this whole diet-of-soup-and-apple-sauce thing is pretty lame.

Deep breaths. I got this.  

I initially joined FIRST because my eighth grade science teacher - who I honestly believe is the reason I am now at MIT - encouraged me to. From what I remember, there were about ten students on the team that season; we traveled to New York for the regional, and raised travel funds by making presentations to companies. I tagged along and watched, wide-eyed, as the upperclassmen in our sponsorship group boldly asked panels of businesspeople for money. For the three years to follow, I was on that sponsorship team: we wrote presentations and delivered them to companies and my school's Board of Trustees. I realize now that knowing how to explain why one's cause is worth supporting is just as valuable as having the practical skills entailed in that cause, whether it's building a robot or performing science research at a university. All hope is lost for the latter if you can't do the former.

Of course, those practical skills are valuable, too. My freshman year, I wanted to become a programmer, but we had too many of those already, so to my great disappointment I was put on the build team. I picked up a saw for the first time, and made a gazillion horrible uneven diagonal cuts before finally converging on the correct method to saw in a straight line. I learned to use a tap by accidentally snapping off the tap while it was still inside the bar. I sat quietly by myself for fifteen minutes, too scared to tell anyone, until finally our other mentor came over, took a look, and said "ah, it happens." I remember tasking myself with sorting out all the nuts and bolts into little compartments based on size - it took me and my friend an entire two-hour build session. The next year, a number of our programmers graduated, and there was suddenly room for more - but I was no longer interested, because I loved "black and greasy" being a regular color for my hands. I loved finding aluminum shavings in my hair and sawdust on my jeans.

I had grand plans for our team. I was going to become team captain, and lead us to glory and victory: we were going to start the first UK regional, and win the Chairman's Award (the most prestigious award FIRST offers its teams.)

I did become team captain, in my junior year, as well as coach for our drive team. I wrote an essay for our Chairman's Award application, about our plans to bring FIRST to Europe, and about how our team brought students together who would otherwise never have met*.

*This is a story that could have an entire post to itself. In a nutshell: our team was made up of kids from my school (an American school) as well as kids from the British school across the street. When I got to 9th grade, I was told to be wary of kids from "that British school", because they were dangerous. Later, some of my best friends on the Robotics team were from "that school", and told me about the stereotypes they used to have of us: rich kids with no street smarts. We put all that aside to build robots, and only experienced any friction when we tried to mimic each other's accents. 

We never won a regional. We never started a UK regional, and we never won the Chairman's Award (take heed, people who think you have to win Robotics competitions in order to get into MIT!) I remember standing on the field with the drive team during my junior year, heartbroken and at a complete loss for what to do or how to react, having just lost very narrowly in the quarterfinals to what I felt was a great injustice. We were so close! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH TIME WE SPENT BUILDING THAT ROBOT? No? Let me tell you. Yes? Let me tell you anyway. During the six-week season, we spent four hours a day in that build room. We were there all day Saturdays and snow days and holidays.

To have all that work comes to no tangible reward was painful and bitter. Also, as team captain, it felt like I hadn't delivered. I was furious with myself and with the rest of the team, who were cheerful and upbeat as we drove to the airport. Why weren't they upset? My petty answer was that they didn't care as much as I did. My friend Sophia's (much more perceptive) answer, which she delivered calmly and patiently while I freaked out, was that the others were upset, too, but weren't letting it weigh them down.

That day, I learned the distinction between being flippant and being upbeat. I also learned that taking defeat well means taking it with a smile, and without trying to be the judge of what is or is not "fair."

Have I made the point that one learns a lot more than "how to build a robot" by doing FIRST?

Have I mentioned that my senior year was when we and our robot hit an all-time low? I graduated and passed over the reins, on that low. I can't really describe how scarring that was. I'm still mortified whenever I visit the team and my old mentors; it's hard to look them in the eye. 

This weekend, my team is competing in the WPI regional. It's very strange to watch a group of people (many of whom are strangers at this point, since I graduated two years ago) complete tasks that my friends and I did two, three, four, five years ago. During the day, the team unpacked the robot and ran tests while I fidgeted impatiently through Statistical Physics recitation, Quantum Physics lecture, Astronomy lecture, and Studies in Drama class. While I booked it over to Worcester, the team ate dinner and debriefed.

On Friday, I sat in the stands for all our qualifying matches, and was blown away by our performance. This is, without a doubt, the best robot our team has ever built. 

It's weird to see a team be better in your absence. 

At the Awards Ceremony, I was texting an old team-mate to fill him in on the excitement when the MC announced that it was time to give out the Entrepreneurship Award. Whatever that meant. I wasn't really paying attention, haunted by memories of the missed Chairman's Award, when suddenly I heard "...for their business plan to start a regional in the UK..."

...what? I snapped my head up so fast that it almost sailed off my neck. 

"...the Entrepreneurship Award goes to our friends from across the pond, Team 1884!"

Oh. My. God. 

I stopped mid-text and gaped at the MC. I was totally stunned. To be honest, the rest of the team looked stunned, too, but I think I took "stunned" to a different level. Earlier this year, it turns out, the kids won an £11,000 grant from Google Rise to start new FIRST LegoLeague teams in London, with the idea that by getting kids invested in Robotics early, they can start enough FRC teams to hold a local regional. They laid all of this out in a very professional-looking business plan. Immediately, my fantasies of running up to collect an award with the team disappeared. This wasn't my victory at all: it was the victory of a new generation of team members. They filed down to high-five the judges and collect their trophy, while I stood in the stands screaming and applauding. On their way back, I stood and high-fived each of them in turn. My place was to congratulate, not to be congratulated, but I still felt honored.

That evening, over dinner, I overheard someone mention "2010" (my senior year.) The guy talking used to be on the team with me, and is now one of our most beloved mentors. He was telling the younger members about that season, in a thoughtful reflective way. "That year," he began, "we hit rock bottom." My stomach clenched. "But we needed to do that - we needed that year, because we realized that we never wanted that to happen again. Since then, we've improved so much. We needed that year to reset - we wouldn't be this good without it." 

I thought about how we used to finish building the robot at the last minute; during my junior year, we spent something like fifteen hours on the robot the day before it had to be shipped. We arrived at 10am and worked until 1am. I remember bleary eyes, kids calling their parents, parents calling their kids, the thought "I probably shouldn't be wielding a drill in my state", the thought "it's weird to see teachers at this hour." Now, the robot gets finished well ahead of time, which gives the drive team the opportunity to practice. My years felt very experimental: we floundered and struggled to find an effective way to structure our build season, and never really hit on it. We never figured out how to saw in a straight line, if you will. 

We didn't build a winning robot: we built a team. I mentioned that we had something like ten members during my freshman year - I remember having 60 sign up at the beginning of my junior year. We took 30 kids to the regional this year, all of whom had an important role to play during build season. We created Middle School LegoLeague teams (the younger version of FRC) and began to mentor them - now, those kids (including my sister!) are juniors in High School and leading the team to new heights of success. 

When my sister was appointed coach, she sent me a Facebook message asking for advice. I was suddenly struck by the cyclical nature of the student-alumni system. You learn, and you move on, but then you come back and help facilitate that learning. You share your mistakes, what you wish you had known at the time, and then hope that those you advise do better than you, so that when they move on, they can update and add to what you had to say. Together, you build up a collective network of alumni experience that makes the students’ experience better every year.

Middle School kids get excited about robots, become High School kids who make Middle School kids get excited about robots, and then graduate to become mentors who return and teach the High School kids to solve problems. 

This morning, I said goodbye to the team and took a train back to MIT campus. I followed their matches via phone and the Internet. Two incredible victories, one defeat - and a 9th place finish. For those of you who don't know: the teams that finish in the top eight are the "alliance captains" for the quarterfinals. They pick two other teams (which can be each other) to join them. The quarterfinals, therefore, take place between 8 alliances of 3 teams each. The first alliance tends to be strongest, because the first place team is on it and gets first pick - however, they also get last pick, so things tend to balance out.

This is how picking works: the alliance captain says something like "Team [Alliance Captain] would like to invite Team [Invitee] to join Alliance [#]." Then, by some weird FIRST tradition, a representative of the invitee gets up to the microphone and (unless they don't want to be on that alliance) says "Team [Invitee] graciously accepts". Realizing that this doesn't actually make sense ("graciously" accept? what?) I got up to the mic during our 2009 regional and said "gratefully accepts" instead. 

At 11:45am, when alliance selection began, I opened the webcast and pressed my ear to my computer's speakers. First pick went by. Second pick went by. Third pick went by. Fourth pick went by, and by this point (because of inter-captain picking) we had been bumped up to being alliance captains. We were therefore guaranteed a place in the quarterfinals. Fifth pick arrived, and one of our top choice teams invited us to join their alliance. 

YES!

I heard my little sister's voice. She's now in the same grade that I was, back when I accepted our alliance offer. "Team 1884", she said, in a voice that many have commented is creepily similar to my own, "gratefully accepts."

Bring it on, elimination rounds - it's worth mentioning that our team has never progressed farther than quarterfinals. I desperately want to publish this within the next minute, before the lunch break ends and the matches begin, because I want to make the point that I don't care at all what happens next.

Dear Team 1884,

YOU ARE THE BEST GROUP WE HAVE EVER HAD. Ever. Your robot is fantastic and you have done fantastically. I'm sorry that I can't be there in person to watch the match, but I have the webcast open right now and I am SO EXCITED FOR YOU! Also, I didn't quite finish this post in time; the MC just announced your name to kick off the match. I'm screaming and applauding from a bench in the middle of the sidewalk. Please know that whatever happens, I could not be more proud to call myself an alumna of The Griffins.

Gratefully yours,

Anna

I woke up Thursday morning, realized it was March 1, dove off my bed, and flung my laptop open. Gmail couldn't load fast enough. There it was: The E-mail I'd Been Waiting For.

"I am pleased to offer you an appointment to The NRAO Summer Student Research Assistantship Program at the NRAO site in Charlottesville, Virginia. Your research topic will be "Pulsars"...Please confirm acceptance of this offer by 5:00 PM (ET) on Thursday, March 8, 2012."

I confirmed acceptance a lot sooner than that, and spent all of Thursday grinning like a crazy person. 

The NRAO is the National Radio Astronomy Observatory; they have a student internship program that I've been dying to do since forever. I applied last year, but didn't get in - which makes this doubly sweet. I'll be there for 10-12 weeks, hanging out with astronomers and scientists and studying pulsars. PULSARS!!! I can't wait.

</NEWSFLASH>

Twisted as this sounds, the reason I haven't posted in forever is because I have TOO MUCH TO POST ABOUT. The musical came and went, I registered for The Most Awesome Classes Ever, I started a UROP, I shadowed clinicians, I joined the Burchard Scholars and Arts Scholars programs, I'm taking a drawing class through the Student Art Association, my wisdom teeth rebelled against me and I spent four days in pure agony before seeing a dentist and finding out that I need to get all four of them removed...

And so on. Each could take an entire blog post (except maybe the whole tooth thing, since, let's be real - who wants to read about my wisdom teeth?) While they've been piling up (the post topics, not the teeth) I've been fretting about picking one to write about; while I fret, more pile up, and the Cycle Of Silence continues.

I've finally picked a story, though. This is about how to look at things. 

---

      

Your instinct is to do what you ALWAYS do when you have a question about her MIT life (right? right?) - e-mail her! You're in the mood for a more challenging/illegal way of doing things, though, so you get one of your minions to steal her computer. First stop: gmail calendar, obviously. You get to the site, and but the blinding array of colors with which she color-codes everything makes it impossible to extract any useful information. You give up, and decide to look at her browser history instead; after all, this is winter on a 21st century MIT campus, so chances are that whatever she spent her weekend doing involved the Internet. 

You start with Friday Jan 13. Gmail. Gmail. Gmail. Facebook. Gmail. Facebook. Gmail. Scroll scroll scroll. Gmail. NYTimes. NYTimes. xkcd. Facebook. Gmail. Your eyelids are beginning to droop when you reach 6:30pm - and things begin to get interesting. 

You haven't the faintest idea who those people are, or what that little red B icon means - but a quick glance down reveals that wheoever they are, they prompted Anna to start reading about saints. 

...and so on, and so on, until, FIVE AND A HALF HOURS LATER (she spent her ENTIRE FRIDAY EVENING reading about obscure saints?!)

She didn't just Google saint names.

She used incendiary WHAT as a WHAT? 

How alarming. And why on earth is she searching things in LATIN?

Your expertise with dead Romance languages tells you that this means "this day."

Right around then, search terms involving festivals, holidays, and actions begin to appear (to your disappointment, incendiary doves do not make another appearance.) 

You force yourself to concentrate on finding trends in the search history. You separate the search terms into two categories: those involving saints, and those involving festivals. You realize that towards the beginning of the evening, she showed more interest in descriptions of the festivals (ex. "festival climb on table, discus throwing day") and descriptions of the saints (ex. "saint killed in battle", "saint doves as weapons") - but that, as the night progressed, her search terms became both more name-specific, and more date-specific (ex. "saint february 20", "November 17 holiday, "saint nennocha june 4", "January feast days").

Aha! Feast days. Dates associated with saints. You realize that she is interested in finding out which feast day corresponds to a saint with a particular description (ex. "saint killed in battle"). She presumably started with a description of the saint, since those were her first search terms. Similarly, she started with descriptions of festivals and then ended with dates. Where do saint feast days and festival dates intersect? Well, both are...dates. Hac die. Could she be comparing dates? Matching up saints with festivals that happen to fall on their feast day?

And, if so, why would anyone spend their evening doing that?

The key lies in the page she visited about half an hour after her last saint- or festival-related search term.

You recognize that icon. It's the MIT icon! And puzzles, well...Anna is an MIT student, after all. MIT kids like their puzzles. Could she be doing a puzzle? A puzzle about saints and dates and festivals? You keep scrolling and realize that, if this was the case, the saint/date/festival puzzle wasn't the only one she tackled that weekend. Her browser history shows similar (though less lengthy) Google search fixations: the periodic table, three-word common expressions (ex. "little boy blue", "take the loss", "cold comfort farm"), Sherlock Holmes, suffixes, anagrams, frequencies of different letters in the English language, alkaline cleaning materials, stock tickers, South Indian chicken potato curry (South Indian chicken potato curry?!), something called "The Eye of Argon"*, children's songs, children's nursery rhymes. 

*More on this shortly.

What kind of weird puzzle - or set of puzzles - would involve reading about South Indian chicken potato curry AND children's nursey rhymes AND anagrams AND Sherlock Holmes AND cold comfort farms? Also, what kind of weird puzzle collection would involve running searches at these obscene hours -

From Friday "night" (if that's still the right word for it):

From Saturday "night" (the search history tells you that this was a sleepless night):

From Sunday "night":

Your immune system is trembling at the thought. Finally, one page in her browser history reveals the source of this weekend-long intellectual adventure:

MIT Mystery Hunt. An annual puzzle competition for some of the world's most intense puzzle-solvers. Hunt is held over one weekend during IAP; alumni swarm back to campus in droves and students recruit friends from within and outside of MIT to join in the quest. This year, the hunt had a musicals theme ("Borbonicus and Bodley" are a spinoff of "Bialystock and Bloom", from The Producers.) 33 teams representing hundreds of participants signed up, and devoted the weekend to performing all kinds of outrageous intellectual feats at the whims of the devious puzzle designers.

Below are some of those outrageous intellectual feats (such anecdotes are, I think, the only way to do some shred of justice to Mystery Hunt.) 

One puzzle I worked on was called "Pirates of the Tyrrhenian" (see here) which presented a very suspicious-looking "loot list" (what the heck would someone do with 1400 apple pies?) and a map of the US that assigned each state a letter. Three of us worked on it together, and spent about twenty minutes playing with the numbers to figure out what they could possibly mean. At some point, one of my friends decided to try converting the numbers to Roman numerals. I'll be frank: never in a bajillion years would I have tried that, because Roman numerals spit out useless-looking letters like X and L and M and C. The letters didn't look useless to my friend, though, who somehow thought up the possibility that these could be stock tickers.

When you convert the number 1400 to Roman numerals, you get MCD. You know what you get when you look up the MCD stock ticker? McDonald's. 1400 apple pies. McDonald's. We screamed and high-fived and jumped around and rushed to look up all the rest of them; we found the state each corporation was based in, plotted them on the map, found the corresponding letters, and scrambled them to spell STOCKBROKER, which turned out to be the answer.

So. Awesome. How my friend figured that one out, I will never understand. 

My favorite puzzle-ing experience by far was when the same group of us tackled "Argh" (take a look.) There were 31 short sound files, each following the same format: 1) a man speaks, not in words but in "hmm"s, 2) the man laughs, 3) a girl responds in English. We realized that we had to figure out what the guy was saying, based on his intonation and the friend's response - however, this would be next to impossible with only that information. We therefore decided that he must be reading from some text available online, and set about trying to figure out what that could be. Why was he laughing? Was he making a joke? 

In two different clips, the girl mentions a name: something that sounds like "Grigner". We Googled it - no luck. Griggner? Grygner? Grignr? Breakthrough. Grignr is the main character in a text called "The Eye of Argon": a famously terrible piece of prose, written by a teenager "who could usefully have been replaced by an infinite number of monkeys"* back in the 1970s. A little bit of research taught us that a popular game is to try and read out loud from "The Eye of Argon" without laughing (we tried - it's next to impossible.) This explained the man's laughter. The only remaining task was to comb through the story and, using the girl's responses as guides, find the 31 passages. Combing through "The Eye of Argon" at 3am with two very sleep-deprived friends - I may never laugh so hard again. It was fantastic - and very cool to realize how easy it is to match a passage of text with particular intonation patterns. 

*Source: http://www.ansible.co.uk/sfx/sfx043.html

By taking the first letter of the last word of each quote, we got a sentence, one word of which was BLANK. We found that sentence in "The Eye of Argon", and the answer to the puzzle turned out to be the word corresponding to BLANK. 

At this point, it was around 5:30am, so we decided to go back to French House to get some sleep. We had been hunting over at Random Hall, since Random and French House have a nice tradition of working together on one team. Campus was completely deserted - there were no bleary-eyed backpack-wielding college students scrambling to get to class on time, no late-night partyers, no cars or campus shuttle or birds. Just us late-night hunters, reveling in the adrenaline of solving puzzles. We held scarves over our faces to block the wind and admired Mars, which had risen up high and bright and red. One builds a lovely camaraderie from solving puzzles.

Actually, I shouldn't say from solving puzzles. I should say from working on puzzles. You know that saints one? With the festivals and dates (and clues in Latin)? We spent something like seven hours working, and never actually solved it. At some point, we gave up and moved on, because we were tired of scouring the darkest corners of the Internet for the most obscure saints ever. This time, we bonded not through high fives and celebrations, but through a sort of shared angst (AHHH WHY DID I JUST SPENT SEVEN HOURS OF MY LIFE DOING THAT I NEVER WANT TO SEE ANOTHER SAINT-RELATED WEBSITE AGAIN.) Being able to enjoy the process regardless of the end result is a wonderful luxury; many teams (including ours) don't actually aim to win, because the winning team earns the right to design the puzzles for the next year, and most people would rather solve than create. 

So! Now you know what Anna the blogger spent Jan 13-15 doing. Congrats. Turn your problem-solving skills elsewhere (if you're interested, here's a link to this year's puzzles) and return her computer before she notices and freaks the heck out. 

The release of Early Action decisions, for one thing. MIT finals, for another (AHHHH). Deadlines for regular decision applications to college, and, for many of my senior friends, applications to graduate schools and fellowships.

My stress falls mainly under the second category, so you may wonder why I'm posting and not studying. I wasn't going to blog tonight, actually; earlier this week, I resolved to spend every waking hour of my weekend either studying for my three finals (AHHHH), sleeping, eating, showering (hygiene is important, kids) or taking a (very) brief study break. But something whisked me away from studying that I can't help but share with all of you - the first thing I did upon getting home was log onto the admissions blogger interface. I need to tell you a story, prospective students and fellow MIT-ers and whoever else is reading this: you, who are stressed. I apologize if this post sounds rushed and hastily thrown-together, but I don't have much time; at midnight, a blogger moratorium kicks in. To respect the release of Early Action decisions, we aren't allowed to blog on Saturday or Sunday. It is now 11:04pm on Friday. I therefore have 56 minutes to open a little window to campus and show you how we here deal with stress.

I didn't leave the dorm yesterday - and this morning, cabin fever hit me hard. So, at 12:30 this afternoon, I zipped up my big poofy winter coat, tugged on gloves, and called up a friend who I haven't seen in months, because we're both busy and our lives never seem to overlap. He picked up on the third ring, and I asked if he wanted to go to lunch. He did. So, off we went, strolling down Mass Ave, catching up, laughing and chatting with a cold winter sun beaming down on our heads. After our Chinese food, we split up, I towards Harvard to buy a Christmas present for the French House freshmen, and he back to campus. As I got off the bus back at MIT, I found myself with a sudden overwhelming rush of energy: I sprinted all the way back to New House, and up the stairs home. 

There, I found stress. Lots of stress. As I mentioned, this is a season for fellowship application deadlines, and a big one was due at 5pm today. My senior friends either sat huddled over their computers or rushed back and forth between other seniors' rooms, asking for advice or clarification on the wording of an essay prompt. For a little under two hours, I played proof-reader, character-count-reducer, reassurer, admirer (all my dorm-mates are ridiculously impressive people) and calculator; with three minutes to go, one of my friends needed to add up six big numbers and divide by four (don't ask why.) I have never punched numbers into my phone so fast. Finally, they all pressed submit, and it was over. 

Exhale.

At 5:10pm, I scurried back to my room, shut the door, and whipped out my orgo notes. And studied. And studied some more. Practice test, old pset, old pset. Practice test. Brief dinner, delivered to my room by my very kind boyfriend. More studying. At 7:30, my friend Davie R. '12 asked if I was going to go carolling with other French House-ers, and I declined, explaining that I had way too much studying to do. 

And regretted it, as I sat in my room for the next hour, thinking about how beautifully my dorm-mates sing and how it would be my last chance to carol with many of them (including Davie, who is one of the most amazing singers I have ever come across.) 

At 8:30, a big group of people came past my door. It was the carollers: they were just leaving, late for some reason. I jumped up, slammed my computer shut, and accepted a packet of music. Orgo could wait. So could physics. And neuroscience. Lizi '12 baked 2+ trays of cookies, while Davie printed booklets of carols in four parts and brought along a tuning fork. We traveled around New House, from living group to living group, regaling groups of strangers with music. I was totally mortified, at first, but as people applauded and smiled and took cookies, I realized that we were cheering people up - and there exists no better study break than that.

We even got people to join us. Now around ten singers strong, we decided to head over to Burton Conner and continue carolling there. Out on dorm row, we sang Silent Night, and a group of passers-by joined in. Led by a resident (a friend of Lizi and Davie from concert choir - I don't know who you are, but thank you!*) we made our way through the five floors of Burton-side and four floors of Conner-side, singing and delivering cookies and picking up more carollers along the way. We crashed a party. We crashed a movie night. In one lounge, a resident joined us by playing the piano. Everywhere, people were smiling and thanking us and telling us how great we sounded; one girl even filmed us. Faces peeked out of doorways. Eyes were wide. Slowly, residents gathered in the hallways to listen. And this was all totally impromptu! No substantial planning, no practice, no musical ability required. Others joined. Now around fifteen people strong, we delivered our grand finale (Hark the Herald Angels Sing) to the Burton-Conner housemasters, who gave us chocolate and smiled wonderful delighted smiles. 

*Christy S. '13, apparently. You're the best!

I saw so many smiles tonight. Tonight, of all nights - when people are crazed with stress and up to their necks in old papers and notebooks and binders. It was refreshing (literally; it's cold out there) and rewarding and SO much fun, and I don't regret a second of it. I completely forgot my stress, somehow. It disappeared along with my voice (my vocal chords are totally burnt out.)

I wanted to tell you all this because it helped me. It was soothing to get outside - to talk with an old friend, to do things with people I care about, to channel my rocketing levels of stress energy into creating music for others. I thought this was probably a story worth telling on this kind of occasion.

And now, it's nearly midnight, so I'm off; I'll re-emerge on the other side of finals, late Wednesday afternoon. A friend and I have arranged to watch The Elegant Universe after our last exam, so I have that to look forward to. Once, in high school, I was freaking out to a teacher about an upcoming bout of exams, and he described an approach that I liked; he said we would bow our heads and charge, get through it, and look up only once we reached the other side. It's almost time! Bow your head, steel your nerves, and remember that above all you are NOT in any way defined by the school you attend - quite the opposite. MIT is great, but only because of the people who come here; it's just a bunch of empty (kind of ugly) buildings otherwise. It is physically impossible to fit every student that the admissions office would like to fit. Therefore, some of you will go elsewhere. But that makes MIT less great, not you - and it makes other schools greater, as you sling your hard work and thoughtfulness and energy over your shoulder and bring them elsewhere, doing the things you would have done if you were here: namely, taking advantage of every resource at hand.

In the meantime, I'm going to bow my head and steel my nerves as well. Waves and vibrations, organic synthesis, structure elucidation, ion channels and hormones, here I come.

Let's charge together. Ready? 

At some point, our director told us that he assigned roles based partly on what "fit best" with our real personalities. I was horrified. 

Six years went by - six years of staying as far away from singing for an audience as possible. Don't get me wrong: I love to sing. I'm no good at it, though, and there are very few people I'm willing to sing in front of. Late in the evening, I walk back to French House along the back of the dorm buildings, because pedestrians are scarce along that stretch of Memorial Drive, and the cars and river add comforting background noise. When no one else is around, I shoot for the high notes without worrying about damaging anyone's stereocilia. I belt it out. I emote without worrying that people think I'm crazy. I only auditioned for Little Orphan Annie because my best friend auditioned too, and we took comfort in solidarity. Otherwise, auditioning for a musical is basically my worst nightmare: not only can people hear me sing, but they're listening to me sing, and judging the quality of my voice, which I have already judged to be less than good. 

Now, on the subject of auditioning for musicals: a week or so ago, a notice went out about auditions for a musical written entirely by MIT students, two of whom are from my living group. It read:

"Please come prepared to sing 16-32 bars of a song that shows off your vocal quality and range."

Feeling disinclined to demonstrate my lack of both, I ignored the e-mail. I didn't delete it, though. I let it sit in my inbox and stare up at me, saying "hey Anna, remember how fun Annie was? Remember how much you love to sing? Remember that post you wrote about doing things you find scary? Are you really such a hypocrite?"

Ignore, ignore, ignore.

Last week, Julie (the musical's composer, who used to live in French House with me) sent out an e-mail to the living group:

"You should audition if any of the following are true", she said. "You want to be a part of this once in a lifetime opportunity to originate a role for the stage. You have never been in a show, but would like to try something new this IAP. You are looking for the most fun thing to do at MIT this IAP. You love to sing. You love to act. You love to dance. You love me"

Yes, sure. Yes. Yes, of course - not sure embarrassing myself in front of an audience is it, though. Yes, in private. Sure, but I'm awful at it. Yes, in private. YES, I LOVE YOU JULIE. 

I had a hard time justifying NOT auditioning, so I sent Julie an e-mail explaining the source of my uneasiness. She told me that everone finds auditioning terrifying, but it's never as bad as one imagines. I said I had basically no acting experience. She said that enthusiasm was more important than experience. I mentioned that I'm a terrible singer. She mentioned that there are dance-specific roles. I asked if I could just dance for my audition, and not sing. She said no. I puttered about for a few days wondering what to do. 

I was taking a bath (not really sure why this detail sticks in mind) and it was close to Halloween: my birthday. My little sister poked her head in. 

How does your brain use your eyebrows?

How many cells are in a panda?

I am curious about TVs. Are there little people inside when you're watching? 

I wonder why junk food is made if it is unhealthy?

Aren't these magical? 

1: I turned 19!

My favorite part of birthdays is...mushiness.

Mushiness comes in sentiment form. People like that-friend-you-haven't-spoken-to-in-ages-because-you've-both-been-super-busy give you a call, or send you an e-mail, or (more commonly) write on your Facebook wall, and the two of you set up a time to Skype. 

Mushiness also comes in cake form. At 10:30pm, I was psetting in the lounge near my room (yes, on my birthday. I'm lame, I know. The firehose stops for no aging ritual, though) when the door behind me flung open with a bang and a hat was pulled onto my head (with more of a "swoosh" than a bang.)

The hat looked like this:

This hat has been worn by many generations of French House residents. It's something I try not to think about when I wear it. 

Anyway, I was led upstairs, where French House and a recently-baked chocolate cake lay in wait. After a chorus of "joyeux anniversaire", which ended on a lovely three-or-four-part chord, I proved that maturity has nothing whatsoever to do with age when I couldn't stop giggling and failed miserably at blowing out the candles. 

2: I was mass 1 of a driven coupled harmonic oscillator.

Sophie '14 and I are both taking 8.03, a class called "Waves and Vibrations." In our second unit, we did so many problems involving coupled oscillators that it seemed only right to become one. For a driving force, we stole a wheel from the wii in the TV lounge and labeled it dcos(wt), and bought some coils of wire to be our springs, labeled appropriately with spring constants k and k'. 

Jealous? Yeah, I thought so.

Other costumes on the night included a few from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the little stick figure man from xkcd, an array of characters from Doctor Who (the tardis, two weeping angels, The Doctor), a female Draco Malfoy, and Merlin (from the TV show.) It was pretty fantastic. Two shown below:

3: Food.

Pumpkin cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes with super-elaborate cream cheese frosting, candy corn. More pumpkin cupcakes. And so on. 

4: Some people here are way too good at carving pumpkins.

I don't think I've ever carved a pumpkin in my life, which is part of why the pumpkins that emerge at French House's annual pumpkin carving competition totally blow my mind. Examples from previous years, from one particularly talented pumpkin-carver (who also has a host of other talents):

Now, take a look at this:

Correct response, on your part: Woah, that girl looks so familiar!

That's RIGHT! She does! BECAUSE THAT'S THE GIRL IN THAT LAST PUMPKIN. Anyway, moving onto some pumpkins from this year: 

First person to figure out what all these pumpkins are (except for the one with the French House girl, since I kind of gave that away) wins. 

5: At the pumpkin drop, a pumpkin exploded and a piece hit me. 

Multiple pieces, actually. It was pretty dramatic. It was made even more dramatic by the fact that it was snowing heavily.

Boston's gift to me: the first time I've seen snow on my birthday. :)

Mystified, I tore off the flap, and a brand new book slid out. I yelped (alarming the desk worker) and dropped the envelope. I knew this book. I had read a very old, very tattered copy of it a couple weeks back, which a professor in the physics department lent to me. For privacy, let’s call him Professor Dumbledore, and let’s call the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. We had met to discuss my interest in astronomy, and our meeting ended something like this:

Me: Do you have any suggestions for things I could do to find out what it's like to be an astronomer?
Dumbledore: Hmm...well, actually, hang on. *pulls out old tattered book from shelf.* This is a wonderful book - it captures the lifestyle perfectly.
Me: Oh, wow! Thank you.
Dumbledore: Don’t lose it.
Me: I won’t. I’ll give it back within a week.
Dumbledore: Good. If you don’t, I will find out where you live and hunt you down.

Eek. Okay.

I flew through the book in a night or two, and fell in love with it. I returned it the next week, and told Professor Dumbledore that it had inspired me to find a UROP in astronomy.

Fast forward a few weeks, to the New House front desk, where I stood slack-jawed with my new book as it dawned on me where I had seen the sender's name before. In a daze, I slowly turned the book over, and read the name of the author. Let’s call him (again, for privacy) William Shakespeare. I picked the envelope off the ground, and re-read the name on the return address. William Shakespeare. Acting on a hunch, I flipped through the first few pages, and stopped when I reached blue ink. There was a note. “Dear Anna,” it read. “Best of luck with all your adventures. Keep looking up. Sincerely, WS.”

WHAT?! My brain exploded. I ran upstairs to show my friend, who knew how much I adored that book, and with what reluctance I returned it.

Friend: ...does Professor Dumbledore know William Shakespeare?
Me: I...don’t know. WAIT.
I flipped to the credits section. Sure enough, on the second page, there it was: Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.

WHAT?! I was stunned. What. A. Ridiculously. Nice. Thing. To. Do. I saw him the next day, at the weekly Physics Colloquium, and made a beeline over to his seat the moment the talk was over.

Me: Professor Dumbledore!
Dumbledore: Hi Anna.
Me: So...I got this package the other day. It was a copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Dumbledore: Fancy that.
Me: I thought you might have something to do with it.
Dumbledore: Perhaps.
Me: *gushing with thanks*
Dumbledore: No problem at all. I sent William an e-mail saying how much you liked the book, and he said - hey, why don’t I send her a copy.
Me: *blown away by how nice people can be*
Dumbledore (with a crinkly smile): You know, Anna - as professors, we want to help you find what you love. That’s what we’re here for. If a student comes to MIT and leaves knowing what he or she loves, then we have done our job.

I hope you’ll agree that this was an incredibly kind gesture, both from Professor Dumbledore and from Mr. Shakespeare. I was (and remain) totally flabbergasted. An e-mail I got from my mom sums it up nicely:

“I am continually amazed at how personable the MIT professors are, at least the ones you come across, which admittedly is a self-selecting subset of the total professor population. I would never have expected a professor to take the time to write to a colleague to tell him how much an undergraduate likes his book. I gather Shakespeare is quite well known, so it’s not as if it’s his first book and he is dying to have an undergraduate notice him. And then for Shakespeare to actually send the book…”

She’s right. I’ve reached out to a number of physics professors (I can't speak for other departments) with questions about psets and/or life decisions; I get responses to my e-mails within a day or two (or, often, within minutes) and have never had trouble setting up a meeting. As an example, here is the response I got from Professor Dumbledore, back when I first got in touch with him:

“Dear Anna,

I would be delighted to talk sometime next week. Please suggest 3 times that would be convenient and we'll find something that works for both of us.

Yours,

-APWBD”

Before coming here, one of my biggest concerns was that I wouldn’t find the professors approachable. My high school was small, and I could swing by a teacher’s office anytime to chat. I was scared of losing this accessibility. I've learned, though, that while one can't necessarily swing by a professor’s office anytime (he or she will often not be there) help conversations and guidance are always given at Hogwarts in the MIT Physics department to those that ask for it take the initiative to reach out for them.

"Can you give an example of something international students have done in the past to make them qualified for MIT?"

My mind went blank. Qualified? What a strange word. I thought of job applications. "Explain how you are qualified for this position." List your skills for us. How many programming languages do you know? I thought of food stamps, financial aid, sports tournaments. Numbers, income, scores. Cutoffs, requirements, eligibility. I thought of math competition trophies and science olympiad medals, none of which I have or have ever had.

I thought about how the MIT application was nothing like a job application. "Tell us about something you do for fun."

McGreggor and I responded the same way we responded to all the questions about minimum SAT scores and minimum GPA and what constitutes a good extracurricular activity: that the only official qualification for coming here is a certain level of English profiency, and that's only because all classes are administered in English. There are no minimums, because, ironically, the institute of numbers-loving folk recognize that numbers don't tell the whole story. I said, in effect, there there's no such thing as being "qualified" to come here.

I'd like to take that back, because of what happened on Friday.

I had an icky week. I had four exams in four days, one of which didn't go well at all. On Thursday night, after my last exam was over, I stayed up until a totally unreasonable hour doing my 8.03 pset, which I forgot to turn in until I was almost back in my room. That meant I had to double back, at around 4pm on Friday, and make the trek to the third floor of the physics department, which was precisely the opposite of what I was in the mood to do.

I don't need to tell you that everything seems worse when you're exhausted - trivial issues are crises and anything short of success dooms you to eternal failure. Needless to say, I wanted some company for de-stressing purposes. I turned the corner towards the literature department (hoping to find my lit professor) and came face-to-face with Davie '12, a French House friend. He waved. I waved. He said that I looked tired. I think that I nodded. He gave me a hug. I got in the elevator, and as the doors slid shut and the lights started blinking "2...3...4", I realized that I wasn't really composed enough to hold a conversation with my professor - and sent the elevator back to 1. When the doors opened, I rushed out, hoping that Davie would still be around - he was, and this is why friends are wonderful. He could tell I was upset about something, and what it was didn't matter in the slightest.

Davie: I have half an hour before German class; we can do whatever you'd like.
Me: Let's go for a walk. It's nice out.
Davie: Okay. Feel free to either talk about it, or just be silent. Either is fine.
Me: *silent*
*ten minutes later*
Davie: Do you want to be distracted?
Me: YES.
Davie: Let's find horse chestnuts. They're fun to open.

We didn't find any - something else had gotten to them first (squirrels? stressed MIT students? stressed squirrels?) since empty shells and their contents lay scattered on the grass. Instead, we did a little climbing and sat on some branches, while Davie told me about the genetics of trees. Trees are fascinating, he said, because they're mostly unrelated to each other; they're genetically closer to flowers or fruit or other predecessors. When evolution rolls on for long enough, all kinds of plants seem to adopt tree form. I talked about how, back in London, my friends and I used to hide in trees and alarm passers-by by bursting into song; Davie said that he used to do the same.

At 4:10, Davie was back in German class, and I, feeling much better, went to the library to check my e-mail. First item in my inbox:

"Anna,
I am really in German class now, but I thought you might benefit from a friendly null-email of good wishes. Consider this so.
:-)
Davie"

The following evening, a group of us were cooking fried rice when Davie got back from a run. He handed me a complete horse chestnut, and showed me how to open it. As I came to understand the satisfaction of peeling open a horse chestnut, I also came to understand that this was what made Davie qualified to come to MIT.

Sure, he's a beast, academically and otherwise. He's written a zillion articles for nature newsletters, and goes running all the time (I don't think he actually walks anywhere.) But the point is that he sent off a quick reassuring e-mail during class; that he used his nature know-how to distract a friend; that he stopped during his run to pick up a horse chestnut from the ground.

I take back my answer to that international student. Sorry. There is a way to be qualified to come here, and that's by being thoughtful: by applying whatever talents and quirky interests you have to helping other people. It can be as trivial as cheering up a bummed friend, or helping a frustrated underclassman with a pset at 3am. Actually, I'd modify that "can be" to a "should be", because I'd argue that those trivial things are the most telling; they are what you do without promise of recognition, when you don't stand to win awards for "Character" or "Leadership" that you get to put on your transcript.

I'm not an admissions officer, but I have faith that there's a way to find that attitude in an application, whether it's through teacher recommendations or essays or interviews, and that it holds more value than a medal. I also believe that it's difficult to fake. Maybe. I hope so, anyway, because MIT would be a sorry place if its students were unwilling to pause for horse chestnuts.

Thanks, Davie!

(2) and (3) are clearly not socially acceptable options at this hour. (1) is less than desirable, since you've been trying for hours already and can tell that you've reached the limits of your productivity. 

Conclusion: (4) is your only option. You figure that the world is over and that you're going to fail out of MIT soon, so you might as well pack up your bags and go home now. As you pull out your suitcase from under your bed, you suddenly remember that there are two chem majors who live in your hall. One of them stays up until 3 or 4am on a regular basis; you check, and sure enough, the light in his room is on. 

You're scared of knocking, though. He's an MIT student. An upperclassman. By definition, he is currently super busy. Even worse, you feel that if he helps you, you'll owe him pset help in return, but you really don't know enough about graduate-level chemistry and complex analysis and goodness-knows-what-else to do that. 

So, you don't knock. You and your friends make your best guess, and call it a night. 

-

Experience has suggested to me that this, much like using NaBH₄ to reduce an ester, is not a productive approach. 

Here's what we French House sophomores do when we get stuck on chemistry pset problems, and help in the form of a TA or professor is not available: we wander through the living group until we find one of our resident chemistry majors, and ask whatever questions we have. Same goes for physics. The kind upperclassman will almost inevitably reach for a whiteboard marker, which is why I've never seen a blank whiteboard in French House; they're always covered with a combination of organic synthesis reactions and kinematics equations.

We never beg for help. If anything, we are begged to ask for help more often. To quote one Particularly Enthusiastic Chemist: "YOU GUYS DON'T ASK ME ENOUGH QUESTIONS ABOUT ORGO! YOU SHOULD ASK ME MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT ORGO!!!! I LOVE HELPING PEOPLE WITH ORGO!!!!"

I guess Particularly Enthusiastic Chemist didn't realize that he had gotten his point across, because he continued with "I LOVE HELPING PEOPLE WITH THEIR ORGO QUESTIONS SO ASK ME WHEN YOU HAVE QUESTIONS!" 

Seriously. I’m not making this up. People here love to teach. A huge contingent of MIT students tutor, both here on campus (for our fellow undergrads) and at local community centers and neighboring schools. We teach classes on topics of our choice to middle and high school students. We’re excited about projectile motion or lockpicking or carbonyl compound reactions or how to build rockets - and we want everyone else to be, too. 

This isn't to say that you should ask upperclassmen for help all the time. They are busy, and you shouldn't use them as a resource instead of your TAs and professors (whose job it is to help you, and whose advice will probably be more directly related to what you need to know for an exam.) However, you should know that your peers are usually happy to lend you a hand, so you shouldn't feel shy or embarrassed. 

This eagerness to help used to make me feel horribly guilty, because I felt that I had nothing to give back.

Take Particularly Enthusiastic Chemist, for example. He helps me with introductory organic chemistry. But could I help him while he studies for graduate-level chem classes? Could I help my physics major friend while he psets for Quantum II?

SURE! - if by "help" you mean "smile at". Otherwise, I’m totally useless. These upperclassmen give, and give, and give - and I have nothing to give back. 

I expressed this concern to Particularly Enthusiastic Chemist, and he laughed at me. “You have no idea,” he told me, “how often I asked [insert Math Major’s name here] for help with [some math class with a fancy name that I don’t know anything about]. Like...it was every second. I wouldn't have been able to do a single problem on my psets without him. I didn't even know what the problems were asking without him. I felt really bad because I could never help him with anything, so I’m paying him back by doing the same thing for others.”

“Oh, I see!” I said, not seeing at all, and thinking about how guilty I felt. 

Fast forward to last night. I was kneeling on the floor of my room, helping a freshman with a couple of 8.01 problems. The whiteboard in my room was covered with equations describing projectile motion. As we arrived at the answer, she thanked me and said that she felt bad; "you must be busy too! I feel bad for using up your time!"

HAH.

If she only knew. I laughed, and began explaining that I got help all the time from our resident chemists and physicists - and realized that I was echoing what Particularly Enthusiastic Chemist had been telling me all along. I understood what he meant. Yes, I <3 physics with all my heart. I also happen to have a particular soft spot for projectile motion, and masses and strings and pulleys and ramps. It was more than that, though. After this year, Particularly Enthusiastic Chemist and a big contingent of other upperclassmen who have been tremendously patient and generous and helpful over my first two years will be gone. I'll never have helped them with a single pset problem. I will never pay them back. Instead, I'll turn and face the other way: at the freshmen and to-be 2016s and to-be 2017s (AHHHH 2017? I'M SO OLD), and when one of them is stuck on a pset problem at some obscene hour of the morning - watch out, fellow upperclassmen. I will fight you for first dibs on helping. 

This post is about the classes I'm taking - and is a case in xkcd's point. Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to...

8.03: Physics III (Waves and Oscillations)

Professor van Oudennarden (pronounced “ow*-duh-nar-done”) kicked off our first lecture with a demonstration. He placed a glass next to some speakers, and turned up the volume (I covered my ears) until it shattered with a bang.

*In contrast to "ood", an alien species from Doctor Who characterized by baldness and tentacles sprouting from the face. Contrast:

              

The pre-8.03 reaction: my level of awe and wonder is inversely proportional to how much my ears hurt. Also, because I didn’t expect the glass to break, the BANG almost gave me a heart attack.

The post-8.03 reaction: if we struck the glass, it would ring with a frequency identical to that produced within the speakers. The speakers produced this frequency with two magnets, whose alternating polarities drove a coil, which pulled a membrane back and forth, which in turn pushed air out in the form of sound waves. These sound waves travelled to the glass and caused the molecules to vibrate. As we turned up the volume, the molecules in the glass vibrated more and more violently, until they finally broke free from their crystal structure. Awe and wonder: the vibrations that caused the molecules in the glass to fall apart from each other are the same vibrations of a fluttering diaphragm in the heart of a speaker.

Speaking of molecules, I'm also taking...
 

5.13: Organic Chemistry II

Our first unit is on “amines”, a class of organic compounds that contain nitrogen.

The pre-5.13 reaction: who cares? How do you even pronounce “amines”, anyway?”

The post-5.13 reaction: you pronounce ‘amines’ uh-means, and they have exciting properties that your human existence depends on. Do you recognize this guy?

This is dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, which means that it helps the cells in your brain talk to each other. In other words: it allows you to function. Have you heard of Parkinson’s Disease? The condition is associated with particularly low levels of dopamine in the brain.

Neuroscience nerd that I am, I freaked out and ran upstairs when I saw this in the textbook. Daniel L. ‘12 was the first poor soul I encountered.

Me: DANIEL
Daniel: Yes?
Me: DOPAMINE.
Daniel: ...What about it?
Me: Dopamine. Dope. Amine. DOPE AMINE! DOPAMINE IS AN AMINE!!!!!!
Daniel: Yes!

YES indeed! Molecules are cool. Brains are cool.  

Speaking of brains, I'm also taking...

9.01: Introduction to Neuroscience

Right now, you’re reading this post.

The pre-9.01 reaction: Um…yes I am. Cool story, bro. 

The post-9.01 reaction: Woah. That’s extraordinary. You’re a blob of cells, and not only are you reading and understanding this, but you are thinking about the fact that you are reading and understanding this. Yay brains! Yay neurons! You have them to thank for all those things you take for granted – consciousness, your ability to store memories of the past while imagining the future.

You have about 100 billion neurons, busy sending electrical signals and converting the signals they receive into chemicals. I would like to thank my neurons for permitting me to learn about...

8.286: The Early Universe

Look around you.

The pre-8.286 reaction: I wonder what the carpet smells like.

The post-8.286 reaction: For every particle I see, a precursor existed in the Big Bang, in a patch of material about 10^-28 cm across. All the particles in my left pinky toe. All the particles of a star about to go supernova. All the particles in my computer, in that tree outside, in the river, in the moon. Inside this patch of material, gravity acted in reverse: as a repulsive force. This caused the patch to double in size every 10^-27 seconds, which means, in technical terms, that the universe expanded in what is known as “an outrageously, mind-bogglingly fast rate.” 

This is more related than you would think to...

21L.301: Doing Right

This is a seminar-style course on ethics in literature. It’s co-taught by my literature professor from last semester (Ruth Perry - she's wonderful) and the head of the philosophy department. We haven’t had our first class yet, so I don’t have much to say about it, but expect to hear plenty more as the semester progresses. What I CAN say is that every particle in every printed letter of each book we’re going to read is descended from the same patch of repulsive material as the particles in my fingertips. And that I can attribute my enjoyment of the text to the dopamine in my brain, and the neurons that contain it. And that this act of saying and your act of hearing rely on vibrations in vocal cords and air and eardrums.

Doesn’t that make you happy?

1) "It seems like the food availability on campus is a little scarce. Do you have time to cook, even if it's just once every two weeks as part of a co-op? Or do most kids just end up eating whatever is quickly made?"

2) "If you (or anyone you know) has a UROP, does that become your primary extracurricular activity? Or do you have time to pursue other things as well as research?

3) "Do you know if [the Koch Cancer center] takes people on for UROPs?"

4) "If you had to make the choice to go to MIT again, would you? I'm a little embarrassed asking this, because work has never scared me off before, but sometimes it seems like MIT students are overwhelmed because the workload is impossible, not simply difficult."

-

QUESTION 1

In my opinion, there are four aspects to eating on campus. 1) dorm dining halls, 2) convenience stores, 3) cooking, 4) eating out

THE DORM DINING OPTION

Depending on where you live, you either have:

1) A mandatory dining plan (Maseeh, Next, McCormick, Simmons, Baker)
2) The option of signing up for a dining plan (everywhere else)

You're free to eat at any dining hall: the meal plans are not dorm-specific. If, for example, you lived at Simmons, you could eat breakfast there, have lunch somewhere closer to campus (like Baker or Maseeh), and then eat dinner at Next House. Even if you're not on a meal plan, you can still eat at a dining hall: they accept cash and TechCash.

From what I hear, the food is pretty decent, but I can't speak from experience. The biggest problem with this option is probably cost, and flexibility: to get what you paid for, you'll have to eat a certain number of meals in the dining hall. 

GROCERY SHOPPING

LaVerde's is a supermarket/convenience store on the first floor of the Student Center. It tends to be quite pricey, so most students opt for shopping at Shaw's (about a 10-minute walk down Mass Ave from the Student Center) or Trader Joe's/Whole Food's (further away, but a shuttle runs on weekends). However, it's a good option when you just need to pick up a carton of milk or orange juice and don't feel like trekking all the way off campus. Also, it's worth mentioning (although this doesn't have anything to do with food availability on campus) that Shaw's gives a discount to MIT students: you get 5% off with your ID.

MacGregor (the dorm) also has a convenience store, which sells snack foods and things like ramen and microwaveable meals. And toothbrushes.

COOKING

Most students who opt out of the dining plan cook for themselves, in some form or another. I live in French House, which has its own system. We cook dinner in teams of four, which means that I cook once a week and have a three- to four-course dinner cooked for me all other nights of the week. Our dinners cost about $3 on average, since we buy everything in bulk (which comes out pretty cheap when scaled for 27 people.) It's a pretty sweet deal - and, to be honest, I think that I would have to be on a dining plan otherwise, because I would find it very difficult (and totally exhausting) to cook for myself every night. I had to do that over the summer (when I was living in MacGregor) and got really sick of cereal, peanut butter sandwiches, and pasta*.

*As sick as one can get of those things, anyway. Let's be honest: Cheerios, peanut butter, and tomato sauce are all pretty fantastic.

I do know some people in non-dining residences who end up ordering out most nights or microwaving frozen meals, but I'm not sure I could function like that. I would imagine that some of them set up mini cooking systems.

EATING OUT
The Student Center has a bunch of food options, like Subway, Dunkin Donuts, Cambridge Grill (salad, hamburgers, pizza, that kind of thing), Anna's (Mexican - extremely popular with some, extremely unpopular with others), and a couple of fast food Japanese, Mediterranean, and Indian places. If you're coming from class at the other end of the Infinite, the Stata Center has a big cafeteria that I like quite a lot, as does the Whitehead Institute. Most of these places (in fact, all of them, as far as I know) also have options for breakfast and dinner. People also venture off-campus, to Central and Kendall Square (though this takes longer) or to the food trucks, which park near Kendall.

QUESTION 2

Depends on the UROP. I know some people who spend all their non-class waking hours in lab, and some people who just spend a couple hours every other day on the project. I think that the minimum amount of time required for a UROP is six hours per week, which would definitely allow for another extracurricular activity, assuming you don't overload on coursework and manage your time well. Something else to take into consideration is what you want to get out of the UROP, and this is something that you will discuss with your supervisor (most likely during your interview) - if you want to be seriously involved in the project, and get your name on a paper, then it will almost certainly have to be one of your, if not your only, primary extracurricular activity.

QUESTION 3

Excerpt from the Koch Center site:

"Undergraduate students from across the campus have the opportunity to collaborate with Koch Institute faculty through the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP). The program allows students to gain hands-on experience in a laboratory setting while pursuing their research projects."

Honestly, I don't know of any centers here that don't take UROPs.

QUESTION 4

Yes. That's not to say, though, that I wouldn't have been happy elsewhere. I think that, in the end, once you make your decision, your happiness level is a function of how well you've taken advantage of being wherever you are. 

It's true that MIT students sometimes make life nearly impossible for themselves, either by taking too many classes or trying to juggle too many extracurricular activities (I'm definitely guilty of the latter.) It's in our nature. There's no shame in acknowledging that you've broken the difficult-impossible boundary, and dropping a class or an extracurricular activity. I don't think that the workload is inherently impossible: most of the horror stories I hear seem to come from the MIT kid tendency to push ourselves to our limits - and beyond.

-

More questions? Send them my way. annah@mit.edu.  

Apparently not.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I was staying at my friend Daniel's house in New Jersey. I opened my computer, and found an e-mail that read:

"Professor Alan Guth has agreed to serve as your advisor. Please use him as a resource for helping you make the most of your time at MIT, and for working towards completion of your Physics degree. Please do stop by and see your advisor on registration day."

I shrieked and slammed my computer shut. I sheepishly opened it up again, re-read the e-mail, and confirmed that it still said "Alan Guth." At the bottom of the e-mail, Professor Guth's e-mail address, fax number, phone number, office number, and home address* were listed.

*That part is a lie. I do not actually have Alan Guth's home address. However, it's worth mentioning that for a number of people here, "office number" and "home address" are not entirely distinct.

At this point, I'll take a little detour and explain the student side of how advisors are assigned, at least in the physics department. I had to send in a form and indicate:

1) Whether I'm more interested in experimental or theoretical physics (or whether I'm not sure yet/have no strong preference)

2) Whether I have an interest in astrophysics, and/or atomic and optical physics, and/or biophysics, and/or condensed matter physics, and/or particle physics, and/or plasma physics, and/or "other", or am not sure yet/have no strong preference. 

3) What advice I hope to receive from my advisor (ex. course requirements, how to plan a career in physics, finding a UROP)

I honestly don't remember what I put, but I do know that I specified an interest in astrophysics, which is probably a large part of the reason I was assigned Alan Guth. 

Anyway, detour over. 

My immediate response to the message from the physics department was to e-mail my mom. I quote: "OH MY GOD. I JUST GOT AN E-MAIL FROM THE PHYSICS DEPARTMENT. ALAN GUTH IS MY ADVISOR. I. AM. FREAKING. OUT."

I sprinted downstairs, came to a screeching halt 2 millimeters from the screen door (phew), flung it open, and waved my hands in the air like a crazy person.

Daniel's mom: "She's excited about something!"

Affirmative. I spewed exclamations (no idea if they were even words) for a couple of minutes, before Daniel interrupted with: "do you think he'll remember you as the girl who yelled at him at the 8.012 final?"

Correction. I did not yell at Alan Guth. I just firmly requested that I receive my exam paper.

Another friend responded to my news with "Hell yeah. Downside is, he might be too busy to advise (?)"

I admit that the thought had crossed my mind - lurking somewhere beneath the "this is the greatest thing ever!" I began having second thoughts. Let's be honest: Alan Guth is probably a very busy man. According to his faculty page, he "has explored the question of whether it is in principle possible to ignite inflation in a hypothetical laboratory, thereby creating a new universe" - and I'm going to ask him to take the time to explore, with me, the question of whether it is in principle possible to major in physics, fulfill pre-med requirements, do UROPs in observatories and labs, then go on to medical school and become a neurologist. In one very-not-hypothetical lifetime. He's unravelling the fabric of the cosmos, and I'm going to walk into his office and unravel into a babbling incoherent mess about how I think everything is interesting and don't know what to do with my life and can barely decide what flavor of ice cream to get, let alone pick classes.

Uh...right.

What if that's just an annoying chore for him, to do along with his *actual, world-changing* work? I expressed my concern to a couple of physics upperclassmen earlier this week, when we were sitting in a room grading the 8.01 Advanced Standing Examination.

Me: So...does anyone here have Alan Guth as an advisor?
*Silence*
Random Girl: Wait, WHAT? GUTH? Dude. GUTH IS THE MAN.
Me: ...is he?
Random Girl: YES. GUUUUUTH!
Me: ...
Random Guy: I took a class with him.
Me: Is he nice?
Random Guy: Oh, yeah. He's a really nice guy. Really friendly.
Random Girl: Yes! He's SO nice, and really helpful! GUTH IS THE MAN!

That was a huge relief to hear. I guess I won't know any of this for sure until the school year begins and I actually begin meeting with him - but I have hope.

Earlier today, I got an e-mail from "Alan" about our first advising meeting. He signed the e-mail "Alan." Eek. Maybe I'll waltz in on Sept 6 and say "ALAN! Hello, Alan. Can I call you Al?" On second thoughts, maybe I won't, because he might not catch my reference to the movie Aladdin.

Apologies for all the fangirlism, but I'm really excited.  

And got a 10. I assume it was for managing to make a sound, since I definitely don't look awesome when I play the trumpet (take a look in the mirror while blowing up a balloon, and you'll see what I mean).

Nine years later (NINE YEARS? I'M SO OLD) I signed up to play in the pit orchestra for Assassins, a show performed by MIT's Musical Theater Guild. The music and lyrics were written by Stephen Sondheim, who also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story. It's been a year since I last played the trumpet (I brought it to campus with me, but barely touched it freshman year) and I've been experiencing a nice, emotional, occasionally painful (my lips hurt!) reconnection with my lovely set of brass tubes.

I've also had to play a flugelhorn for the first time.

In case you're unfamiliar with the difference between a flugelhorn and a trumpet, here's a picture of a trumpet:

They're about the same length, but a flugelhorn is fatter. It's like what would happen to a trumpet, if a trumpet ate every day like I ate last night (I had the most ridiculously gigantic plate of fish + sweet potato fries + calamari EVER) .

Brass instruments are fun. I once got a call from our apartment's porter in London; he said that a neighbor had been phoning in to complain about my trumpet-playing.

Whoops.

Fortunately, no one has complained about my playing here (yet). Most dorms have a music room (as far as I'm aware), which is a little room equipped with a piano and music stands, so I troop downstairs once a day to practice, trumpet in one hand and flugelhorn in the other - and a backpack full of mutes.

Trumpet mutes are some of the funkiest-looking objects ever created. Here are two examples:

The first is a straight mute, and the second is a cup mute. The brown cork-y part goes into the bell of the trumpet, and mutes the sound in different ways. I was familiar with these two before Assassins, but had never come across one of these before:

This is a harmon mute, so-named because it puts you in harmony with your neighbors, who can no longer hear your squawking tones*. The little thing sticking out of the bottom (opposite the cork part) is a "stem". It can be pulled all the way out of the mute body, and music will specify whether you should take the stem out, push it all the way in, or pull it most of the way out.

*I made that up.

I puchased the mutes, and borrowed the flugelhorn (from fellow MTG trumpeter Matt P.) the day of our first rehearsal with the cast (the singers) - so I didn't get a chance to practice before then.

Disaster.

My first act was to place the flugelhorn on a stand that Matt lent me, which looked something like this:

So far so good. When it was time to switch instruments, I dropped the trumpet on my lap, swung the flugelhorn to my lips, blew - and no sound came out. I was silent for the rest of the piece. Finally, I tapped Matt on the shoulder.

Me: MATT! THE FLUGELHORN WON'T MAKE ANY NOISE!

Matt stared at me. He stared at the flugelhorn. He reached his hand into the flugelhorn's bell and pulled out the stand. He then set up the stand properly, which made it look something more like this:

Um...right. I knew that. Thanks Matt.

It was still a bit of a challenge to get any noise out of the instrument, since the amount of air required for a note is different than on a trumpet. Pulling the giant black wedge out of the bell was a good start, though.

The next disastrous incident came during a particularly fast piece, in which I have to switch between mutes (STRAIGHT, CUP, NO MUTE, CUP, HARMON WITH NO STEM, HARMON WITH STEM, STRAIGHT, NO MUTE) at speeds rivalling those of Hurricane Irene.

Like Hurricane Irene, I left chaos in my wake. At one point, I flung a straight mute through the air and nearly hit the guy two seats down. It rolled out a big arc on the floor, and all eyes followed. My trumpet fell over a couple of times. In my frenzy, I smacked the mouthpiece into my upper teeth and threw a pencil onto the floor.

I had been nervous before about playing in front of strangers, and all this flustering didn't help my situation. Fortunately, my fellow players were patient, and encouraging; Matt kept pressing me to "play out", and "play with confidence" - and finally, three or four songs in, I did. 

Don't judge MIT's performing arts scene on my klutziness! You'll be surprised (and, if you're like me, a little overwhelmed) to learn that that we have, here on campus, over a dozen dance groups, a couple of literary societies, and a zillion musical and theater ensembles.

The MTG singers are fantastic. The rest of the pit orchestra is fantastic. The show will be fantastic. Performances begin on September 2nd and run for a couple of weekends, so you should check out the schedule and come see MIT's performing arts in action! Freshmen, as a helpful commenter pointed out, tickets are only $3 for you, so take advantage of your discount :)

I promise that my mute-flinging days are over, so don't worry: your face has nothing to fear.

As I realized my mistake and erased the year, I realized that 2008 was three years ago. People born on 18 August 2008 are walking and talking all over the globe.

It was a terrifying moment. 

Feeling old got me thinking about the impending school year; the end of August is coming up soon (how is this possible? Did July even happen?) and that will mark the end of my 19th summer.

Feeling old also got me reflecting on those 19 Junes, Julys, and Augusts*. I figure that you might be curious about how I spent my summers (particularly those in high school, since there's an entire section on the MIT admissions site about it) so here's a breakdown. If you aren't interested in my pre- high school days, skip down to Summer 13 (the numbers correspond to my age at the time).

*It took me forever to write this sentence. Ideas on how to pluralize things like "June" and "July"? I had to stop myself from typing "Julies". 

Summer 0: I cried, and ate. And pooped and peed. Basically, not much has changed since then, except that I now do these things less frequently and with more consideration for other people.

The fact that I made faces like this is further evidence that not much has changed:

Summers 1 & 2: Daycare. I remember absolutely nothing about this.

Summer 3: Montessori school. I remember nothing, but apparently "Montessori school" means that I went around to a bunch of different stations (math, language, reading, etc) at my own pace.

In the fall, I started kindergarten.

Summers 4 & 5: Summer camp run by my school. The usual little kid stuff: arts and crafts, games, singing, dancing, running around. I received my first report card, and decorated it with a drawing that I labeled "bath cat". I haven't the slightest clue what that means, so if you do, please enlighten me.

Summers 6-8: Mandarin summer camp, also run by my school. I poured tea, cooked spring rolls and dumplings, sang songs in Chinese, and dressed up as a Chinese opera singer. At some point, I probably learned some Mandarin, too.

Summer 9: My family moved to London, and I started Middle School in the fall.

Summers 9-11: Sports camp, run by my school (oh, to be young and athletic once more...) I remember fencing (foil), archery, football ("soccer"), tennis, capture-the-flag, and missing the bus to the golfing range; I was super upset, because I had to spend the day playing with the little kids, and we all know that being 9 years old means being above that.

Summers 12: Basketball camp. Not a clue why I decided to do this.

-

And now: HIGH SCHOOL!

Summers 12-15: CTY

It'll be difficult to do justice to this in a few sentences, but I'll try. This is an academic summer program: you take one or two three-week long college-level classes, some of which you can get credit for (I didn't do any of those.) There are six-ish hours of lecture during the day, and a bunch of different activity options in the late afternoon ("cloud-watching" is there pretty regularly, as are "acting improv", "competitive number counting", and "fun with duct tape"). There are campuses all over the US, although everyone knows that Lancaster (PA) is the best site*. The classes I took were (in order): Archaeology (which I signed up for in order to study dinosaurs - whoops), Astronomy, Cryptology, and Game Theory.

*Really. Ask anyone. And by "anyone" I mean "me and the people I went to camp there with." 

I loved CTY. I loved the classes, but more than anything I loved the people - and I'm still friends with a number of them today. Occasionally, I bump into a couple of my fellow Lancaster-ians on MIT campus.

For more information on the program, here's the official website, and here's a better website.

Summer 15: A French language program.

I spent lived with a host family in Antibes that didn't speak a word of English - and my conversational French improved more in those two weeks than in years of classes at school. You can't compare an in-the-classroom learning environment with actually going to the country and being forced to speak the language in order to communicate.

Summer 16: SSP (yay! more three-letter acronyms!)

There were 36 of us on the New Mexico campus, out in Socorro (more commonly known as "The Middle Of Nowhere"). During the day, we had lectures on topics in physics, astronomy, calculus, and programming (Python). We were divided into teams of three, and each team picked a near-earth asteroid (2002 KL6 - I LOVE YOU! And miss taking pictures of you!). Over the six weeks, we collected observations of our asteroid (the 1-3am observatory session made for great team bonding experiences) and used our newly-acquired physics/astronomy/calculus/programming skills to calculate its orbit. That last night, most of us pulled all-nighters putting our final orbit determination report together - but man, was that sunrise beautiful. Another SSP alum is our very own Chris S. '11 :)

We hosted guest speakers, ranging from a CIA case officer to a guy doing research on parisitic infections at the University of Washington. We (well, some of us) played Settlers of Catan at 2am, and stayed up all night psetting (a good preview of MIT life). Like CTY, I made friends here who I'm close to even now - and I see my old room-mate around MIT :) (hi Demetra!)

Also, this summer marked the first time I saw the Milky Way - or any dark night sky, for that matter. I cried (don't judge - IT WAS BEAUTIFUL, OKAY?).

For more information, here's the website. There's also a nice summary on the MIT Admissions site.

Summer 17: Research at the Sandia National Laboratories

I spent a summer back in New Mexico (can't get enough of that place) working in the Cognitive Science department of Sandia National Laboraties. I was the research assistant to the niece of my old Robotics mentor (woo team 1884!) - he heard of the job posting, remembered that I was interested in neuroscience (I spent half my time with him babbling about how brains are awesome), and encouraged me to apply. I lived with a stranger for seven weeks, went to work with strangers - and had such an adventure that it took TWO BLOG POSTS to describe (here and here).

Summer 18: Research at MIT

...which brings us to now! I'm working with a grad student to analyze huge datasets of genes from people with various stages of colorectal cancer: we use statistical tests and biology software to try and identify pathways that might be associated with the disease. Right now, most of my time is spent learning, and coding in, Perl, which has been, well - let's just say that I think I scream more while coding in Perl than while riding a rollercoaster or watching a scary movie. And that's saying something.

-

So, those are the 19. All have zipped by - soon, it'll be time to start thinking about Summer 20, which is hard to believe. 

I hope you're having a great summer! 

Don't

It was sometime in the middle of October, fall semester of freshman year - and it had been one of those days.

I overslept, rushed to first period lecture without eating breakfast, nearly fell asleep in every lecture as a result, rushed from my last class to my first extracurricular activity of the day, rushed back to French House to eat dinner, crammed food down my throat without speaking a word to anyone (no time for words), rushed back out to my next extracurricular commitment, then rushed home at 8:30-9pm or so, to finally get some work done. I had a bunch of p-sets and exams to worry about, and this, combined with the stress from the rest of the week, was taking a toll on my sanity.

When I'm stressed, I need my friends. I need an ear, a shoulder, words - comfort. When I don't have the energy to monitor what I say or do, I need familiarity.

At that moment, the novelty of college and MIT lost its charm. I was sick of seeing unfamiliar faces everywhere when I walked around campus. I wanted professors who had known me for years, like my teachers from high school. I wanted my old room-mate back (my sister), and the freedom to randomly call up a friend to chat, without worrying about whether this person would find my behavior forward or strange.

Solution to a stressful, unbearable week: phone a friend. I dragged myself to the lounge on my floor, found it deserted, and pulled out my phone. My fingers froze one millimeter from the keypad. Who could I call? My first instinct was to call a friend from London, but a combination of expense and time difference ruled that out. I had a couple of old friends who, like me, had crossed the ocean to attend university in the States - but they didn't pick up. I panicked, and, with increasing nausea, realized that there was no one at MIT that I felt comfortable calling.

I sense some incredulity from you.

"Room-mate?" you ask.

Didn't have one. Will probably never have one, since French House is made up almost entirely of singles.

"Dorm-mate?"

I honestly didn't know any of them well enough. I was so busy that when I actually came back to the dorm, it was to sleep. Because of one commitment or another, I ended up missing both our beginning-of-the-year bond-with-the-freshmen picnic, and our living group photo for the yearbook. While I'm sure any of them would have been happy to talk to me, I didn't have the energy to potentially fall apart in front of a near-stranger.

"Friends from CPW? From your pre-orientation program?"

=~ m/people I hadn't seen in weeks/

(uh, sorry - I've been doing a bit too much Perl programming recently). I had fashioned my own new little MIT world, but had thrown so much energy into trying new things (every club, ever) that I neglected to maintain those friendships.

I made my first friend at MIT because I appreciate a good nerd joke.

It was the second night of CPW, I think, and I was dancing on the roof of Baker House when I suddenly noticed that the guy across from me had an awesome shirt. It said:

Recursion, noun. Def: see "recursion"

SCORE! A geeky reference I understood. I felt compelled to compliment the stranger on his excellent choice of attire.

Me: I like your shirt!
Guy: *dancing*
Me: HEY. I like your shirt. (it was loud up there)
Guy: *dancing*
Me: I. LIKE. YOUR. SHIRT. (like I said, it was loud up there)

He looked thrilled.

Guy: YAY! I love being in a place where people actually get that reference!

Over the next five hours, he taught me to play pool and we talked about all kinds of things that I no longer remember. More importantly, he had a seemingly-endless supply of ridiculously delicious throat lozenges (hey, I had tonsillitis. I know where my priorities lie) which automatically made him my best friend ever. After CPW, we went our separate ways, but kept in touch - and Sam B. '14 remains, over a year later, one of my best friends here at the 'tvte.

Pre-orientation

I spent my pre-orientation program (FUP: the Freshman Urban Program) on crutches. Unfortunately, it rained for approximately 70% of the time, and it's hard to hold up an umbrella when your arms are busy transporting the rest of your body around the place. I found out how kind people can be, though - the strangers in my group took turns walking extra slowly and following me around with an umbrella, and everyone had an amazing amount of patience with me. Being on crutches and slowing down the group is a horrible feeling, but less so when everyone remains cheerful and understanding. When classes started in the fall, it made a tremendous difference to walk into a gigantic lecture hall and be able to pick out the familiar faces of fellow FUPers (sweet alliteration, there).

Orientation

During the "hey, old bloggers - come and meet the new freshman bloggers" event, Cam T. offered to drive me to Ikea when it emerged that all I had brought to campus was one medium-sized suitcase and one backpack (it's tough living overseas, okay?).

My first thought: WOAH. IT'S CAM T. THE BLOGGER. IN THE FLESH.
My second thought: I feel weird going to Ikea in a fancy dress (it was the last day of sorority recruitment, so I was all dressed up)
My third thought: Well...I really need to go to Ikea.

So, I went - and had an awesome time. Cam is one of the few people I know who can make an adventure out of an Ikea trip - and, like Sam, is still one of my best friends here on campus.

French House

I got a lot of comments from my dorm-mates first semester, about the fact that I was never around. "We miss you!" they said. "You should come home more often!" I remember walking into the kitchen for dinner late, one day, and being totally taken-aback by the chorus of "ANNAAA!"'s. They were always happy to see me, even though they didn't know me, and I don't think I can express how much I appreciated that.

Apparently, a few of them thought that I was going to move out, because I was around so rarely. I admit that I considered it. I felt like I was living with strangers, and assumed, like I mentioned before, that it was because they were "not my type" - but it was because I didn't have the patience, in my hectic first semester, to stick my definition of "type" in the trash, where it belonged. Once I got to know them, there was never the chance that I was going to leave. They've been the whole package for me: friends, teachers, siblings, counselors. They take care of me, and I try to do the same.

Summer

It's summer. I'm living in MacGregor, with five other French House-ers. We've been to Six Flags, to the beach, to a rock concert; we've gone out to fancy dinners, consumed outrageous and terrifying amounts of bubble tea, and celebrated birthdays; we've played rock band and kicked butt at Taekwondo. We've talked for hours and watched the sun rise (hi Daniel!).

MacGregor is also filled with people I've never met before. I went to the Cambridge dance party with four people I met that day. Two people from my floor came to the rescue when I locked myself out of my room while taking a shower.

One day, the French House crew were going out to dim sum for lunch - and while assembling in the lobby, I saw a guy walking past who I recognized from 8.022 recitation. "HEY!" I called out, impulsively. He said hi, and I asked if he wanted to join us for dim sum. He said sure, and now we spend almost all our time with him.

Summer is perfect for meeting new people - for once, you're not living with the usual crew. Take advantage of it. Invite someone to lunch with your friends. Knock on your neighbor's door and introduce yourself. Be brave.

Don't forget

If you don't make time for other people, you will struggle to make friends. If you filter everyone you meet by how closely they resemble your friends from home, you will struggle to make friends. It's okay to go crazy and become super busy (most people here do), and it's okay to miss your old friends - you will miss your old friends - but when you come to college and create your new lifestyle and your new little college world, don't forget to open it up to everyone you meet, and take the time to get to know them. Hop in a new acquaintance's car for an Ikea trip. Stay up all night talking. Stay in touch with that random guy you met in the gym (hi Aaron!). You meet people in a huge variety of contexts - give them all a chance.

Thank you

This post is as much about reflecting on my own mistakes and successes as it is about thanking the friends who helped me through them - friends from home, who have remained my best friends across thousands of miles; French House, who, despite my AWOL behavior throughout first semester, stuck with me and helped me create a home and comfort zone on campus; Sam and Cam and FUP friends and everyone I've ever met, because I can honestly say that I haven't met a single person here that I regretted getting to know better. You guys are the best.  

Other Freshman: "I made my first resume when I was six; I knew eight different programming languages by that point, and started my first company while in the womb."

Which of these people will be able to land an undergraduate research position in their first year at MIT?

That's right! They both can. Thus is the beauty of the UROP program.

UROP, noun or verb ("to UROP"). Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. 85% of MIT undergraduates participate in research while they're here - in labs and machine shops and offices and goodness knows what else, on campus and around the world.

As far as I can tell, UROPing follows a basic rule of thumb: if you want one, you can get one.

One night, you're getting ready for bed when you hear a knock at your bedroom door. You open it to find a Nobel Prize winner on his knees, begging you to UROP with him. "I'll even give you my medal!" he says.

Let's be honest: your chances of finding yourself in this situation are basically zero. The initiative has to come from you. Before you embark upon your quest:

Make a resume.

You're definitely going to be asked for your resume, so you might as well make one now. That way, you won't have to worry about throwing it together when the time comes. The MIT career office is a great, under-used (from what I hear) resource: I made an appointment with them to go over my first draft, and found it very helpful.

Think about what your interests are.

You're definitely going to be asked to describe them. Think about why it is you’re looking for a UROP in the first place (I trust it’s something other than “I’m bored”), or why it is you’re interested in a particular area of research. Do you have prior experience that you want to build upon, or put to use in a new way? Do you have no prior experience, and want to try something new? Is there a particular cause you feel strongly about?

Have a little faith.

No one is expecting you to waltz onto campus with years of research experience - or any at all - under your belt. Professors definitely recognize that everyone has to start somewhere. I had a little freak-out about this earlier in the year, and a grad student friend of mine said something that I found very comforting: “in my experience” (and trust me – this guy has a lot of experience) “it's a lot more important to show that you're willing to learn, than it is to show off how much you already know."

^Something to bear in mind.

Anyway, here you are, resume and bucketloads of faith in tow. Time to begin your search! Resources to take advantage of: 1) People you know (professors, TAs, freshman advisor, GRT, friends), 2) The UROP website, 3) Department websites, 4) Department doors (knock!), 5) Off-campus institutions, and 6) Talks and symposia.

1. People you know

Professors: you have regular access to these people, and they all do research! I know people who got UROPs by sticking around after lecture, or visiting during office hours. Chat to your professor about his or her work, and if it sounds like something you might be interested in, ask if there are any UROP opportunities available. Worst possible scenario: there aren’t, and you look elsewhere. Don’t feel intimidated.

TAs: again, people you have regular access to, who do research. Maybe you find your TA easier to approach than your professor; he or she holds office hours, too, so you can chat then or before/after recitation.

Your freshman advisor: it’s this person’s job to help you. My advisor wrote a couple of e-mails on my behalf to people he knew in his department, which was awesome. It helps to know people who know people.

Your GRT: a graduate student living in your dorm. Mine does work at the Media Lab, and I definitely wouldn’t hesitate to ask him for suggestions. Again: it helps to know people who know people.

Friends: remember that the vast majority of undergrads UROP at some point. Most of the people I know currently UROP. While a friend probably can’t single-handedly set you up with a job, chances are that they’ve been through the process before and can at least point you in the right direction.

2. The UROP website

Professors, post docs, and grad students will post openings on this website, along with their contact information. There are a zillion kinds of UROPs across a zillion departments, so you’re bound to find something that interests you. Bear in mind that not all UROPs are advertised, so you should also take a look at...

3. Department websites

Many (most) UROP opportunities go unadvertised: you have to make them, in a sense. If there’s a particular department or area of research that interests you, check out their website, find a professor or lab doing work that looks cool, and get in touch with them. I usually attach my resume, since I know they’ll ask for it later anyway. If you’re feeling a little bold and don’t want to deal with the possibility that you won’t get a response to your e-mail (more on this later), you can knock on...

4. Department doors

I was at a Physics faculty dinner a couple months ago, and chatted with a professor who told me that to find a UROP, I should wander the halls of the department and knock on office doors with copies of my resume on-hand. Sounds a little intimidating (hi Famous Physicist! Job please?) but shows some spine, in my opinion. I know someone who landed a summer internship at CERN this way. If you’re dying to get off-campus (understandable), you can also look...

5. Outside MIT

I found out recently that it’s possible to UROP off-campus: at the Children’s Hospital, for example. I don't have any personal experience with this, but I would probably start here, or by getting in touch with someone at the UROP office. Finally, keep your eyes peeled for information about...

6. Talks and symposia

Sign up for mailing lists, read posters in the hallways, and ask your dorm-mates to forward you information they receive from their respective departments. I signed up for the Brain and Cog Sci mailing list before I even got to MIT, and that's how I ended up with my first UROP: I attended a talk, thought it was interesting, and approached the speaker at the end to express my interest in her work. I introduced myself (heart pounding and teeth chattering), shook hands, explained that I was considering a major in her department, and asked if there were any opportunities to help out with the research in her lab. She told me to send her my resume, and that was that. I was pretty pleased with myself, and turned to leave – two seconds later, my feet got tangled up in some random person’s briefcase, and I face-planted. Right in front of her. I was out of that room like a shot.

Anyway, I e-mailed her...and never got a response (might have something to do with the face-planting), which brings me to my next point:

Be ready to fight for it.

If you really want a UROP, sometimes you have to fight for it. Stalk for it, even.

Here’s the thing: I recognize that MIT professors are very busy people. E-mails get buried in overflowing inboxes; it happens to all of us. But listen: if I want a UROP, I am not going to allow myself to flow out of anybody's inbox.

So there.

Anyway, after about two weeks, I accepted that my e-mail was not going to be answered. I did a quick search online, found the professor’s office number, and walked in. A couple of post-docs stared at me, waiting for an explanation of who I was and what I was doing there. I said that I had sent an e-mail to the professor a couple of weeks ago about a UROP, and wanted to follow up in person. They told me that she was currently traveling, but that another post doc was looking for a UROP, and that I should e-mail her. I walked back out, post doc's contact information in hand, and sent her my resume that evening.

...no response.

Find another lab? No way. I wanted that UROP. I signed up to be a research subject for the lab, and during a break in the procedure, asked the woman administering the experiment about UROPing. The response was, in sum: "I'm from Harvard, and have no idea what a UROP even is."

My response, in sum: :( :( :(

A week later, I got an e-mail from the Lab Manager, who said that he'd "heard" that I was interested in doing research with the group, and that two post docs were looking for a UROP.

I have never responded to an e-mail so quickly in my life. I scheduled an interview, and was working with the two post docs by the end of the week.

A heads up about the UROP interview: as far as I'm aware, most UROPs require some kind of interview. In my experience, these are pretty casual: the researcher just wants to know a little more about what your specific interests are, and what you hope to get out of the job. Make sure you've done your research on what kind of work your interviewer does, and come prepared with a few questions of your own: you should be assessing the UROP as much as the interviewer is assessing you. It should be a two-way fit, so that you actually enjoy committing to the experience.

In conclusion: if you want a UROP, you will find one, even if you have to bang down a few intimidating office doors (or fall flat on your face) along the way.

-

Hopefully that covered most of it! If you have any other questions, or if you're a UROP veteran with advice of your own, please post below or e-mail me and I'll create a little FAQ/addendum section.

This is the view from my new room:

Hello, Charles River and New House :)

I'm living in MacGregor, one of the two MIT undergraduate dorms open for those of us living on campus for the summer. In August, I'll move back to French House, but this is where I'll come home to for the next couple of months.

MIT during the summer is a beautiful thing. No psets. No exams. No pressure to cram in lunch between lecture periods. If I see sunset, it's because I'm laughing with a friend, in his/her room, and not because I'm moping over an unfinished p-set, in my room. Finally, I have time: to do the things I always wanted to do during the school year, without the weight of "oh why am I here doing this I should be there doing that."

I'll spread those things out over a few posts, but thought I'd begin with two stories: one embarrassing, and one awesome. I'll let you decide which is which.

A Trip to Mount Auburn Hospital

I admit that a trip to the hospital wasn't really how I envisioned my first full day back...but it made for a good bonding experience. And a good story.

My flight from London landed in the evening, and that night I wandered around campus with friends, getting a private tour of their respective labs (PEOPLE HERE DO SUCH COOL WORK. just saying.) Someone suggested that we go chairing, to which I replied: "what's chairing?"

Answer: Chairing involves riding a wheelie chair down a ramp in the basement of one of the main buildings. It's the best thing ever.
Me: What happens when you reach the wall?
Answer: You use your feet to stop.
Me: Oh...really? Wouldn't that hurt?
Answer: Nah. Not if you do it right.

I guess I did it wrong, because when my chair slid to a stop (and the thrill of WHEE-ing down a ramp was gone), I could barely walk. My shin felt like it had crumbled into lots of little pieces.

My friend Juan, though (shout-out to Juan '12: do forgive me for telling the world about this) apparently did it even more wrong, because I walked back around the corner to find him sprawled on the ground, chair practically on top of him.

Long story short, the two of us ended up at MIT Medical the next day, where I had a super-embarrassing conversation with the triage nurse:

Nurse: What happened?
Me: Uh...I hit a wall.
Nurse: Oh! So...you tripped, and hit the wall?
Me: ...No. I was in a chair.
Nurse: You...tipped over?
Me: ...No. It was a wheelie chair.
*silence*
Me: I rolled into the wall.

*five minutes later*

Nurse: What happened?
Juan: I was in a chair.
Nurse: Oh. Did you hit the wall, too?
Juan: No. I hit the floor.

Yup. Goodbye, dignity. Anyway, both of us were fine - I had to take a little detour to the hospital to get an x-ray to confirm that this was in fact the case - and we limped on our merry way back to MacGregor.

Moral of the story: Chairing may or may not be for everyone.
Positives: I can cross "chairing" off my list of "things one ought to do while at MIT", and had a nice bonding experience with Juan :)
Negatives: ...nah.

The Cambridge Dance Party

Cambridge is a wonderful place to spend your college years. You probably know that it's young, that it's lively, that it boasts gorgeous river views and is totally walkable - but did you know that it has an annual citywide Dance Party?

That's right: once a year, the entire city is invited to the same party, held in front of City Hall. It's a pretty big deal: they close off that entire portion of the street (bus service stops, too), and when I arrived at 9:30ish it was packed. I went with three friends from MacGregor, who I met for the first time at dinner that evening - and after we nudged our way to the center of the dancing masses, felt compelled to take this picture of City Hall:

 

I admit that I was surprised at the turnout: most people seemed to be, as expected, college-aged-and-a-bit-older, but there were definitely people in their thirties and forties and even an elderly couple dancing nearby. Elderly couple, whoever you are: more power to you!

When you're dancing in a setting so packed that at least three strangers feel your every movement...when you're holding a stranger's shoulders and running behind him, singing, in a conga line...when you're doing the cha cha slide in a mass of hundreds...you can't help but feel like a part of a community. It was the first time that I genuinely felt like I lived in Cambridge: that this is my community - the city I live in, the people I live with.

I took a couple more pictures, but it's hard to do justice to what the atmosphere was really like:

 

 

Moral of the story: Cambridge is an awesome place to live - particularly in the summer, when one actually has time to explore it.
Positives: I got my exercise for the day, and made some new friends. Shout-out to Jamal '14, Amy '13, and our lovely RA Moji '11 :)
Negatives: ...nah.

To come: what I'm actually doing here on campus (aside from dancing and injuring myself), and other ways to take advantage of summertime.

Maybe this sounds delightful to you. Freedom! A chance to be expressive and creative in front of lots of other people!

For me, this sounds like: My Worst Nightmare! A chance to freak out and embarrass myself in front of lots of other people!

I took improvised solos for seven years. I joined the middle school jazz band in sixth grade, and then continued with the high school version three years later. Nothing before or since has come close to terrifying me as much as those solos, as illustrated in the following table. Here, Fear Level is inversely proportional to The Number Of Seconds I Think I Have Before I Throw Up.

*Please. I could totally take him.

My band teacher, Mr. L, assigned me my first solo in sixth grade. Just straight up told me that I was going to do it. I practiced hard at home and played it well when alone, but in class my hands shook and I pressed my mouthpiece so hard to my lips that they went numb and no notes came out. It was humiliating, and every time I was convinced that Mr. L would take my solo away from me. The big scary eighth grade boys in my section thought so, too; they suggested naming the band "The Band Of People Who Can't Play Solos" in my honor.

Mr. L never took that solo away from me. Three or four measures before the start of the solo, he would give me a smile and a nod. I would lift my instrument up. Blow. Nothing would come out. Panic. Shake. Get a few notes out. Fail. He would wave play on, like nothing happened, while I hid behind my music stand. 

Three years later, I was in high school, and the system was different. At the beginning of every piece, Mr. L would ask for volunteers for the improvised solo section. For reasons that are still not quite clear to me, I raised my hand almost every time. I knew that if I thought too hard about it, I wouldn't do it - so I put myself on autopilot, and shot my hand in the air. On the occasions that I didn't, Mr. L would usually make eye contact with me, and I knew that I was soloing whether I wanted to or not.

And boy, was it good for me. I soloed a lot. In class, in concerts at school, in public squares in Malta and in cathedrals in Prague. I'd get that little smile and nod from Mr. L, put my trumpet to my mouth, do my thing until the rest of the band started playing again, and ride waves of adrenalin (the terror kind) for the rest of the song. It never got less terrifying, ever. I never got less nervous. My solos improved, but I was never super good. What improved was my willingness to solo: I became better at clearing my head, relaxing, and enjoying my time on stage - at saying "yes, this is terrifying, and therefore I am going to do it." Every little success felt tremendous (what? a note in the right key? YES!). Every time I inhaled and raised my hand to volunteer at the beginning of the piece, and heard the applause at the end of my solo, I emerged a tin ybit more confident. 

Here is something I have never regretted doing, ever: impulsively signing up for something because I find it scary or intimidating. At the beginning of freshman year, I joined Dance Troupe, because I liked dancing but the idea of dancing in front of other people practically made me wet my pants. The night of our first performance, I found myself standing on the stage in the dark, seconds before our song began - and suddenly wondered what the heck I was doing there. Before I could have a full-blown nervous meltdown, the lights came on, the music started, and all thoughts of the audience disappeared. A few minutes later, I jogged off stage, heart pounding and a huge grin on my face.

It was so much fun. It's much less humiliating to stick to things you're good at - and, let's face it, people will go to pretty extreme lengths to avoid embarrassing themselves - and you can achieve great things that way. It takes a whole new dimension of gut, though, to hold your head up high when doing something you're not good at, in front of other people: to keep on going purely because you enjoy it, and want to improve.

So, do something that scares you. Prefrosh: this fall, sign up for one activity that you've always sort of secretly wanted to do but are scared of trying because a) think you might be bad at it or b) you've done it before and you're definitely bad at it or c) you think people would judge you for doing it. Dance. Try out for a sport. Audition for an a cappella group, or an improv comedy troupe. Pick up a new instrument. Get a friend to do it with you, if that makes you feel better. Heck, I'll do it with you.

Oh, and that solo in sixth grade? The night of the concert, I rocked it.

I remember how I felt when I first arrived here: like I had no limit to what I could take on. That if I just "tried hard enough", I could perform the most superhuman balancing acts.

False.

I found my limits - pushed them, broke them, flailed about, and realized that learning where one's limits are can be a very good thing. I bombed a couple of tests, watched a beautiful sunrise on nights when I would have preferred to sleep, and had a mini emotional breakdown in my orgo TA's office.

I don't regret it. I needed to find those limits, I think: all the advice in the world couldn't persuade stubborn me to take on less, and if it had, I would always wonder whether I could have done more.

A note to my future self, though: there will be reason to regret all this, if you fail to learn and change accordingly. So here I am, the freshman you, preserving five of those lessons in a blog post that the world can read (and maybe learn from, too). Enjoy, and wince when you remember how it felt for these to be hammered home.

5. If you don't succeed, the problem is not necessarily that you need to work "harder".

Organic Chemistry class nearly drove me to madness this semester: I kept telling myself that I needed to work harder, work harder, work harder – after all, nothing before this had ever suggested that I couldn’t get the results I wanted if I just put enough time into something. After a couple of exams, I was horrified to find that time was not the issue – I had no more time to give, and yet: I still wasn’t succeeding. Something was wrong. Had I simply hit the limit of my intelligence? Was this as good as it could get for me?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No. Saying "I'm not smart enough" is easy. The challenge is to admit that the way you study doesn’t work, or is inefficient. Maybe you spend a lot of time doing problems you know how to do, instead of focusing on the ones you know you can’t do, because it makes you feel better (I know I’m guilty of this). Maybe there are sections of the textbook you don’t understand, that you skim over and forget to ask your TA about. Maybe you keep one eye on the answer key while doing practice tests.

Yes, a poor performance can sometimes be ascribed to not studying for long enough, but at some point “I just need to study harder!” no longer makes sense: you need to re-evaluate how you spend your time, or you won't do any better.

Trust me. I have the test scores to prove it.

4. Get off campus at least once a week.

It's all too easy for MIT to become a bubble: your entire college existence can revolve around a few buildings, and maybe a grassy area or two. Personally, this makes me feel claustrophobic, and a little sad. MIT is near BOSTON! People travel thousands of miles to visit what is literally across the river. There are museums, concert halls, famous historical monuments and landmarks and parks. Harvard Square is beautiful at night. You can afford to spend a couple of hours here and there doing something cultural and interesting that takes your mind off p-sets and your body out of its exhausting routine. At the very least, take a walk. Get to know the community you live in – because, surprise surprise, there’s one beyond that which you're immediately involved with.

3. It's okay to be part of a group without leading it. Sometimes it's better to do less, better, than to do more, worse.

I suffer from a (chronic) condition known as “need-to-lead”.

Symptoms include:
-Compulsively taking up an executive or management position every time you join a club or an organization
-Feeling the need to personally take care of every task that needs to be done
-Spreading yourself so thin that you can no longer contribute in a significant way to any group you're involved with
-Struggling to keep up academically
-Calendars that are more colorful than a Crayola crayon pack
-Becoming a rare sighting around the dorm

Causes include:
-Wanting to give as much time and energy as possible to groups and causes that you care about
-Control freak tendencies – liking to play a role in deciding how things progress, and are run
-Habit. The idea of being part of something as a regular, non-executive-board member is weird.

Treatment, and cure:
-Redefining leadership. Being a leader doesn’t mean having a fancy title or being on the [clubname]-exec@mit.edu mailing list. It means speaking up when you think the group is wandering astray from its mission, and can be as simple as setting an example by consistent and energetic participation.
-Realizing that other people are just as competent as you. The club is not going to fall apart just because you aren’t the president. It could be the opposite – if you stretch yourself too thin, the club might fall apart because you are the president, even if you mean well. Let someone with the time focus their energy on the position, and do what you can to lead from behind.
-Learning to say ‘no’. Recognize when you’re hosed for the week, and don’t volunteer to run that event. Don’t.
-Bearing in mind that not officially being responsible for something doesn’t mean that you can’t help out, or give your input.

2. Sleep is underrated, and pulling all-nighters is overrated.

I think that this speaks for itself. Also: that AWESOME idea you had between 2am and 6am? Probably a bad one. Hold off on executing it until the next day.

1. The most important one.

Whatever the situation – you studied harder for a test than you ever have in your life, maybe, and performed horribly anyway, and suddenly you really miss all your friends and family at home and don’t know what you’re doing at this school and it’s been too long since your last break and you have four problem sets due tomorrow and haven’t started any of them because you spent so much time studying for that test and didn’t even do well on the test anyway so you don’t know why you even bothered – smile. Don't forget to smile.

-

There.

To all the MIT readers out there - if you have anything to add, feel free to post it below, and I'll create a little addendum :)

Freshman Anna out. See you as a sophomore!*

*Edit, 3 June: it has been pointed out to me that due to the Law of Conservation of Freshmen, I'll still be a freshman the next time you all hear from me. My bad.

"You know what would be awesome?"
followed shortly by
"Wait...we could actually do this."

These words are exciting, because MIT students take "awesome" and "we can" to a whole new level.

And that's why this story starts with that question.

-

Julie H. is a senior in Mechanical Engineering, who arrived at MIT thinking that her musical days were over. Courtesy of the HASS-D requirement, she ended up taking "Harmony and Counterpoint" in her sophomore year - and is now double-majoring in Music. She discovered a love for composition, and, since she's always loved musical theater, began to throw around the idea of writing a musical - but, in her words, "it was sort of a pipe dream" and she "never expected it to happen".

Famous last words.

This IAP, Julie joined the Musical Theater Guild (MTG), and was Assistant Music Director for their performance of Jekyll and Hyde.

One day, at an MTG party, magic happened.

Rachel B. '11: "You know what would be awesome? A musical about hacking at MIT."
Julie: "I've been looking to write a musical! If you decide to do that, I will totally write music for you."
*Cue lots of joking around*

*Pause.*

"Wait...we could actually do this."

And it was thus that Hack, Punt, Tool, the musical, was born. Julie even managed to find an advisor, and have the project count towards her music major as an independent study.

Work began on February 6: Daniel L. '12 writing lyrics, Rachel B. '11 and Zach B. '13 writing the script, and Julie writing the music. Every Tuesday evening, they meet from 10pm to 1am, along with other MTG members who are keen to lend ideas.

Today, MTG held their "selection" process, which occurs in two rounds. In the first round, people suggest any number or shows (usually around 30), and these are narrowed down to 4-6 shows for each production period. Anyone who has been in an MTG show in the past year can come, and cast his or her vote. There are four slots - fall, IAP, spring, summer - and the crew hoped that Hack, Punt, Tool would be chosen for fall or IAP.

Guess what? Julie will learn the trip from Connecticut to Boston very well next year, because she's going to be doing a lot of commuting. That's right: Hack, Punt, Tool was selected to be performed during IAP.

Hooray!

A little blurb about the storyline, in case you're curious - a freshman comes to MIT, keen to get involved in the hacking community. All he wants to be is hardcore (there is, in fact, a song called "Hardk0re*"), but learns that there is more to hacking than that.

*Spelled like that. Now you HAVE to come see the show.

I'll let a quick excerpt speak for itself (from the song: There's More To Life Than Tooling):

"There's more to 8.01
Than getting p-sets done
Studying alone you'll find it rough
But in a group you'll find
That with your minds combined
The hardest problem never seems that tough."

Yeah. Pretty awesome. But as awesome as the product is, it can't compare to its creator. You've heard a gajillion times that MIT students are time management ninjas, but this takes ninja to a whole new level.

Julie is a senior, which means that "springtime" is "thesis time". I asked her what else she's been up to while writing this musical.

I almost wish I hadn't.

"Well, I'm writing my thesis, which is in product design. I'm taking 2.72 - Elements of Mechanical Design - where we design and build our own lathe. I'm taking Senior Seminar in Music, where we wrote a 20-page research paper on a field of our interest in music, and 2.674, which is a nanotechnology lab. Oh, and I'm in Concert Choir. I think that's it."

*Silence*

"Oh, and I'm president of RoboCup."

Yeah, no big deal. It's not like building autonomous soccer-playing robots would take up any time at all.

It takes a special sort of person to successfully juggle that many commitments, but what has impressed me above class titles and thesis projects and musical endeavors has been Julie's smiley face. She's NICE. AND CHEERFUL. ALL THE TIME. IT'S INCREDIBLE. There have been sleepless nights and what I would imagine has been a mind-bending amount of stress, but it never shows, and I admire her for that more than I can do justice to here. As I write, she's sitting at her computer behind me, singing.

So, know this: music exists at MIT. At any given time, 30% of the student body is enrolled in a music class*. We have a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor who wrote an opera that premiered at the Metropolitan Opera. Working with the Musical Theater Guild is, according to Julie, "the most fun she's ever had at MIT".

*Credit to Daniel L. (lyricist and tour guide) for this statistic

So, if you get the chance to be around campus during IAP 2012, swing by during the last weekend of January and the first weekend of February, and bear witness to what happens when a few dedicated undergraduates pool their brains and energy together, and turn "what would be" to "what is". See the result of an unbelievable amount of hard work - and understand what I mean when I say that, to me, Julie has redefined what it means for there to be more to MIT life than tooling.

*Inhale*

I DECLARED MY MAJOR!

I can’t believe it. After all the deliberation, all the conversations and requests for advice and frustration and questions and identity crises…

Every student at MIT is required to declare a major by the end of their freshman year. If you're really, really unsure, you can declare "undeclared", but most people do make at least a temporary decision, for a couple of reasons:

1. More resources. You’re assigned a faculty advisor in the department you’re interested in, and receive information about events and research opportunities.
2. You are not bound to your decision. To change your mind (by the end of sophomore year), all you need to do is fill out a form and get it signed.

Basically, there are no disadvantages (at least, none that I can think of) to declaring your major at the end of the year. My impression is that joining a particular department is the best way to figure out whether you really fit there; you may find that you love it, or that you hate it. Either way, great! Now you know. The only binding factor is, obviously, the whole would-like-to-graduate-in-four-years thing: if you took zero aero/astro classes until your junior year, and then switched into Course 16 (Aeronautics and Astronautics), you’d probably be in for a rough time.

It's worth mentioning that the major I wrote down on my MIT application is NOT the major I ended up declaring. And, on that note, I should probably explain how I chose mine.

How Anna Chose Her Major

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (approximately 3270.65 miles* from MIT), there is a cupboard in a middle school science classroom that contains a book called The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene. I read it in eighth grade, and decided that I was, without a doubt, going to become a physicist (after I accepted that it was not possible to become Brian Greene himself). I’ve always been a stargazer; on planes, when they turn the cabin lights off at night, I can be found standing by the bathrooms with my face pressed against the window (those windows are REALLY cold, in case you were wondering). One of the many reasons why I trip so often when I walk outside is because my eyes tend to be oriented upward, instead of straight ahead. When I saw the Milky Way for the first time a couple of summers ago, I burst into tears and bawled that it was "SO BEAUTIFUL", which freaked out all my new camp friends.

*according to the lovely people at this website

Basically, I decided that becoming a physicist would bring me closer to the universe, and the universe closer to me.

About halfway through high school, I began to feel uncomfortable with physics. There was something impersonal about it: something grey, and mechanical, and overly-mathematical, and the idea of spending all my time in a lab or an office made me uneasy.

The summer before my junior year, my mom bought me The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, a collection of case studies written by neurologist Oliver Sacks. For those of you who haven’t read any of his books, let me briefly explain why Oliver Sacks immediately became my hero, by quoting him directly:

“…we are over-developed in mechanical competence, but lacking in biological intelligence, intuition, awareness…and it is this, above all, that we need to regain, not only in medicine, but in all science.” (from Awakenings)

“I am equally interested in diseases and people…am equally drawn to the scientific and the romantic” (from The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat)

Rock on, Oliver Sacks. He has this amazing way of making science personal, and of reminding us to be wary of reducing patients to lists of symptoms: that it is necessary to use a combination of the objective and the subjective. This struck particularly close to home for me. I imagined myself performing research about people, using my experimental results to help people and change the world. Also, let’s be honest: the brain is really cool. You and I carry one around in our heads, and yet know next to nothing about it.

The summer before my senior year, a lecturer at the camp I went to (shout-out to the Summer Science Program) discussed why he majored in physics, and then went on to medical school and never looked back. “There is no human face to the science of physics,” he said. “There is a human face to medicine.”

Eek. I think it was at that lecture that I officially changed my mind, to the grief of the eighth grader physicist within me: I was going to become a neurologist.

I got to MIT, and told my new friends and dorm-mates that I planned to declare Course 9 (Brain and Cognitive Science). A few months into my first semester, I began UROPing in Saxelab, which performs research in an area called Theory of Mind. My group is studying how people view complex social scenes: we're going to monitor the eye movements of 1) a group of normal subjects, 2) a group of normal subjects with localized regions of their brain disrupted, and 3) a group of subjects with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). All super cool, and nothing to dissuade me from picking Brain and Cog Sci as my major.

The moment I arrived on campus, however, my plan fell apart. The fact is: there are a lot of really cool things you can study here. I had no idea what a major in Comparative Media Studies would entail, or what the distinctions were between all the different engineering departments. I was overwhelmed from meeting so many different people: from hearing "COURSE [NUMBER] IS THE BEST! YOU SHOULD MAJOR IN IT!", where [NUMBER] has represented literally every department.

This began happening a lot...

Extra credit to the first person who can tell me where this is from.

...as suddenly, I felt like I could major in anything. Civil and Environmental Engineering? Sure. Aerospace Engineering? Heck yeah. Biology? Okay. Chemistry? Yeah! Math? Maybe. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science? Why not?

When I have trouble making a decision*, my instinct is to try everything first. Okay when it comes to picking a breakfast cereal, but not so much when it comes to picking your major. There are thirty four departments and programs at MIT (though not all of them are available as majors for underclassmen), and a grand total of two semesters before it’s time to declare.

*Every time I have to make a decision.

Panic. Identity crisis. How was I expected to make a decision without exploring all of the options? How could I feel comfortable crossing, say, Political Science off the list, unless I took a class in it and decided that it wasn't for me? What WAS “Urban Studies and Planning”, anyway? Also, my astronomer/physicist self had never really stopped haunting me, and it didn't help that I LOVED all of my physics classes. It was back to square one.

I found two approaches particularly helpful:
1) Doing things
2) Talking to people

First one: doing things. It’s what it sounds like. What sounds awesome in theory might not necessarily be a good fit in practice. Something I’ve had to come to terms with recently is that there’s a difference between finding a subject interesting, and actually wanting to do it; research, for example, does not entail making a grand discovery every day and saving a nation per experiment. It involves a lot of failure, and frustration. You have to love what you’re doing, and it seems to me that the only way to figure out whether you love doing something is to do it. This can mean working in a lab, joining a club, or just tinkering in your bedroom (the first two, for me).

Next: talking to people, which is equally valuable – and necessary, when it’s impossible to “do” everything (trust me: this comes from someone who has tried). For every interest of mine, I’ve had no trouble finding someone (faculty, upperclassman, alum) who’s done it for ages, loves doing it, and is super pumped to tell me all about it. Even if you don’t find exactly who you’re looking for, discussing your interests with others helps to get your thoughts and priorities in order.

In sum: there’s no excuse for not talking to people, and it can even (drumroll) lead to what you decide to major in.

Here’s what happened. I went to a Physics faculty dinner a few weeks ago, and pulled up a chair next to the Associate Head of the department, Krishna Rajagopal. I babbled about my major choice dilemma: about how I wanted to help people, particularly by addressing issues in cognitive science, but that I loved physics, and always had. I was a big fan of the physicist problem-solving approach.

Professor Rajagopal: “Have you considered Biophysics?”
Me [super embarrassed, and wishing Google was readily accessible]: “…I don’t know what that is.”

He gave me the names of some professors that I should talk to, and was super quick to get back to me when I followed up via e-mail later that evening; he responded within an hour, which made him my favorite person in the world.

I e-mailed the first name on his list: Jeff Gore, who started a biophysics lab at MIT last year. He responded within fifteen minutes, which made him my new favorite person in the world, and we set up a meeting for the following afternoon.

The next day, I showed up at his office, and we talked for half an hour about my interests, about his research, about biophysics, and about how I could begin exploring it. It seemed that it was in fact possible to pursue a joint study of physics and cognitive science.

Behold: the physics flexible option (Course 8b), in all its awesome power. It allows people like me – who don’t necessarily plan on going to graduate school in physics – to gain a solid backbone in physics, and take lots of awesome physics classes, while still being able to branch off into other fields, and apply the problem-solving approach elsewhere.

In the website's words:

“This option is designed for students who wish to develop a strong background in the fundamentals of physics and then build on this foundation as they prepare for career paths that may not involve a graduate degree in physics. In the past, many students have found an understanding of the basic concepts of physics and an appreciation of the physicist's approach to problem solving an excellent preparation for careers in business, law, medicine, or engineering. This option should be even more attractive today in light of the growing spectrum of nontraditional, technology-related career opportunities.”

Yes, please. Count me in.

Professor Gore then gave me a list of names, which included Sebastian Seung: a member of both the Physics and Brain and Cognitive Science faculty (in other words: my hero before I ever met him). Actually, I met him the next day, by total coincidence: he introduced the speaker at a talk I attended. After the lecture, I walked up (and by “walked up” I mean “cornered him”, poor man) and explained my interests. He introduced me to another professor as a “young lady interested in both physics and neuroscience!”

Other professor: “HAH! Physics and neuroscience! That’s a DANGEROUS combination! Hah hah!”

Um, sure. Dangerous. That’s me.

At the end of our chat, I told Professor Seung that I was going to declare my major soon, and he told me to make him my advisor.

!

Funny how things work out.

Anyway, on Tuesday, I had a meeting with my current advisor (every freshman has one), and checked the box next to “Course 8” (Physics) on a piece of paper. At 4pm, I dropped it off at Student Services…and that was that. I am an official physics major at MIT.

Dear eighth grade self: you’re welcome.

Begin by walking down Dorm Row, which takes you past almost all the dorms in West Campus.

Stop when you are greeted by the following sign:

You have arrived at New House: home to all of MIT's cultural houses, as well as a few culture-unspecific living groups, like Desmond.

Enter the arcade.

Walk to the very end. Do a couple of stretches for your hamstrings and calves, and then climb to the top of the stairs (and feel thankful that you aren’t dragging an enormous suitcase or bags of laundry behind you.)

It's a good work-out.

You emerge in a lounge, where a group is inevitably playing either Super Smash Bros., Super Mario Kart, or Rock Band. They're preoccupied, so keep walking, and enter the kitchen/dining area.

You are in French House: home to 6 refrigerators, and 26 undergraduates from all years (with a huge range of majors, hobbies, and French-speaking ability).

We cook dinner every day (except Saturday) in teams of four. It's a good deal: five evenings a week, I have a four-course home-made dinner made for me, and one evening, I learn to cook. At midnight, cookies or muffins or pretzels or cake will magically appear on the sac-table*, and everyone will help themselves.

*"Sacrificial table"

What's that? You're dying to meet the people I live with? Understandable. Let's start with that kid over there - the one at the dining table closest to you, with the brown hair. That's Davie.

Davie is a junior from southwest Vermont, double-majoring in Math and Music. At MIT, he is involved in the Gilbert & Sullivan society - which performs comic operas by Gilbert and Sullivan - and the chamber chorus, which is a class that runs for three hours per week.

Non-MIT-related hobbies include "birding", which consists of "watching birds, looking at birds, and studying birds", and doing the same for insects. Davie has written about a hundred and fifty nature articles, most for a local paper, but also a few in the Vermont Entomological Society Journal and local nature newsletters. At his house in Vermont, he has found about 540 species of moth, seven of which had not previously been found in Vermont.

If you’re feeling brave, go ahead and challenge him to a game of bananagrams.

Afterwards, ask him why he likes MIT. He'll tell you that in all his time here, he has met “maybe one person” who wasn't "really nice."

Now ask him to tell you about French House. He’ll list some nouns: "quirkiness, silliness, friendliness, cooking, intellectualism, humanities, incidentally French, games."

A girl at the next table chimes in with "it's pretty amazing how many people are into the humanities in French House!"

This is Elizabeth, a freshman from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who recently declared a major in Course 16: Aeronautics/Astronautics. Ask her why.

"Until 7th grade, I thought I wanted to be a teacher...but then I watched this NOVA episode about the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity."

When she saw the moment of celebration in mission control, she realized that she wanted to be a part of that.

Elizabeth plays the violin in MITSO (the Symphony Orchestra), and would like to stress that “Adam Boyles, our conductor, is really awesome." She's also involved in WiSE, which pairs MIT students with high school girls in the area. They meet once a month and discuss what it's like to be an engineer through lab tours and activities.

Ask her about her summer plans: you'll be jealous (I'm jealous!). She's traveling to Germany (the same program that blogger Hamsika did last year) to teach math and science to high school kids.

If that's not cool enough, she's UROPing in the Space Systems lab, working on satellite controls with a grad student.

She also says that she "really likes reading literature." You begin to ask what her favorite book is, and she answers before you can even finish the question: "To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf! It's a really really really amazing book."

Ask her about French House.

"It's the people here who are really special. Juan can speak four languages, and Davie sings in his room all the time, and Julie's writing music and Dora's a double major with history, and Alan squawks at people."

Sure enough, as you pass Davie's room on your way back to the lounge, amazing opera floats out the door.

When you get back to the lounge, the game of Super Smash Bros./Super Mario Kart/Rock Band is over, and people are just hanging out. If you'd like, you can try talking to Ben, but if my last conversation with him was anything to judge by, you might leave a little bewildered.

Me: Ben, where are you from?
Ben: Ben was born an errant macaroni farmer in the wilds of suburban New Mexico.
Me: ...Ben, where are you ACTUALLY from?
Ben: Guam.
Me: Ben.
Ben: Tokyo.
Me: Ben.

At that point, I gave up and stalked him on Facebook to find my answer. I then tried to elicit some information about his MIT-related activities, and about what he thinks of French House.

Me: Could you tell me about the MIT-related activities you do? I’m writing a blog post.
Ben: I go to MIT. I am a student there.
Me: ...
Ben: I always take more than 36 units of classes, so I am a FULL-TIME student there!
Me: …
Ben: …
Me: Well, you do varsity fencing, right?
Ben: Yes.
Me: Since you got here?
Ben: Yes.
Me: Did you do any fencing in high school?
Ben: Yes. But not MIT varsity fencing.
Me: What about fencing here do you like?
Ben: Everything.
...

I tried one more question.

Me: What do you think of French House?
Ben: I think everything of French House. The people here have become gaseous by high-energy interactions.

Um, okay.

On second thoughts, maybe you shouldn't talk to Ben. Instead, talk to the girl next to him: Adrienne, a sophomore from San Diego, who's majoring in Course 9: Brain and Cognitive Science.

Adrienne was on the MIT sailing team last year, is now doing EMS as a third rider, and UROPs in the Littleton Lab, where she is studying "synaptic transmissions, specifically complexin...with fruit flies."

In her free time, she can be found baking, doodling, drawing, and reading.

Ask her about MIT!

"What really sold me was the people. You can literally find every type of person here...and no one really cares what type of person you are. They're supportive and they'll help you no matter what."

Luis interjects from the hallway: "and they watch Disney movies with you!"

Now, ask her about French House.

"It's my family. I can act ridiculous...like I am now (as she hurls a pillow at Ben). I always have someone to go back to. They'll take care of me and I'll take care of them."

Ben interjects: "like the Mafia!"

Thanks, Ben. It's time to leave the lounge, and walk to the Maisonette: a living room-type space with couches, and a gorgeous view of the Charles River and Boston skyline.

One of the Maisonette's inhabitants is Daniel: a junior from New Jersey, double-majoring in Courses 5 and 18 (Chemistry and Math), and minoring in 7 (Biology).

I advise you not to ask Daniel why he likes Chemistry, until you've had the chance to explore majors for yourself, since he will probably persuade you to major in it too.

Instead, ask about his UROP.

"I work for Richard Schrock, who taught me 5.112*. He won a Nobel Prize in 2005. He was talking about his research one day, and I went up to him and asked if I could work in his lab during IAP, and he said 'okay sure!'"

*A very intense version of introductory chemistry

"I've been working in his lab since IAP freshman year, and now I'm publishing a paper with him in March. He also got me my job last summer (he has a collaborator in France), and I got two papers from that. So, yeah, Dick has been really helpful: I really feel like part of the lab. I give group meetings just like the grad students. Everyone in the group is in charge of making sure one thing is working at all times and I'm in charge of the HPLC."

HPLC?

"High-Performance Liquid Chromatography. It's fun. I like my UROP."

What exactly is he doing?

"I solve problems. Like, my current project has lots and lots of applications…the original instantiation of the project is I can get these commercially important compounds from seed oils instead of petroleum, and the project I just started (that we’re going to publish about soon) is about being able to separate cis and trans alkenes, which is important because there are a lot of compounds that you can only make in percents, but it would be nice if you could have them in pure mixtures. So right now my project is a way to do that…and it works really well.”

You should move on from talking about his UROP, because otherwise you'll be here forever. Ask him about fencing.

"FENCING! The best sport in the world." He adds a bit of explanation, and concludes with: "also, who doesn't love swords?"

Fair enough.

There are a zillion other things you could talk to Daniel about: his musical performance in Jekyll and Hyde, tour guiding, helping another French House-er (Julie '11) write her musical, tutoring...but you probably don't have all day.

-

I'm a big believer in getting to know a living group through getting to know the people who live there, and that idea formed the basis for this blog post. However, another way to get to know MIT dorms is through their i3 videos. Elizabeth (who you met) just finished making one for French House, and you should take a look ☺

Keep an eye out for 3:49, where I deliver a personal message to all prefrosh out there.

Please feel free to post any questions you have about our awesome living group in the comments section! You can also e-mail me personally, or any of the people I discussed above (for example, if you want to ask Daniel or Ben about fencing, or want to ask Elizabeth about MITSO, or want to ask Davie about acting and singing and studying insects).

Here's some contact information:

Davie '12: drolnick@mit.edu
Elizabeth '14: elizqian@mit.edu
Ben ’12: bnnield@mit.edu
Adrienne '13: altran@mit.edu
Daniel '12: levineds@mit.edu

Come visit us during CPW :)

“Who will get in? What happens to the people who don’t? Will I get in? Who will I become if I do? Who will I be, who will I become, if I don’t?”

First, I think it’s important to recognize why people apply to MIT. Though I can only speak for myself and for people I know, trust that my words come not only from the accepted and the attendees, but also from the rejected. My primary reason for wanting to go to MIT – and the primary reason of everyone I have spoken to about this – was not the belief that I could not succeed without coming here, but rather the faith that I would have an extraordinary experience en route to my success.

It seems to me that this distinction is often overlooked. Comments like “don’t worry, you’ll still succeed” and “you’ll be great wherever you go” are well-intentioned, and much appreciated, but often miss their target, because they do not recognize where disappointment stems from. I never thought that failing to get into MIT would mean failing at life. Rather, I thought that getting in would mean having access to unique resources and unique opportunities. A close friend of mine, who was rejected, tells me that he was hurt and disappointed not because he believed he could no longer succeed, but because he lost the chance to have an MIT undergraduate experience. I know that these feelings do not apply to everyone – perhaps some of you do believe that attending MIT is the only path to success – but I think that they have historically not received the attention they deserve, and would like to address them here. Again, I can speak only for myself and for those I have discussed this with, so feel free to disagree.

I've been immersed in this place for six months. You’re probably sick of hearing that MIT is what it is because of the people who go here, so let me rephrase this in a more relevant-to-admissions-decisions way: MIT is what it is because the people here create their own experience. They fill what would otherwise be a bunch of (not particularly aesthetically pleasing) buildings with energy, personality, and cool ideas. The individual creates his own experience at the Institvte: he takes advantages of the resources that are here, and creates the resources that are not.

The process of making what you can from a situation doesn’t require a specific setting.

I would never suggest that it's easy to recreate an MIT experience, because I know that you'd never believe me. But I will venture to challenge every single one of you - those who are admitted, and those who are not - to concentrate on what you wanted out of your MIT experience. Hopefully, it was more than the chance to physically walk down a specific hallway, or take a specific class taught by a specific person. I trust that there were clubs you wanted to join, fields you wanted to explore, dreams you wanted to realize.

Whatever it is you wanted: hold onto it as tightly as you can. The hard part comes after pi day: in deciding what to do with these hopes and plans. I challenge you to bring them with you, wherever you end up: to resist abandoning them because you’ve been accepted and your life is complete, or because you’ve been rejected and your life is over. To make them happen, wherever you go.

You are guaranteed to meet hurdles and obstacles on the way to getting what you want out of college. Not because of where you are, but because of who you are, I challenge you to climb over them, dig through them, beat them down, and not allow yourself to be defined by the school you attend.

---

Addition: I want to draw attention to Spencer's comment, since I think it's a great idea.
"Fellow commenters, what say you we post those dreams and plans here to make sure they're not forgotten after pi day?

I'll start: To have something of my design land on Mars."

I'd love to hear them.

"Excuse me, professor!" The first one cried, as we all gaped at him. "It seems that your students are a bit too attractive!"

(Darn right.)

"Is (girl's name I can't quite remember) here?" A brunette near the front of the room slowly stood up, and the invaders gestured for her to come out to the aisle. They crowded around her – I think that one lifted her up, although I couldn’t see from my seat – and delivered a full serenade. Some knelt down, some held flowers, all had adoring expressions on her faces – and when they were done, they sprinted out of the room to thunderous applause.

These charming men were the MIT Logarhythms: one of the Institvte's most well-known a capella groups. For Valentine's Day, they took serenade requests and ran around delivering them, to the mortification of the recipient, and the delight of everyone else.

Before I deliver some love messages of my own, I need to give you some context: a ridiculously eventful Thursday.

A BRIEF GLANCE AT ANNA'S RIDICULOUS THURSDAY
12:48am: Finish my 8.022 (Electricity and Magnetism) problem set.
12:50am: Migrate upstairs to the French House kitchen, to work on my 18.03 (Differential Equations) problem set.
4:30am: Dump some salad and pesto (mmm, pesto) into a bowl as fuel for the final push
4:55am: Finish my 18.03 pset.
5:00am: Go visit my friend, Aaron '14, to yell I FINISHED THE PSET!
5:02am: Set four alarms (two clocks, one phone, one actual alarm clock)
5:05am: Sleep (mmm, sleep).
10:00am: First alarm goes off. Turn it off.
10:01am: Second alarm goes off, Turn it off.
10:10am: Third alarm goes off, strategically placed across the room. Get up, turn it off, pull out laptop, and work on reports for the Public Service Center.
11:15am: Finish reports for the Public Service Center
Noon: Turn in reports. Turn in 18.03 pset.
12:05pm-12:55: Lecture for 5.12 (Organic Chemistry)
1:05-1:55: Lecture for 18.03 (Differential Equations)
2:15pm: Purchase some sushi and bubble tea from the Stata Center, to cheer myself up
2:30pm: Powerful urge to write some poetry ensues, most likely due to the sleep deprivation.

Not only did I have a powerful urge to write some poetry, but I had a powerful urge to write a blog post and not get an e-mail from Chris Peterson pointing out my lack of recent publications.

At 2:31, my Eureka! moment hit. What about a BLOG POST WITH POETRY?

And what more appropriate time to write poetry than Valentine’s Day? A day for expressing love, for making romantic gestures…and for writing Shakesperian love sonnets, in full 14-line iambic pentameter. So: as a few of the other bloggers have been doing, here’s some information about the classes I’m taking this semester. Luckily for you, not all the bloggers demonstrate a correlation between sleep deprivation and writing extremely low-quality poetry.

Before I begin:

***A quick lesson on Shakesperian sonnet structure***
The rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. In other words, the poem is broken up into four sections: the first three have four lines of alternating endings, and the last has two lines with the same ending. Now comes the tricky part. Each line is written in what's known as "iambic pentameter": five sets of two syllables each, where the second of each pair is emphasized.

Ex. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate"
= Shall I comPARE thee TO a SUmmer's DAY? / Thou ART more LOVEly AND more TEMperate
***end of lesson***

Disclaimer: I am no poet. In fact, I am a very poor poet. I would never be sharing any of this poetry with you, if I were not totally sleep-deprived (I did a lot of things this weekend; "sleep a lot" was not among them).

Ode to 8.022: Physics II (Electricity & Magnetism)
*Pronunciation guide: 8.022="eight oh two two"

Electric fields and charges: mystery
Unknowable to me in high school years
I struggled through the class and the AP,
But now I shed my bias and my fears.

"You fool!" you shout. "Why would you take that class?
The work is tough, and never will relent.
8.022 makes students cry en masse,
Your confidence, you will come to lament."

It could be that I'm crazy, I admit
But love like mine can deal with cranial pain
To endless waves of p-sets, I submit
Devoted to dear physics, I remain.

Professor Fisher's lectures help me see
That this is not impossible to clasp
There's elegance in here; there's symmetry
And solving problems can be in my grasp.

8.022, my love makes me a fool
Since I, to you, exist only to tool*.

*to tool: verb. When used by MIT students, means "to work" or "to study".

Ode to 5.12: Organic Chemistry
Pronunciation Guide: 5.12 = "five twelve." 5.13 = "five thirteen."

You warned me that to fall behind spells doom
That failing to keep up will seal my fate
That if I struggle, I must leave my room
To look for help before it is too late

You struck me with an overwhelming fear
In recitation I felt anxious, stressed
As gaps in my chem background cost me dear
I tried so hard, but you seemed unimpressed.

I signed up for you at the last minute
Because I thought I might become pre-med
I did not think we'd mesh well, I admit
But now I know this was too early said.

I find that now you fit me like a glove
As time went on, I found my strengths and grew
To understand hybridization, love
I have a gift for spatial work; who knew?

I hope that you will let me be your queen
Let me succeed, and bring on 5.13.

Ode to 9.00: Introduction to Psychology
Psychology, an ode to you is one
To humankind: to curiosity,
To courage, healing, hope, and spirit. None
Have probed so deeply our identity.

9.00: don’t you see our love is real?
My hand is stained with notes in black pen ink
As I jot thoughts on how we think and feel
How bodies and consciousness are in sync.

Course 9, I think I may soon join your ranks
You draw from science and philosophy
The doubleness in me gives thanks
As I need math and the humanities.

One day, I will know all about the brain
‘Til then, my love I’ll struggle to contain.

-

Unfortunately - and I know you'll be super disappointed about this - I didn't write a sonnet for 18.03 (Differential Equations). My relationship with that class is going through a rough patch; it hurt my feelings pretty badly on Thursday, and we are still not on speaking terms.

Since I don't think that 18.03 deserves a love sonnet right now, I opted for a limerick instead.

***A short lesson on limericks***
A limerick is a five-line poem that follows "anapestic trimeter". This means that its syllables are usually stressed and unstressed in the following way (although there are some variations):
duhduhDUH, duhduhDUH, duhduhDUHduh
duhduhDUH, duhduhDUH, duhduhDUHduh
duhduhDUH, duhduhDUH
duhduhDUH, duhduhDUH
duhduhDUH, duhduhDUH, duhduhDUHduh
***end of lesson***

Ode to 18.03: Differential Equations
I began the new year with the feeling
That you were, diff eq, quite appealing
But you gave me much stress
So I loved you much less
5am? That was mean; my heart's reeling.

-

To be honest, I saved the best for last. I didn't write this class a sonnet, simply because I don't think I could do it justice, and there are certain things I need to make clear to you. I'm taking a course called 21L.320: Big Books, which apparently means "Physically Large Books", and not "Important Books", as I initially thought. The class lasts for half a semester (it's half the number of units of a regular course) and involves reading, discussing, and writing about, one book. This quarter, the book is Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson. Perhaps you, like me, had never heard of Samuel Richardson - but you've probably heard of Jane Austen, and it might surprise you to hear that Samuel Richardson was Jane Austen's favorite author. Reading Clarissa is amazing, partly because it's immediately obvious how this book could be the father of everything that came after it: including everything written by Jane Austen.

At first, I was intimidated by the fact that my book could be used to deliver someone a fatal blow. How could I possibly enjoy 1500 pages of 18th century letter-writing? It turns out that this book is as much a study of human nature as it is a story: the best way to describe it is by using Samuel Johnson's comment that Clarissa is "the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart." Reading it is fascinating, because you find so much of yourself and everyone you know in these aristocratic 18th century British characters. The book is timeless, as long as humans are reading it.

This seminar is what I look forward to every Tuesday and Thursday. It involves a different kind of thinking from my other class: thinking about people, about morals, about gender roles, about relationships between parents and children and men and women. It involves stepping back in time and experiencing a world that is completely different, yet made up of human beings that are no different from us.

-

So, that's my schedule. Feel free to ask any questions about my classes, since I know that the sonnet form may have been unclear! I also highly recommend trying your hand at sonnet/limerick composition; Person who posts the best one gets either a) a prize sent to him/her or b) a poem written about him/her. Promise.

Final note: this came in the mail today, and I thought I'd share, since it's pretty :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Did I mention that I don't get cellphone signal here? GPS doesn't know where it is, and neither, in all honesty, do I.

To recap, I’m here for MIT’s Four Weeks For America Challenge, which sends about a dozen students to schools around the country during IAP, to try and make a difference in communities that need it the most. Each of us is paired up with a Teach For America teacher; my host teaches Algebra I, Algebra II, and Pre-Calculus. The high school is 100% Navajo, and about a quarter of its students go on to graduate. Even fewer go on to college.

School. Otherwise known as my second home.

I’ve been out here for two and a half weeks now. I’ve seen seniors in Algebra II who don’t know the difference between subtraction and division, and students of all grade levels who can’t write a grammatically correct complete sentence.

I’ve learned that teaching is hard. Really hard. I have come to believe that teaching is an art form: preparation followed by performance, with the energy and creativity to improvise if - when - something doesn't go according to plan. When you teach, you find yourself frantically coming up with a zillion ways to explain the same concept; one person might just need to see an example, but another might need to see it graphically, or visually with coins and blocks. You also get to have a lot of fun making said visual aids.

Teaching is a subtle art. Human beings are sensitive. Make a face when a student gives a wrong answer, and he or she may shy away from participating for the rest of the semester. Fail to acknowledge improvement, and a student may stop daring to improve. Most dangerous of all, fail to make it absolutely clear that you believe in every single individual’s ability to succeed – and students are unable to believe in themselves.

A few days ago, I found myself sitting with a sophomore who was learning the Pythagorean Theorem. Unfortunately, learning the Pythagorean Theorem is difficult when you have no idea how to square, or take the square root of, a number. Explaining it in words was like head-butting a brick wall, so I realized that it was time to change tactics.

I have become a big believer in visuals. Look at this, and ask yourself: what would I accomplish by head-butting this repeatedly?

I jumped up, and ran to the cupboard. Flinging the doors open, I grabbed a bag of blue coins, and knelt down next to the student. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s try this a different way.” I pulled out three coins. “How many is this?”
“Three.”
“Right. Now, we’re going to turn these three coins into a square!” I pulled out six more coins, and arranged them in a 3x3 grid. The student looked at the coins in alarm. I continued my little improv act: pulling methods of explanation out of the air. “Squaring a number literally means…turning it into a square! Creating a square with that number on each side.”
A hesitant nod. A nod! I was so excited. “So, what is three squared?”
Silence. Come on, come on, come on.
“Nine.”
YES!
“Yes! Nine! GREAT! See? You get it. Now, figure out four squared. You can use the coins.”
He stared at me. I grabbed the bag, and dumped out about thirty coins onto his desk. He tentatively scooped some out of the pile, and sat forward in his seat. Soon, an elegant little 4x4 grid lay before him. He even shifted the coins at the edges to make them line up perfectly.
“Sixteen.”
“Exactly.” Success!

Moments like that are what keep me going.

That story had a happy ending, but carries with it a tragic undertone. The sophomore I taught to square numbers is one of a hundred kids in this high school – a hundred kids who have gone through their entire academic careers without a solid foundation in basic number manipulation. Take a look at these two examples.

Heart-breaking Example 1
Me: “So, you flip a coin. What’s the probability of landing on heads?”
Freshman: “I don’t know.”
Me: “Okay, so remember our formula for probability…”
Freshman: “Oh! Oh! Two over one.”
Me: “Two over one? But that’s a fraction bigger than one! That doesn’t make any sense.”
Freshman: *blank stare*

Heart-breaking Example 2
*solving an equation for x*
Me: “So, is x by itself now?”
Senior: “No.”
Me: “So what do we have to do?”
Senior: “Divide by negative one.”
Me: “Yes! Exactly.”
Senior: “I don’t know how to do this part.”
Me: “Well, what’s negative x divided by negative one?”
Senior: “x?”
Me: “Yeah! And what’s four divided by negative one?”
Senior: “Five?”
Me: “DIVIDED by.”
Senior: “Um…three?”
Me: “Don’t just guess. Think about it.”
Senior: “One? Negative one? Four?”

-

I don’t know what conclusion you drew from those two dialogues, but I have been realizing, with increasing horror, that many of these kids don’t understand numbers. They learn the operations by rote memorization: they have no idea what a fraction means, what probability means, or what it means to divide or subtract or multiply or square. Because of that, they get the operations mixed up, and keep guessing as you prompt them.

In the students’ junior year, they take an exam called the NMSBA: the New Mexico Standards-Based Assessment. If they pass, they can graduate. If they fail, they cannot graduate, and therefore cannot go onto college. The exam covers math through Algebra II, and it’s obviously important that they learn as much of the material as possible. Imagine that you are an Algebra II teacher. What do you do with a classroom of juniors who never really learned the difference between division and subtraction? Take the time to give them a conceptual understanding of basic math, and you have no time to teach them what they need to know for the NMSBA. Don’t take the time to do it, and they struggle to learn new material, and lack the tools to problem-solve. Combine that with opportunities lost to snow days, professional development days, national holidays, the days that students simply skip – and you face a daunting challenge.

-

I’m not here specifically to be a teacher; I’m here to help out in the classrooms, and work on some sustainable projects of my own. One afternoon, however, my host teacher had to proctor an exam, and her Pre-Calculus class of seniors were supposed to spend the day in the gym. In our opinion, this was a waste of precious learning time, so I stepped in for the class period and taught them exponential decay and half-lives. After class, a few of them stayed to chat. It was a strange feeling; this time last year, I was in their shoes: a senior in high school. A couple of them are nineteen already. I turned eighteen a few months ago. I don’t think of myself as their teacher; I think of myself as someone their age, who has as much to learn from them as they do from me.

Case in point: fifteen minutes after class, one of the Pre-Calc kids was at the board, while I sat in a chair and struggled to understand the intricacies of Navajo family relations. It turns out that in Navajo culture, it is possible for an eighteen-year-old to be his nineteen-year-old friend's grandfather. Apparently, who your relatives are is not determined strictly by blood or by who gives birth to who, but by your clan names. If you don’t find this interesting, feel free to skip over the next section, but I thought I'd do a quick lesson for those of you who are intrigued by what is in my opinion a highly bizarre phenomenon.

---

A QUICK LESSON IN NAVAJO FAMILY RELATIONS (as Anna understood it. Take with several very large grains of salt.)

You meet Man A and Woman B. Each of them will introduce themselves to you by name, and then by their first four clans; in English, this would sound like “I am (Man A’s Name). (Clan Name 1), (Clan Name 2), (Clan Name 3), (Clan Name 4).”

Man A and Woman B get married and have children. The children’s four clans are taken from their parents’ four clans, in the following order:

Man A: Clan 1A, Clan 2A, Clan 3A, Clan 4A
Woman B: Clan 1B, Clan 2B, Clan 3B, Clan 4B
Children: Clan 1B, Clan 1A, Clan 2B, Clan 2A

Your first clan is your mom’s first clan, your second clan is your dad’s first clan, your third clan is your mom’s second clan, and your fourth clan is your dad’s second clan.

Weird situations like being your friend’s grandfather arise because there aren’t that many clan names around here. Imagine that you and your friend exchange clan names:

You: Clan A, Clan B, Clan C, Clan D
Your Friend: Clan E, Clan F, Clan A, Clan H

In this situation, you would be your friend’s maternal grandpa, because your first clan is his third clan.

…I think?

Ponder that for a while.

---

My life out here has comprised of coexisting as teacher and student.

On the teacher side of things: I go to bed at 10:30 and get up at 6:30. I improvise, constantly trying to find newer and simpler ways of explaining concepts. My before-school, lunch, and after-school time is the kids’ time to ask me for help. I put so much of myself into tutoring and mentoring that when one of my kids (they’ve become “my kids”, even after two and a half weeks) doesn’t do well on a test, my heart sinks as though it were me getting that grade. When one of them gets an A, or shows significant improvement, I celebrate like it were my own. Chatter and giggling during class drives me crazy, when eight months ago it was my highly-entertaining friends and classmates doing the chattering and giggling.

On the learner side of things: I learn that every minute of class time is precious learning time that cannot be wasted. I learn that what is a simple explanation for one person might be the most complicated thing in the world for another. I learn that out on the reservations, kids are growing up without electricity or running water, with – in some cases – an alcoholic parent, and no role models. I met a boy who butchered an animal for the first time when he was four and has an interview with Princeton on Saturday, and a girl whose mom was murdered last summer. I learn how to be patient, how to never give up, how to frame and reframe questions, and about how I need to be less of a control freak, and instead need to push students to solve problems on their own. I learn about a beautiful culture that’s isolated from the rest of the world, and wonder what will happen to it if its children succeed in high school, and depart for universities around the country and around the world.

I’d like to finish by asking you to do me a favor. Think about your favorite teachers. The ones who took the time to tutor you during lunch, or after school…the ones who inspire you, the ones who will always believe in you…and take a minute to think about how much effort and energy they throw into teaching – how much effort and energy they give for you – every day. Think about it, appreciate that you’re lucky enough to have mentors like that, since not everyone gets that chance – and thank them.

I was a little jittery. I set three alarms that morning, and donned my most comfortable pair of sweatpants (Manchester United sweatpants, otherwise known as "Best Football Team Ever" sweatpants). Exams were passed out. My desk remained empty. I raised my hand. A proctor yelled "BEGIN!" I stood up and glanced around; no one around me had an exam, either. We shared a hall with a few other physics classes, and it looked like the entire 8.012 section had been left exam-less.

Panic attack. I marched up to a group of proctors, and tapped one of them on the shoulder. He turned around, and some gears at the back of my mind began to turn; he looked strangely familiar. I ignored them, and explained that no one in the 8.012 section had an exam.

Proctor (smiling): "8.012? Are you sure you're in the right place?"
Me: ...
Proctor: "Is 8.012 even in this building?"
Me (bristling): "Um, yes. 8.012 is DEFINITELY in this building, and we DEFINITELY do not have exams."
Proctor: "Oh...okay. We'll sort it out."

He turned to the other proctors. I took ten steps in the direction of my seat, and then froze as the gears in my head clicked into place. I freaked out, and grabbed the girl next to me; a shout-out to Sophie ’14, friend and dorm-mate. I’m sorry if I scared you.

Me: "SOPHIE! DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT WAS?"
Sophie: "What?"
Me: "THAT PROCTOR! DO YOU REALIZE WHO THAT WAS?"
Sophie: "Uh...no? Should I?"
Me: "THAT WAS ALAN GUTH. OH MY GOSH THAT WAS ALAN GUTH."

Alan Guth (scroll down to the bottom). Also known as the father of inflationary universe theory and, apparently, a professor at MIT.

Woah.

He was there because he's a recitation instructor for 8.033 - General Relativity - who had their exam in the same hall. He also, I found out, is a recitation instructor for 8.286 - The Early Universe - which is pretty mind-blowing, since we owe much of our theories on the early universe to him.

If that didn’t blow your mind, maybe this will: I am currently living on a Navajo reservation, forty miles from the nearest grocery store. There’s a gas station, two schools, and a cluster of houses occupied by teachers…and that’s it.

It looks like this in every direction

I’ll be here for the next four weeks – for IAP, which you read about in a recent post by Hamsika - as part of MIT's Four Weeks For America Challenge.

The high school I'm working at is 100% Navajo, and has a graduation rate of 27.6%. The teacher I’m paired up with teaches math, and her roommate teaches English; I’ll be helping both of them out over the next few weeks. She told me that the kids are currently busy chopping wood to prepare for the winter, and that "about half…live in hogans and/or house/trailers without electricity and running water." In case you don't know, this is a hogan:

Is your mind blown yet?

It’s a completely different world.

This afternoon, my host and I took a walk around the area, to clear our heads and get some exercise. I was horrified at how quickly I became out of breath, until I found out that we’re about 7,000 feet above sea level. The fact that we were almost knee-deep in snow made it even more of an adventure; at night, the temperature here drops to below zero (Fahrenheit!). I don’t know about you, but when I think “New Mexico”, “Arctic tundra” doesn’t immediately come to mind.

Did not expect this.

Since today was my first day at school, I don’t have much to report about the students or about the work that I’ve been doing, but you can expect to hear plenty more from me in the next couple of weeks :)

A final note: the house I’m staying in has this sign by the front door, which I thought I would share…

"She believed she could so she did."

And here’s a beautiful New Mexico sunset. Happy New Year!

]]> Academics & Research, 2011-01-04T02:03:40+00:00 Anna H. '14 http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/help http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/help Heads up: this post contains references (italicized) to the song “Help!” by the Beatles. Relevant verse reproduced at the bottom, for your convenience.

-

When I was younger, so much younger than today (in high school), I always thought of myself as more of a writer than a mathematician. I loved both words and numbers, but the former came more naturally. In no time at all, I could bang out essays that I was proud of, and loved coming to an understanding of a text through the writing process itself. I’m not saying that I never needed anybody’s help in any way, but I was definitely confident of my ability to write.

Then, I came here. These (high school) days are gone, and I’m not so self-assured.

This semester, all four of my classes have p-sets, and one of them, 24.900, has p-sets AND essays. This is Introduction to Linguistics: an awesome class, which opened my eyes to the intricacies and mind-blowing consistencies of language…and which lay the smackdown on my morale for a couple of months.

I couldn’t wait to write my first paper: to prove that I could write as well as I could manipulate equations. The topic was a "critical evaluation of an article", and upon submitting, I honestly thought that I did a pretty good job.

Then I got the grade. Not what I expected. Stunned, I skimmed through the three paragraphs of comments my TA posted, feeling like I’d been slapped. The first sentence: "A good job, but there are issues you might want to work on in the future to make your writing better."

Issues I should work on to make my writing better?

No one had ever said that to me before. I'm ashamed to admit that I spent a little while sulking, before steeling myself for the next paper. This was a fluke. I had been careless with my editing, probably, since a lot of it had taken place in the early hours of the morning. The next one would be the best paper ever written. EVER.

After the first paper, everyone in the class found a speaker of a foreign language, and conducted interviews to analyze particular aspects of that language (topics in syntax, compound word construction, inflectional morphology, etc). I paired up with a friend from my pre-orientation program, who is from Nepal. A shout-out to Pramod '14, who has now spent hours and hours of his time (four of my papers!) being patient with me while I embarrass myself trying to speak his native tongue!

Anyway, when I got this second paper back, the first thing I noticed was the much-improved grade. Phew. That first one WAS just a fluke. And then I looked at the comments, and saw "writing-wise, there are some problems which you should try to address - your writing is quite good, but there are issues which are common to both papers of yours that I've seen so far."

What? Again with the "issues". What really hurt, though, was the last comment: "when it is time to write the third paper, please make an appointment with the writing tutor: I think talking to her is very likely to help you. It is not like you are doing badly in the class or anything - it is just that it would be good if you could use this class and its resources to their full potential."

A writing tutor?! Again, I was stunned. I couldn't believe it. He wanted me to go to a writing tutor? To admit that I had "issues" with my writing? No way.

I wish I could tell you that I took his advice and made an appointment with the tutor, but that would be a lie. I didn’t even look up her e-mail address. Why? Maybe it was partly pride, maybe partly laziness, but I think that more than anything it was stubbornness: I wanted to fix this problem myself. I felt that I had something to prove.

Which was stupid.

Third paper came and went and, surprise surprise, my grade went down. This time, my TA sent me an e-mail, which more or less broke my heart.

"a pattern which is best addressed than neglected"..."issues with the organization of the text"...and that suggestion - that humbling suggestion, which was now turning into more of an entreaty - to go see the writing tutor. "Don't get me wrong", he said, "I really enjoy your papers, they are thoughtful and interesting!"

AND GOOD PIECES OF WRITING!, I wanted to add. REALLY! I CAN WRITE! I SWEAR!

Or so I thought. I reluctantly e-mailed the writing tutor, and started work on Paper 4. I went to see her the day before it was due, and slouched in my chair and watched her pen with suspicious eyes. What could possibly be wrong with my writing?

The entire first paragraph, apparently. Bam. Not enough background information. Bam. Don't assume the reader knows that. Bam. Imagine that this is the first time someone from the linguistics community has studied Nepali. Bam. This example isn't clear. Neither is that one. Repeat the example down below, where you make reference to it. Summarize your points at the end of each section. Summarize it all at the end. And so on, and so on, and so on, and when I left the room I left behind my ego, and carried instead a piece of paper covered in blue ink.

It turned out that I wasn't a bad writer, exactly; I just didn't know how to write that kind of paper. I didn’t understand that I was supposed to address an audience who had never heard of Nepali: who knew very little about linguistics. I was introducing the public to Nepali for the first time, not reporting my findings to my professor. As a result, I wasn’t able to present the material in a way that made sense. This wasn’t my fault: I had never written this kind of paper before. What was my fault was the fact that it took me so long to figure out how the paper was meant to be written: if only I had checked in earlier, I would have been set for the previous three papers.

After a week or so, the grades and comments for that fourth paper rolled in. My grade shot up to the bar I set for myself, way back at the beginning of the semester. With it, the tone of the comments changed. "A great paper! Not only the research is very good - the writing is very good, too!"

To my surprise, I was proud of myself. More proud than I had been about any p-set, or any high test score. I didn't expect to feel proud; I thought that by going to ask for help, I would in a way be "cheating": it wouldn't be a grade earned through my own efforts, but through the assistance of someone else.

Turns out that taking the time to see someone for advice - to get a pair of fresh eyes to look at your work, when you've hit a wall - is something to be proud of. It takes effort. It takes a little bit of courage, I think, and humility. It requires admitting that you can't do everything alone, that you can always improve, and that you're willing to go that extra mile to make sure what you turn in is really the best it can be.

At MIT, I have heard over and over again that students are reluctant to ask for help. Many come in from high school as the kid who was always asked for help: never one who had to ask. The transition from the know-it-all to the struggler can be confusing and upsetting, and qualities that made us successful in the past - stubbornness, belief in ourselves and our ability to figure things out on our own - suddenly hinder us. We run into walls, and keep banging our heads against them, instead of just asking for a leg up from someone else.

-

At our first MedLinks meeting, one of the officers addressed a question that we all had to answer in our application. "You come across a closed door. Your goal lies on the other side. What do you do?"

I remember staring at the question for a long time, wondering whether "open it" was the wrong answer. I went through all possible scenarios in my head: if it was locked, would I walk away? No. Would I break in? Possibly. Would I knock? Maybe. If it wasn't locked, would I run in with no hesitation? Would I hesitate and re-assess?

The officer showed us the variety of answers he received. They ranged from "open it" to violent descriptions of forcing the door open (involving, among other things, chainsaws and explosives), to creative hacks, to “magic”. Not one answer, the officer pointed out, with a sideways smile, mentioned asking for help. Those that assumed a locked door assumed a solitary quest.

-

The MedLinks program is just one resource here. There is also S^3, Student Support Services, which can help when things get overwhelming, or just offer basic advice on time and stress management. There are the writing tutors, who I can personally recommend. There is the career office, who I made an appointment with to get help with my resumé, and who promptly smashed it apart and helped me fit the rubble back together. There is MIT Mental Health, there are GRTs (Graduate Resident Tutors), tutors available within specific departments, your professors during office hours…the list goes on and on and on. MIT takes care of its students: the help is there, if you can recognize that you need it, and then get over your stubbornness and reach out. My TA is a great example of this: his analysis of my writing and the arguments in my paper was probably more in-depth than my analys of Nepali. Seriously. He's awesome, and so SO helpful in combing through every detail and pushing me to take my work to the next level, and I only wish that I took his advice from the beginning.

This kind of thing doesn't just apply to MIT. At home, there are family and friends. There are teachers you're close to. Guidance counselors. There are support networks through clubs and organizations.

On the other hand, maybe you’ve never had a problem asking for help. If that’s the case, then great! I don't think it ever hurts, though, to be reminded that asking for help doesn't mean "giving up", and it certainly doesn't mean that you've failed. People recognize that it takes initiative and courage to get help, and appreciate it. In an e-mail I received from my TA shortly afterwards, about something unrelated, he closed by mentioning my paper: "By the way, take a look at the comment for the paper 4 - it was really good! You have improved _a lot_ - you must have worked hard, and it really paid off."

There was something deeply, profoundly satisfying about that. I would take it any day over a 100% on a p-set that I did on my own without too much effort.

So, learn from this obstinate MIT student, and remember that while independence and the ability to problem-solve on your own is important, equally important is the ability to recognize when you've hit a dead end, and need to open up the doors to reinforcements.

-

“When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind, I've opened up the doors.”
-From "Help!", by The Beatles.

]]> Academics & Research, Life & Culture, 2010-11-23T22:57:30+00:00 Anna H. '14