Why I Chose MIT 

In all honesty, there are times (*cough* hell weeks *cough*) when MIT makes me feel like this:

But mostly, it makes me feel like this:

(p.s. you should all go waste some time on this site because it's hilarious - and it's also where I got the above two gifs)

I visited MIT for the first time during CPW, and I came in expecting the stereotype, i.e. that everyone here would be incredibly nerdy and anti-social, and that I would fail all my classes because they'd be insanely hard. I was mostly deciding between the Rice-Baylor 7-year med program (where I wouldn't have to take the MCAT and would be guaranteed a spot at Baylor Med School), but my four days at MIT convinced me that MIT was the right place for me to be pre-med...despite the fact that I would have to take the I-never-want-to-ever-take-this-again exam a.k.a. the MCAT.

So what made me change my mind? I think that above all, it was the spirit of MIT. People here want to change the world - in whatever way they can. The pre-med students that I met during my CPW were all down-to-earth, big dreamers, and hard-working. But they were also realistic. They knew that a B at MIT wasn't the be-all-end-all of their med school ambitions. They collaborated with others, they shared ideas, and above all, they held on to the idea that they wanted to make a difference. They inspired me.

That, combined with the ridiculous numbers of opportunities here (UROPs, MISTI, Camp Kesem, proximity of hospitals, etc) pulled me away from Rice (disclaimer: I *do* think the Rice-Baylor program is still awesome). Just a few days after CPW, I comMITed and happily joined the MIT Class of 2013.

What It's Been Like to be Pre-Med at MIT

I like it. I feel like pre-med students here offer a unique perspective on medicine: that of a joint scientist-engineer-philanthropist. MIT has a pre-health office that has streamlined the medical school process and made everything easy to follow and understand. Last semester, all the students planning on entering medical school in Fall '12 were asked to answer a series of questions to allow them to be matched to a pre-med advisor. Over the course of this semester, I've been meeting with my pre-med advisor: the one and only McGreggor Crowley. (Best advisor ever?? Yup, I think so!) Together, we've come up with a list of schools I should be considering, a packet of information to give to those writing my rec letters, and a preliminary draft of my personal statement. Every med school advisor helps his or her advisees through the process, complementing the series of presentations/talks that the pre-health office organizes as a guide and resource to current applicants.

To give you an idea of what these presentations are like: the most recent one featured an admissions officer from Harvard Medical School, who answered questions and walked everyone through the expectations of the medical school application/interview. These sessions are both a little intimidating (so much to do!) and very helpful. I've visited the pre-health office at least 7 or 8 times this semester, as I was toying with the idea of a gap year, worrying over whether or not my recommenders spelled my (very long) last name correctly, and confused about which schools to apply to. They've got my back :)

Grades

Of course - this is what everyone is most worried about: will I be able to maintain a high GPA at MIT? Rest assured, it's not impossible. I know a number of pre-med students who have 5.0/5.0 GPAs and have gotten into top schools. I also know people who have collected a few B's and have lower GPAs - they too have ended up at great schools.

I guess my point is: don't let the idea of a B (or even a C) prevent you from coming to MIT and being pre-med. Every medical school in the world knows that MIT is a tough place, and that perfect grades aren't the only thing worth considering in an application. Come here to learn, to be challenged, to gain some engineering intuition - in conjunction with your pre-med course work. And if you get a B, consider it a lesson learned: you're more than a grade/letter.

Closing Thoughts

I'll add more of my thoughts as I get further into the medical school process. In the meantime, feel free to email in with any questions or concerns. To prospective '16s: I hope you all loved CPW - and that I get to see you here in the fall! To those of you who didn't sleep at all during CPW, this is how I'm imagining you: 

 Cuteeee ♥

Haha - peace out, guys! 

It didn't seem that way at first. I was scheduled to fly out last Friday: Boston --> New York --> Houston. I managed to get to New York, but then my flight got canceled, leaving me frustrated and with an intense craving for home/family/my mom's food - none of which I'd had in nearly a year.

Things perked up slightly when I walked into my Delta-provided hotel room and saw a beautiful queen size bed. I curled up and (1) watched Finding Nemo, and (2) started reading Hunger Games. At some point, I fell into a dreamless sleep, and eight hours later, woke up to catch my flight and arrive safely in the ever-humid city of Houston, Texas. 

Enter: sleep, food, an absence of psets, and the realization that my younger brother is way taller than I am. 

I spent the first few days of Spring Break lazing about the house, taking four-hour naps a little too often and relishing the taste of home-cooked food. I dragged my mom and brother to the theater to watch Hunger Games (go watch it - it's awesome!) and finished the rest of the book series. I glanced briefly at homework but only to tell myself that it didn't look too bad and fully qualified for procrastination.

On Tuesday, I joined three of my favorite '12s (Vidya, Helen, and Yun) on a mini-roadtrip to the small town of Brenham, home of Blue Bell ice cream. We took a tour of the ice cream factory + got free ice cream! Yummmmm :) Here are some pics from our Brenham trip (some of which are heavily edited since Vidya and Yun got a little excited about Picasa's new editing features, loll):

(L-R: Yun '12, Vidya '12 - Imitating the owls!)

(Me: freaking out about flowers)

(Helen '12: reliving her childhood)

(L-R: Yun '12, me - bluebonnets!!)

On Wednesday, Yun and I made our way to the 2012 Livestrong Assembly, held in Austin, Texas. As co-chairs for Camp Kesem MIT this year, we joined Ram '13 in repping our Camp Kesem chapter at the Assembly. Last year, Livestrong made Camp Kesem one of their community impact projects, allowing 12 new Camp Kesem chapters to be created all over the nation - all of which will launch their first camps this upcoming summer. At the Assembly, we had a chance to meet Livestrong leaders and community partners from all over the world (Africa, Pakistan, Canada, and more). It was incredibly inspiring - and the best part? 

WE GOT TO MEET LANCE ARMSTRONG!!!!!

Check out this vid from the Assembly:

Case in point: over the past year or so, I’ve been working with MIT’s Edgerton Center, which supports teams such as the Solar Electric Vehicle Team, Formula SAE, Marine Robotics Team, and more - all of which place a big emphasis on hands-on work and building. I’ve corresponded back and forth with a number of the student leaders in these groups, but it wasn’t until about two weeks ago that I actually visited their workshop in Building N51 and saw for myself everything that they do.

Check these pictures out: 

Can you believe students built all these things?? All of these groups spend a significant number of hours each week in the workshop, working away into the night. While they receive some funding from the Edgerton Center, they do quite a bit of fundraising on their own. As a pre-med student at MIT and predominantly a life sciences type of person, I was impressed by everything these groups had built in their workshop. I think I’ll get a chance to go back next week and explore a little more - but in the mean time, just thought I’d share these pictures :)

Spring break kicks off tomorrow! I’m heading down south to Texas for some hot weather, special times with family, a road trip with friends, and a conference for Camp Kesem. More updates on the flip side of Spring Break! 

p.s. If you'd like to learn more about the Edgerton Center, here's the link to their page.

The past three weeks have validated that statement. I've spent an average of 6 hours each day (read: ~ 8 pm - 2 am) for the past 4 days working on 6.005. Our assignment is to create a Sudoku solver, which will read in any Sudoku puzzle and figure out a solution to it. It's pretty cool!! Except hard to do :( So understandably, there's been an outpouring of overwhelmed-ness amongst the 6.005 student body. 

This feeling of utter panic manifested itself on the 6.005 Piazza site (Piazza is basically a site where students can ask questions and instructors/classmates can answer them - a.k.a. a way to get instantaneous answers to questions) via a thread titled: "Extended deadline for pset 2":

"Hi, can you give a class extension for pset 2's deadline? This is a hard pset, and we are just starting to cover the materials that are necessary to complete this pset, so it is unnecessarily demanding to finish the pset by this Thursday.

Thanks!"

A bajillion people liked/viewed/responded to that thread, and less than 24 hours later, we all received the following email, with the subject line "6.005 announcement: Problem Set 2 Deadline Changed":

"In response to popular demand, we have decided to move the deadline for the Beta submission of problem set 2 to Sunday 11:59 PM.

Armando and Saman"

Which in turn resulted in the following i'm-so-relieved-and-in-love-with-freedom-of-speech-and-democracy piazza post: 

"Yay!"

And the following success baby meme (credit to Edan '12):

Which all-in-all made my Tuesday night (or Wednesdy, early morning rather) a bubble of extreme happiness. 

And now I'm sharing that happiness with you :)

Happy Leap Day!

Camp Kesem MIT is a one-week, free summer camp that takes place towards the end of August and is geared towards kids whose parents have been affected by cancer. Each summer, a combination of kids and counselors (all of whom are MIT students) come together for a week of pure camp fun – filled with sports, nature activities, arts and crafts, ropes courses, drama rotations, swimming, hiking, and more. Planning for each camp session is done entirely by a coordinator board made up of ~15 MIT students; this board starts preparing for the following Camp session as soon as the present session is done.

I was a counselor for Camp Kesem MIT during my freshman and sophomore summers at MIT, and I’ve been a part of the coordinator board for a year and a half now. I LOVE CAMP. Throughout the year, we hold a number of events and fundraisers on campus to raise the $65,000 we need to make Camp Kesem happen each summer.

One such event took place this past weekend: The Camp Kesem-SAE Date Auction. SAE (Sigma Alpha Epsilon) is one of MIT’s fraternities and has been our partner for the Date Auction event for three years now. During the event, a number of MIT students are “auctioned” off, with gift cards to local restaurants and businesses. Typically, a “date” is bought by his or her friends, who pool together and “buy” their friend for an impressive sum. (I hope I’m doing a decent and not-sketchy job of describing this; please feel free to question me about any details that seem awkward – it’s an awesome event, I promise!) The businesses that donated prizes to this year’s date auction were California Pizza Kitchen, F1 Racing, Vapiano’s, Melting Pot, among other places. We raised over $6600 in just two hours through this Date Auction event!!

CK Counselors at SAE-CK Date Auction 2012

Every time I do something CK-related, I’m reminded of how lucky I am to have a happy, healthy family that hasn’t been affected by cancer. The kids I meet at Camp are so strong and resilient – each year I go to Camp, I’m blown away by their maturity and their stories. They’re the best kids ever <3

To add a personal touch to this blog entry, I want to introduce Jenn Lai ‘11– an MIT alum and a Rhodes Scholar. This is her story with cancer--

~*~

I’ve always been fascinated by personal stories. Everyone has pivotal experiences, those experiences that become skyscrapers in their life landscape, forever altering their perception of things around them. It’s just so happened that my skyscrapers were built by something called cancer.
When I was seven years old, my mother passed away from cancer. At the time, I had no idea what cancer was; I hardly even understood what was going on around me. All I knew was that there was a thing called cancer and that it was bad.

It wasn’t until some of my high school biology classes that I started to learn about the biological underpinnings of cancer. The topic fascinated me; it was sort of a guilty pleasure to learn about cancer. It gave me a glimpse into what occurred in my mother’s body, bringing me one step closer to understanding what had happened so many years ago. Cancer, I learned, is generally a disease of the old. As our bodies age, cells accumulate mutations in their growth mechanisms driving them to eventually overtake the body. I could imagine these malignant cells growing without bound in my mother’s body. Yet something didn’t make sense. My mom wasn’t old. She was forty.

There comes a time when we start to realize that some traits are hereditary: height, eye color, hair color, premature death by cancer. I didn’t know exactly what kind of cancer my mother had-- I had never asked-- but I had a hunch that whatever it was, I was likely to have it too. I delved into studying cancer, perhaps because I was simply hooked, perhaps because I was trying to understand my mother’s death, perhaps because I was trying to save myself.

It was around the time that I was applying to MD/PhD programs at the end of my MIT career that I started to do a little more digging. In trying to distill my reasons for wanting to become a physician scientist, it only made sense to investigate my own medical history. My mother had both breast and stomach cancer, I found out. She was diagnosed with ductal breast cancer in January 1997. The prognosis after surgery and radiation was good. Several months later, after undergoing surgical exploration for a case of ascites, build up of fluid in the peritoneal cavity, the surgeons found invasive gastric cancer. She passed away in September 1997. My maternal grandfather also passed away from some form of gastric cancer, as did a maternal aunt.

Curious, I typed into my Google search bar: hereditary gastric cancer. Among the first results that came up were some articles about hereditary diffuse gastric cancer (HDGC). I clicked on one, then another, then another. HDGC, I found out, is a relatively rare form of hereditary gastric cancer that is passed in an autosomal dominant fashion--if one parent is affected, each offspring has a fifty percent chance of also being affected. About fifty percent of HDGC cases can be linked to a gene mutation in CDH1, which encodes for the cell adhesion protein E-cadherin. Mutation carriers have about an 80%/70% (female/male) lifetime risk of developing the cancer by the age of 80, with median age of onset at around age 40. Diffuse gastric cancer is unfortunately very difficult to detect early by endoscopy, as the cancer grows in clusters in the lining of the stomach rather than in a distinct mass. By the time diffuse gastric cancer becomes symptomatic, it is often advanced and too late for treatment. Given the high likelihood of developing diffuse gastric cancer, it is now recommended that CDH1 mutation carriers undergo preventative removal of the entire stomach, a drastic but necessary measure.

After reading as much as I could about HDGC and CDH1, I looked into the criteria for getting a genetic test done and knew that I had to get tested. I had my blood drawn and sent to City of Hope in August 2010, and by December 2010 I knew that I am a CDH1 mutation carrier.
The implications of a positive test result are vast: coming to terms with destiny, deciding to get surgery and when, figuring out how it will affect my life and the plans I’d set out for myself. It came at a time when I knew I’d be moving to Oxford, then later dedicating at least eight years of my life to MD/PhD training with more years of medical training after. It’s been a long journey, which I could probably write an entire series of books on, and it’s not over yet. The main storyline is this: I have now decided to take time off from school to concentrate on my health. I will be having my surgery done in a couple of weeks at home in Honolulu, Hawaii, then will return to school in the fall.

The immediate response I get from most people is usually something along the lines of, “What!? You can live without a stomach?!” The short answer is yes-- the stomach is actually surprisingly overrated. It’ll be an adjustment, and it’ll take time, but the fact is that it is both possible and necessary.
I’ve had plenty of time to think about if I am really making the right decision. Removing an organ is a big step. It is true that I wish I didn’t have to do it, but the reality is hard to ignore. After my mother passed away, I had a subconscious expectation that I wouldn’t live much beyond forty-- maybe that’s why I have always worked so hard. Now I know that without this surgery, my life expectancy would be forty. As tumultuous as this entire experience has been, it is liberating to know that I will now have a pretty normal life expectancy. There is so much to do with that time-- it really is a gift.
If I didn’t have a good reason to go into medicine and research before, I do now. The fact that preventative surgery is the only safe option for me sometimes makes me frustrated. It has also shown me that there are very real medical problems that still need to be solved, and this is only one of them. I can’t wait until I can move on to the next chapter of my life and start addressing these problems academically. In the meantime, I am focusing on enjoying every bite of every meal and the sunny Hawaiian days.

~*~

Jenn is the author of the blog gastronomically speaking, and she welcomes you to follow the rest of her journey. To find out more about gastric cancer and spread gastric cancer awareness, please visit No Stomach for Cancer. 

<3,

Hamsika

---

My name is Stephanie, but mostly I go by stephlin, steph or “yoooo.” I’m currently finishing up my senior year in Course 7 (which is awesome! Everyone should study biology!!) with a minor in Applied International Studies and concentration in Spanish. I was a beekeeper/researcher for a summer in high school (obligatory fun fact), really love parentheses and tend to write/talk too much (as you will soon see…). I’m incredibly excited to be going to Oxford next year via the Rhodes Scholarship, and Hamsika asked me to write some juicy new details about the application experience. Here goes:

Prologue (sounds so official, right?).
I made the decision to apply for the Rhodes last year (junior spring). Long story short[er], I wanted to be a physician but also wanted to study the humanities side of medicine before jumping from Biology at MIT to Physiology in medical school (I eventually want to work in public health and infectious disease. See, I told you – long story). Oxford has some really interesting programs and a very different style of learning from the US, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to gain a different perspective and meet awesome people. So over the summer as I was filling out medical school applications, I was also working on:

The Rhodes Application – you know the drill.
A 1,000 word personal statement, transcript, 2-page resume and between 6-8 letters of recommendation. What a monster, right? I submitted everything in early September to the MIT Distinguished Fellowships Office, which had interviews and chose a group of students to give Institutional Endorsements to. Everything, including the endorsement, was shipped off to one of 16 Districts in early October. And then I waited.

The Interview – Whoa there. Whoa.
In late-ish October, each District emails or calls its Finalists to let us know that we’ve received invitations to interview in mid-November. I was sitting in 7.20 (Human Physiology) when my email came, so I had to refrain from making a ruckus. But I was ridiculously excited…and about 30 seconds later, very nervous. The Rhodes Interviews are notoriously difficult; questions can range from challenges to weaknesses to baseball, poets from your ethnicity, politics, ethics, class from freshman year, classes from sophomore year and yes, even that one class you always slept through senior year. I spent weeks working with the Fellowships office, faculty and friends to talk through questions. I think this preparation was one of the most valuable parts of the process - because it forced me to think critically about my aspirations and values, and learn to articulate them properly - but also the most grueling.

The Interview – Fish and cocktail parties.
And then I flew to California. The actual interviews take place on Saturday, but all Finalists attend the cocktail party on Friday night in order to meet each other and the interviewers. I thought it would be terrifying; the bios of the previous Scholars online are absolutely amazing and intimidating. But this is what happened:

Fun, right? The other applicants and interviewers were all super-accomplished people, but they were also very warm and friendly, and genuinely interested in learning more about me. The cocktail party made the interview process less nerve-wracking and much, much more fun (also, they fed us tacos with really good guacamole. that makes everything better).

The Interview – The Interview.
On Saturday morning all 10 Finalists from the LA region were interviewed in half-hour slots that we’d drawn the night before. After chatting with the receptionist and another applicant for a while, I was called into the room and led to the head of a very long and intimidating table:

But the interview also ended up being more fun than expected (haha this is a trend), though the questions were still challenging. I was asked about my favorite class from freshman year, an awesome class from sophomore year, lots about medicine and medical ethics (which made for very interesting conversation), art in Boston and Barcelona (where I’d worked on an internship), biology and a host of other topics. No questions on baseball, thank goodness. I walked out smiling then, nanoseconds after the door closed, began psychoanalyzing every statement I’d made. Which leads us to…

The Longest 4 hours of my life.
The last fun thing about the Rhodes interviews is that they tell you the same day whether you got the scholarship or not. After my interview I wandered around downtown LA for a while looking for food (a very common theme in my life. the food, not the LA) and then went back to the hotel lobby to chill for a few hours until the call-backs. To distract myself, I went to the nearby CVS and bought one of the DVD’s that was on sale. The choice was a hard one – the entire time I was thinking, “what if they call me back for a second interview and ask me what I did all afternoon? Maybe I should watch an inspirational movie. A documentary. Something in Spanish. Something deep.”

I eventually picked up “Happy Feet.” Penguins are good for the soul!

Ta-dah!

Finally, I joined all the other interviewees back at the site to wait. This was actually really cool because we got to chat with one another and play a mean game of “Go Fish” while the judges sat in the room next door talking about us. Twice, the chair of the committee came in to call someone back out to re-interview, and my heart would stop (along with everyone else’s, I’m sure) for just a second.

After 2.5 hours they came back to make the announcement, lining up in a very intimidating row. As they called the first name my heart was pounding in my ears.

“Stephanie…”
[mini-heart-attack]
“Bryson.”
[*facedesk. Yes, the other Rhodes Scholar-elect from Southern California is also named Stephanie. Fun story.]

And then they called my name and I sat there with a really silly look on my face. I don’t remember much of the next few hours; I’m pretty sure my vocabulary was limited to “Thank you,” “wow” and “[silly grin].” Not the most eloquent moment of my life, but I think that’s okay.

The end. Plus the stuff that’s missing.

And there you have it.

But I’m missing a huge chunk – you see, this has been MY snapshot of the last few months, but there are so many other people who have helped build the story. I’ve gotten mountains of support from the Fellowships Office (hi Kim, Sarra and Scott! Look, I wrote another essay!), Scholarship alums (including alum blogger Melis ’08), MIT faculty and friends. They’ve spent hours upon hours helping me to revise essays, prep for interviews and stay sane. And then there are the people who’ve written recommendation letters and worked with me on projects and let me potter around in their labs and etcetcetc. Nothing I’ve done at MIT has been done alone, and I’m unbelievably grateful to all the people I’ve met along the way. This place has so much excitement in it. It’s beautiful.

Basically: I LOVE MIT!! Thanks for reading, guys. If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them, and I hope to see you all at CPW!
 

Perhaps this isn't so surprising. When applying to MIT three years ago (it's been 3 years already?!?!), this was the page I took to heart: The Match Between You and MIT. Among other things, this page says:

• Opportunities abound at MIT, but they must be seized. For those students who take initiative - who take advantage of what's around them - MIT's resources are unparalleled.

So true. MIT has produced a number of Rhodes Scholars, Gates Scholars, Truman Scholars, and so on - but more than that, it's created a population that strives to make the world better in some small (or big!) way. Looking back on my two and a half years here, I am most proud of my accomplishments outside the classroom, particularly my work with the MIT Public Service Center. 

In my 'Two Videos' entry from December, I briefly mentioned that I would be going to India over IAP, working with AIM for Seva (a non-profit organization that has constructed schools and hospitals all over India, primarily for those who cannot afford education or healthcare) and Embrace (a social enterprise that was founded at Stanford and has developed a low-cost infant warmer to prevent neonatal mortality due to hypothermia). Well, I'm back now, done with my project report, and ready to share my experiences with all of you. 

(Sidenote: if you'd rather just read my report/see pictures and not hear me ramble on, follow this link)

I peaced out of MIT about two hours after my last final exam, jumped on a plane, and flew from Boston to New York, New York to Dubai (where I met up with my mom), and Dubai to Ahmedabad. Half-asleep, I then got in a taxi and drifted in and out of slumber during the two-hour ride from Ahmedabad's airport to the small village of Shamlaji, wherein Shamlaji Hospital - my project site - was located. 

The goal of my project in India was to introduce the Embrace infant warmer to doctors/nurses at the Shamlaji Tribal Hospital, train them on the use of the technology, and collect data on each and every infant that was placed inside the warmer. As a Tamil-speaker, I struggled with language barriers at the hospital, where most individuals only knew Gujarati and/or Hindi. Fortunately, one of the nurses could speak English and graciously translated for me throughout my trip. Whenever she wasn't around, however, I used a crazy combination of facial expressions, hand gestures, and rudimentary Hindi gleaned from watching Indian movies. Half the time, I gave up and broke into giggles, amused by how ridiculous my communication fail was.

After about three weeks at Shamlaji Hospital, I traveled back to the tribal hospital I went to last year, in Anaikatti - a small town in southern India. I checked out the results of my project last year (a training class for nurses regarding first aid techniques and basic English phrases), as well as the new equipment that the hospital was able to purchase in the past year. Following this, I flew back to Boston, where, as you already know, I went to LeaderShape in an extremely jet-lagged state, turned 21, and spent the last two weeks of IAP relaxing.

The reason I wanted to write this entry is to show you all that MIT truly opens doors for its students and encourages innovation and creativity in a number of different ways. After I submitted my project proposal, I received guidance and funding from MIT's Public Service Center, the Baker Foundation, and the Kelly-Douglas Fund - all of whom had suggestions for how I could make my project even better. 

Anywayyy. I feel like there are too many words in this entry. I'm going to stop talking now. 'Til next time! There's an awesome guest blog coming your way :)

(1) Work never ends - no matter what, there's always something productive you could be doing. 

(2) Failure is all too common - you can't be perfect 100% of the time. 

(3) It's easy to feel sad and miserable about work, psets, and consistently staying up till 4 am or 5 am.

(4) It's possible to be inundated with work yet happy at the same time.

(5) It's my choice to pick (4) over (3).

And that's why this semester's going to be different. In terms of classes, this upcoming semester is going to be my most challenging semester yet. As a double major in Course 6-7 and 9, I'm taking the following:

6.005 - Elements of Software Construction

• This class is notoriously tedious and time-consuming. It relies on Java, which I haven't actually come in contact with since my senior year of high school. I'm going to be sending several up several prayers during the course of this semester, and caffeine and I are going to be better friends than ever before.

6.006 - Introduction to Algorithms

• While not as time-consuming as 6.005, 6.006 is hard, as evidence by the picture below which went semi-viral on Facebook last semester. The caption was: "Death came to personally serve us our 6.006 exam." (credit for pic goes to FB user Loneoceans Ggy)
• 

9.09/7.29 - Cellular Neurobiology

• Supposedly a chill class? Neurobio's my fave :)

5.60 - Thermodynamics and Kinetics

• I've never done a whole lot of thermo before, and I've heard mixed things about this class. Most people have told me that if I have a good TA, this class will be pretty easy. Ummmm - definitely need to go find a good TA.

STS.075/21A.340 - Technology and Culture

• This class only meets once a week, for two hours at a time, has no midterms, no final, and 6.2 out of 7 (i.e. high!!) ratings on MIT's subject evaluation system. I have a feeling this is going to be my favorite class this semester. The one downside is that it starts early: 9 am every Thursday morning. Solution: multiple wake-up alarms - all very loud.

To offset the impending stress of this workload, my friends and I have made a promise to insert fun, spontaneous events into this semester. My current list of random, fun to-do's includes the following:

1. Explore Harvard Square
2. Go to concerts (have you all heard of the Indian drummer, Zakir Hussain? YouTube him!)
3. Have movie nights (LoTR marathonnnn)
4. Go crazy with Photo Booth
5. Karaoke Nights
6. VIsit all the museums - Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Science, etc.
7. Check out more of Boston's North End
8. Have random nights where everyone dresses up nice and goes out to dinner.

I'm sure this list will get longer and longer as the semester goes on, and I don't expect to finish everything on it. Still, it makes me look past the psets/tests to come and look forward to the outings and hangouts. I'll share all our experiences with you all - and hopefully, you all find similar things to do around your own hometowns. Find the fun in life!

PS - I've seen Quinton 4 out of the 6 times I've been to the gym this past week; I'm pretty sure he's working out to impress you all during CPW :)

This:

(video credit: Tony Eng)

The official description of LeaderShape, as detailed by MIT's Division of Student Life, is as follows: 

• MIT LeaderShape is an intensive six-day leadership development experience that takes place over IAP. Participants will be asked to wrestle with such challenging topics as professional ethics, dealing with uncertainty, working within a diverse community while developing skills in areas of problem solving and interpersonal communication. Over the course of the program students will develop a community among their peers, facilitated by MIT faculty & staff cluster leaders and student veterans of the program. LeaderShape takes place at an off-campus retreat site in southern Massachusetts, allowing students the opportunity to fully engage in the leadership experience.

My own description is a little shorter:

• The best six days of my junior year thus far.

Let me elaborate. 

Around 1 pm on January 20, I joined ~50 other MIT students and boarded a bus to the Camp Wonderland Conference Center in Sharon, Massachusetts. Cookies greeted us as we walked into the conference center, and we wasted no time in devouring them. This was the first of many times when we ate way more than we should have at LeaderShape 2012.

The six days of LeaderShape are characterized by specific themes:

Day 1: Building Community

Day 2: The Value of One, the Power of All

Day 3: Challenging What Is, Looking to What Could Be

Day 4: Bringing Vision to Reality

Day 5: Living and Leading With Integrity

Day 6: Staying in Action

On day one, we were all split into separate clusters, each with its own faculty facilitator and student co-facilitator. I was lucky enough to have two of the most awesome people ever: Chancellor Eric Grimson and one of my bffls, Kuljot '13. Together, they helped all of us come up with a vision to change the world and a plan to put that vision into action. They offered their thoughts, their advice, their constructive criticism - making us feel like we could accomplish anything we set our minds to. The week was led by head facilitators, Tracy Purinton (the Associate Director of MIT's Leadership Center) and Kirk Kolenbrander (the Vice President for Institute Affairs and Secretary of the MIT Corporation), who led a series of interactive exercises and activities throughout the six days. They actively asked for our feedback and tweaked the program to suit our preferences. During mealtimes, all the facilitators sat with the students; it felt surreal to share a meal with both the Chancellor and the VP of MIT.

The last day of LeaderShape also happened to be my birthday, and I couldn't have picked a better place to celebrate my birthday or better people to celebrate it with. At midnight, the guys at LeaderShape serenaded me with a rendition of "Just the Way You Are", followed by a brief showering and an awesome dance party. We stayed up till 5 AM playing Mafia and just talking. Later that morning, we came together for the close of LeaderShape: one big family :)

Now that we're all back on campus, there has been a flurry of Facebook friend requests and a hilarious assortment of Facebook posts and potential dinner/movie plans. The LeaderShape experience was incredible, and I'm thankful for all the wonderful new friends I've made. Shout out to LeaderShape 2012: I miss you guys!! ♥

Why? Because I, like Elizabeth, am officially done with finals!!! I left campus about 2 hours ago, and am currently at Logan Airport, wishing my flight weren't delayed. The airport is packed, and I've already spotted several MIT hoodies and sweatpants. So many students are headed home :)

I've decided to use this extra bit of free time to write an entry I wanted to write/post this past Monday regarding admissions decisions.

Two years ago, I wrote an entry called 'To the Deferred' - and I want to now add to the words expressed in that entry.

First: to those of you who got in - congratulations, and welcome to MIT! I hope to see you on campus during CPW.

To those of you who didn't get in: I have a story for you! And hopefully, it'll make you feel a bit better. 

--

This past semester, I worked very, very hard - not only on schoolwork, but on scholarship applications as well. There was one application in particular that I poured my heart into - I wrote nine versions of that application, asked for several others' opinions on my essays, and revised, revised, revised.

In order to compete for scholarships, you often have to interview at your school and compete for one of your school's nominations spots. I spent a week preparing for my MIT interview, using study breaks during finals studying to drill interview questions with friends. In the end, I didn't get a nomination spot - and for about ten minutes, I sort of just stared at the wall and let tears fall.

Rejection hurts - there's no doubt about it. But it hurts less if you take a second to think about the big picture - which is where my friends came in. 

Here are some excerpts from my conversations with friends (copied/pasted from gchats/emails that were pretty much all taking place at the same time, lol):

Me: "idk i'm trying to be positive and i more or less am but a small bit of me is very very sad right now and i'm trying to make that little hamsika feel better :P"

Yun '12: "I bet that tiny hamsika is the one that's extremely goal-driven too because i have a tiny-yun like that but sometimes i need to remind her that failing just made me get up again and go and tackle the next big bad thing and i think tiny hamsika will keep on feeling sad for a while, but eventually she'll become happy and join big happy hamsika"

----

Me: "i really wanted to make everyone proud! :("

Anjali '12: "Winning a scholarship doesnt mean anything - it's about what you do and why you do it. It really is" 

___

Me: "i'm losing some faith in myselff"

Caroline '10: "really though, scholarships are awesome - but they're not the only measure and it certainly doesn't validate or invalidate your work"

__

and lastly, these two - 

Ambar '12: "Do not think about this too much - I've learned to think of these application processes as a way for me to simply learn more about myself and get better at writing essays and then each one of these will never disappoint no matter how far you go."

and 

Vidya '12: "you are such a super awesome bamtastic person kiwi - like forrealz"

("kiwi" is a nickname - just fyi, haha)

__

The same sentiments apply to you all + admissions decisions!

All of you, whether you got in or didn't get in - should be proud of the fact that you applied to MIT, one of the most selective schools in the world. In filling out the application, you explored your interests, your goals, and your strengths - you took time to share those characteristics with the entire admissions committee. And no matter where you end up, you will do well, as long as you put your mind to it. ♥

As Anjali '12 told me, winning/not winning or getting in/not getting in doesn't change what you've accomplished so far in your life. If everything you did was done for the sole reason of getting into MIT, then you're doing it wrong - do what you love, what you care about. And if you do that, I think these acceptances/rejections will hurt a little less. 

I bounced back within a day after I received news about the scholarship - and I'm happy :) I have fabulous friends, and I'm proud of what I've done so far in life. In just a few minutes, I have to board my flight - but I hope this entry is helpful/comforting to you all.

Best wishes - and happy holidays!

~ Hamsika

p.s. It might be a while before I get to blog again; I'm not completely sure I'll have Internet in India...catch you guys in 2012 for sure!

Second: this weekend is going to be EXCITING! I know of at least five or six MIT '12s currently in the running for Rhodes Scholarships. In case you missed this or this, let me update you: so far, 44 MIT students have won Rhodes Scholarships, and 7 have been in the last four years! Keep this year's eligibles in your thoughts this weekend as they go through the Rhodes intervew process :)

Third: Life updates. My life has been filled with learning experiences recently; case in point:

• as it turns out, it's not a good idea to accidentally push down on your laptop screen, since they tend to crack.
• sitting in the very center of an exam hall when you happen to have a bajillion questions about the exam isn't the smartest idea; in fact, the professor might even ask you to get up and move to the front, to make it easier for him to come to you and answer questions.
• the MIT career services center is actually amazing at editing CVs/resumes - huh, who would've guessed.
• taking 6.01 (intro to EECS) with a bunch of sophomores/freshmen is great, particularly since they often know more about coding than you do.
• all-nighters are hard to pull
• there is such a thing as too much caffeine
• MIT alumni are amazing - and very responsive to email :)

Fourth: I want to share an entry I wrote a while back but never got a chance to publish; it's about MIT's Solar Electric Vehicle Team and their recent participation in the World Solar Challenge. Note that this is slightly outdated, as I wrote it while the team was competing in Australia. They ended up finishing 15th overall - congrats, SEVT!

_______

"An epic journey is about to begin: over 40 teams will depart Darwin, Australia on October 16,
2011, and will strive to be the first to reach the city of Adelaide, 3000 km south of Darwin. Among the
teams competing in this event, the World Solar Challenge, is the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team,
which has been preparing for this competition for about two years now. Twelve MIT affiliates (graduate
students, undergraduate students, and alumni) are in Darwin at the moment, preparing for Sunday’s
competition. The pressure is on to get MIT’s car ready for the race!

Alix de Monts, a junior at MIT majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Energy,
is wide awake at 4:30 am on a Wednesday morning in Australia and speaks excitedly about the
experience of working with the Solar Electric Vehicle Team. She describes every team member as a “jack
of all trades,” adding, “we do all the work our selves. We have a core group of very dedicated members.
Everyone is involved in everything.”

MIT’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team was first established 26 years ago and currently maintains a set
of 12-15 actively involved MIT students and alumni. The team has changed with the times, adapting its
design approach to the novel technologies available and seeking sponsorship from a variety of places,
the biggest of which are Ford, Konica Minolta, Infinesse, 3M, and MIT’s Edgerton Cetner. Today, the
team works with a total budget of $300,000, most of which accounts for in-kind donations such as time,
technology and resources. The SEVT car itself is valued at $150,000.

Alix describes variety of challenges that the team has had to overcome, the most significant of
which took place this past summer. SEVT originally intended Summer 2011 to be dedicated to testing
the car and working out minor kinks; however, on the second to last day of testing, the car strayed off
the road, flipped, and suffered immense damage. A summer that ought to have been relaxed and
leisurely suddenly became intense and stressful: the team was forced to start from scratch and rebuild
their creation.

Now following a number 80-hour weeks and sometimes 72-hour days, the team is gearing up to
compete and is hoping to win the World Solar Challenge. They will take on teams from all over the
world, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, and of course, Australia itself. The event
is geared towards endurance, and SEVT has put their utmost effort into making their car the best it can
be – even at the expense of comfort! The car does not have air conditioning, and in fact, the driver sits
on an unpadded, aluminum seat. Thankfully, these cars will never hit the markets and in fact are not
meant to be for commercial use; however, as Alix mentions, bits and pieces of cars’ design may be taken
up and incorporated into future vehicles, thereby bettering the automobile industry.

All in all, the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle team has a very action-packed and exciting few weeks
ahead of them! When asked if she has any last thoughts or comments, Alix says:
“To MIT students: We're always looking for new members. Shoot us an e-mail at
gosolar@mit.edu if you're interested in joining. We'll take people from all majors and any
experience levels. All you need to do well on this team is dedication and hard work. We'll teach
you the rest.”

And also:
“Everyone should check out our website: mitsolar.com as well as our blog:
mitsolar.blogspot.com. We also have a Facebook and a Twitter ! If anyone wants to show their
support for the team we have a great "Adopt-a-Cell" program: http://solar-cars.scripts.mit.edu/
sponsorship/adoptacell.php.”
Best of luck to Alix and her teammates! Look out for more on the MIT SEVT in the months to come!

___

That's it for now! I have a couple other entries planned (IAP plans! Yay!), and I'll post them within the next few weeks :) See yaaa.

(Interruption: Ahmed '12 is sitting next to me. He says 'hi.' lol...)

But today, I wanted to make some time and write about something special: numbers. 

See if you can make sense of the following:

102

25

5

39

7

56

50

98

Any patterns jumping out at you?

At some point or another, each of these numbers has felt to me like a definition. My high school rank. My highest test grade at MIT. My lowest test grade at MIT. My birthday. And so on. I've cried over some of these numbers and rejoiced over others. At one point or another, each of these numbers meant more to me than all others. 

One of the most common questions I've received as an MIT student is, "What was your SAT score?" My answer is always the same, "I could tell you my score - but to tell you the truth, I don't think it'll help you very much...just do your best!" I stand by that answer. Growing up, my mother always told me that instead of comparing myself to others, I should compare myself to myself: I should seek to beat my own scores, improve my own standards, etc. My mom's advice is probably one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received. 

This week has been particularly rough on several of my friends here at MIT - and, for that matter, on me as well: tests, problem sets, untimely sickness - alone, any one these items is easily managed. But together, they only seem intimidating and impossible: every little failure seems huge. Case in point: on my 7.03 (genetics) exam this past Monday, the average was a 46, with a standard deviation of 17. Monday night, I checked my grade online and was entirely shocked and disappointed. Today, the professor encouraged us all to stay in the class: a 46 on the exam corresponded to a B.

Which just goes to show you that much of what you know about numbers...is false. Numbers *don't* define you - in any sense of the matter. The importance of your high school rank will linger through your college app process and fade away after you graduate from high school. The same goes for your SAT score. I will be the first to tell you that it's important to work hard, to aim high, and to celebrate great scores and accomplishments. But two years of MIT have shown me that there is more to life than numbers, that there is more to anyone than a bad test grade. 

Anyway - I felt like this was enough of an issue that I wanted to get my thoughts out. Good luck with all your college apps - and don't stress out too much about numbers!  ♥

The test itself was pretty difficult, though. The physics, reading, and writing sections were straightforward and similar to practice tests I'd taken. The bio section, however, was much much harder than MCAT passages I'd seen before, which left me feeling a little bummed at the end of the test :( When I went into lab later that day though, I had a surprise waiting for me that cheered me up instantly: flowers, a card, and ice cream! My lab is the besttt. ♥

In retrospect, I think that if I went back and relived these past few months, I would have studied for the MCAT differently. I thought I'd share some of the things I've learned/discovered this summer regarding MCAT prep. I know that this entry won't be helpful to everyone out there, but hopefully, one or two of you are pre-meds and might appreciate my humble advice ;)

Topic 1: MCAT Prep - Courses and Books

Quite a few of my friends have taken Kaplan and Princeton Review MCAT prep courses and have found them helpful. I've never been a huge fun of test prep courses though, partly because I think they're overpriced and partly because I like studying at my own pace. Most people who I've talked to have said that test prep courses are helpful in that you have a structured environment that forces you to study and furthermore provides you with a wide range of study materials. If you're good at self-studying, however, and have access to several prep books, you might consider saving some money and opting out of a prep course. This decision is totally dependent on the type of person you are! Courses are useful to some; I just like independence a little too much, haha.

That being said, I've tried out a wide range of test prep books/materials this summer, and I think I've figured out which ones work the best:

(1) Examkrackers - I didn't get to use their "1001 Questions in..." series (I do recommend these though!), but I did use their subject prep books. They were fantastic! Concise, informative, easy to understand, and complete with practice questions that were very much on the level of real MCAT questions from the AAMC (Association of American Medical Collegs). I found Princeton Review and Kaplan practice questions to be slightly harder than Examkrackers/AAMC questions. If you end up taking the MCAT, definitely use Examkrackers to study!

(2) Princeton Review - Because Examkrackers books are so compact, they occasionally miss a few details; to supplement the Examkrackers materials, I used Princeton Review. If nothing else, I highly suggest getting Princeton Review's MCAT Organic Chemistry review; in many ways, I found the PR version of this book to be on par with or even slightly better than the EK orgo book. Also, practicing with PR questions definitely gave me a little more confidence on the MCAT.

(3) Kaplan Flashcards and Quicksheet - Get them! They're an easy way to review concepts, and I almost always had a set of flashcards with me when I was riding the T somewhere. I admit it's kind of nerdy though; people kind of gave me funny looks for flipping through them on the subway, haha.

(4) **AAMC Practice Tests** - This one's the most important. The AAMC has released 9 real MCAT practice exams that you can purchase directly from the AAMC. Take all of them! Multiple times! And take them seriously. Strive to finish the test far before your timer runs out. That way, when you sit down for the actual MCAT, it'll feel just like another practice exam :)

Topic 2: Timeline for Studying

Yeah, I definitely did this wrong. I started studying two and a half months before my MCAT, which is actually a great time to start studying: far enough advance that studying isn't too stressful and not too early that you spend more time checking your email than reading your prep book. What I did wrong was take a practice test a month and a half into my studying. I wanted to feel comfortable with all the material before I subjected myself to a test setting. But if I could re-do my approach to studying, I would definitely start by taking a practice test, then slowly hone in on the topics I really needed to work on. I feel like that would have made my first month of studying a little more useful and productive. It gives it more of a direction. 

Even if you, like me, choose not to start out with a practice test, you should definitely take a test at least a month before your MCAT, then every few days after that. The week leading up to my MCAT was relatively relaxed, and I practiced going to bed early and waking up early. Haha, I even tried out different breakfasts to see what made me feel the most alert and focused during my practice tests. Turns out coffee encourages spazzy thinking; don't drink coffee before your MCAT! =P Oh, and I also found a mouse in my room the night before my MCAT. Make sure there are no mice in your room! It doesn't make for great dreams :(

Topic 3: The Day of the MCAT

Relax! Walk in with a smile, and feel confident. And make sure you have something fun planned for afterwards! I actually had an essay to finish after my MCAT, so that coupled with a difficult MCAT bio section left me feeling a little down after the MCAT. But then lab happened, and I cheered up fasttt. Basically, my point is: after the MCAT, you're going to want to celebrate immediately, and not waste time deciding exactly how you're going to celebrate. Lunch or dinner with friends is a great option :) 

~*~

Andddd, that about wraps up my advice. I can't think of anything else at the moment, but if I do happen to have a flash of inspiration, I'll come back and edit this entry. Good luck to you future pre-med-ers and MCAT-ers. I wish you all the luck in the world :) 

P.S. Good luck to Nikki '13, Arooshi '13, Rajita '13, Jeanne '13, and Shreesh '13 - all of whom are taking the MCAT in the next few weeks!

Generally, when I make mistakes occur at lab, I mourn for about ten minutes, then move on with my life. My grad student's policy is "you can make every mistake once." I don't think I've ever pushed the bounds of mistake-making as far as I have this summer, lol.

Except with these three experiments, I'm 100% sure that I did everything correctly. I've mentally run through each and every one of my actions over and over and over again. I have no idea why my experimental results emerged as they did. After 3 days - and not my usual ten minutes - of moping, I've finally decided to take a different perspective on this problem. I'm going to see this situation as a learning experience, a chance to learn more about the cells I'm working with, and the latest in this hepatocyte-centered scientific field.

This is turn explains why I've spent the last two hours of my life scavenging about Google Scholar, downloading 10+ papers, and reading through all of them. I've picked up so many random but interesting deets on hepatocyte behavior and challenges other scientists in the field have encountered. A frazzled post-doc in my lab today told me that science is all about failure. Reading these papers has showed me that yeah, science is about failure - but more than that, it's about seeing failures as interesting avenues to explore, as potential for future experimentation.

That's how I'm planning on approaching it anyway.

In other news, I've fallen in love! 

With Boston sunrises :)

Check it out:

I was thinking about lab and about how these past few weeks in Bhatia Lab have taught me about more than fibroblasts and the hepatitis C virus. From lab, I've learned a little about life - and how to live it:

1. Tell the truth. I've done some pretty stupid things in lab. Case in point: I've cracked coverslips, broken pipettes, multiplied incorrectly, and accidentally poured out too much or too little of the volume in question. I've shamefacedly but honestly gone to my graduate student and reported each of my accidents. Nonetheless, I do realize how terribly each of our experiments would have gone if I had lied about any one of my errors. Honesty works best.

2. Get a good night's sleep. Every night. I've been in lab as late as 11 pm, and I come home exhausted. 8-9 hours of sleep does wonders for lab stamina though. Sleep is magical.

3. Don't know something? Ask for help. I've asked so many questions at lab that I've probably driven my grad student crazy at times. When something doesn't make sense, it is so worth it to take a few extra seconds and truly understand what's going on. It also saves moments of looking dumb later on.

4. Think before you speak. While asking questions is great, thinking for yourself has its own merits. A couple days ago, I unthinkingly asked my grad student if I should put 2 microliters of a probe (used for FISH: fluorescence in situ hybridization) into an empty tube instead of first putting the solvent buffer in and then the 2 microliters. My grad student just looked at me for a moment, then said, "Really, Hamsika? Really?" After which I felt silly, lol. 2 microliters is clearly too small a volume to be chilling in a tube on its own.

5. Have an idea? Share it. One of the greatest strengths of lab work is the fact that there are often established protocols for various approaches and techniques. Sometimes, though, it pays sometimes to stray outside the box, take a risk, and try something different. Question everything! Understand why you're doing what you're doing, and then see if you can make it better.

Haha, okay, I think I've been deep and philosophical enough for one day. Till next time!

Aside from learning about mass spec and the excretory system and all that jazz, I've been picking up some info on how this particular Boylston St. Starbucks works during various hours of the day.

For instance:
1. The busiest time here is at like 10:30 a.m. every morning (random much?), where line stretches all the way to and sometimes out of the door.
2. At any given time, approximately 20% of the inhabitants are wearing some kind of Boston sports team gear.
3. At lunch time, like half the people here are wearing suits and occasionally refer to this Starbucks as an extension of their offices. Not that I eavesdropped or anything.
4. Cute babies come here. A lot.
5. This Starbucks is has international feel to it. The guy sitting diagonal to me is Skyping with someone in Chinese. Directly across from me, there are two men and two women conversing in Spanish. And I generally throw in a bit of Tamil to the mix, whenever I take a study break to call my mom and complain about how annoying it is to be sick.

I like it at this Starbucks! It feels like it's made for college students, what with all the long study tables and individual study spaces. There was a little excitement this morning, as one of the Starbucks-ers called 9-1-1 on a sleepy dude who was passed out on one of the couches. Turns out he was alive and well. And not dead as she feared. The EMS team that responded to the call was kind of amused :)

So far, summer has felt a little less summery than would be expected. The high for today is 59 degrees, with a low of 51, and while I wore a t-shirt nonetheless, it's only because I have a jacket to wear over it. Boston weather's been toying with us lately: tornado warnings, thunderstorms, 98-degree days, followed by rain and a 40 degree temperature drop.

On the plus side, most people are choosing to assume that it's 100 degrees and that things like ice cream runs are a necessity. My lab, being awesome, has a scheduled UROP ice cream trip this Friday, thanks to the efforts of Anjali '12, Brian '12, and Omar '12. Yumm. I'm actually hoping we make this a froyo trip - partly because I love froyo and partly because I want to convince my grad student, who doesn't like froyo at all, that it's delicious.

Okay, now I'm hungry. Food time.

p.s:

p.p.s. the guy next to me just started humming "Friday." *cue facepalm*

Just in time to head back to Boston/MIT for the summer :)

This is where I'll be spending most of my summer days, chilling with centrifuges and occasionally creeping on Anjali '12, who'll be working just a few benches down from me. The grad student I'm working with is awesome and has casually shortened my name to "H," lol. I started working in this lab just over a month or so before this past school year ended, and I've loved it. Somehow, this UROP manages to be fun, relaxed, serious, and instructional, all at the same time.

Aside from research, I have a couple other things to keep my busy this summer, one of which is...

THE DREADED MCAT.

Yeah, NOT looking forward to these:

But I am looking forward to this:

I've blogged about it before, but just as a recap, I'll give you the ten-second lowdown on what CK (specifically, CK-MIT) is:

Basically, Camp Kesem MIT (one branch of the national Camp Kesem organization) is a student group dedicated to giving kids of cancer patients a chance to spend time with other children who also have a parent with cancer and who share their struggles and worries. Each August, CK-MIT holds a one-week camp session, filled with all sorts of fun camp activities, including swimming, sports, hiking, and more.

This year, there will be about 60 counselors and 75 campers (ages 6 to 18). To ensure that Camp is free for all campers attending, the counselors have been working together to raise over $50,000.

And where does that money go, you ask? Well, towards making the following happen:

Campers! ♥

Being silly

Happy!

Ambar '12 with a group of young campers

The 2010 CK-MIT Counselor Team

Ahhh, so many memories :)

In case any of you are interested in donating, you can donate online here, and if you have any questions, you can send an email to mit@campkesem.org - or drop me a line at hamsika@mit.edu. I love talking about CK, and I seriously cannot wait for Camp in August.

Okay, now back to packing for my flight back to Boston tomorrow. Peaceee.

My last final is over, my boxes are packed, and I need to check in for my flight home in six hours. My one-week-old brass rat is physical proof of my being halfway done with MIT. I can't believe how quickly these past two years have flown by...

Around this time last year, I wrote an entry that told a picture-based story of my first year at MIT. I was thinking of doing something similar this year - but this past year consisted of things much bigger and better than the story of my life =P

This year, as many of you know, MIT celebrated its 150th anniversary, and all sorts of cool installations appeared on campus. Jenny shared a few pictures with you guys in her entry, but I'm adding a few of my own to the collection:

Thousands of people showed up on campus for MIT-150's Open House and FAST (Festival of Art, Science, and Technology) events, snapping pictures of different installations and checking out various labs and inventions. Turns out the Boston Globe thought MIT's 150th was a pretty neat event to cover:

Check out these three articles, along with this one on the Official Google Blog.

I love my school :)

"I , and the department are looking for 4-6 volunteers from each class who would like to have lunch on Tuesday, April 26, 2011 with the Visiting Committee. The Visiting Committee is made up of members of the MIT Corp., faculty from other schools and donors/sponsors to both the department and the Institute. You must be available from 12-1:00 pm.

If you are interested in participating please respond to this e-mail with your name and your year. In the case of too many volunteers we will pick names from a hat."

I RSVP-ed attending to this lunch event for two main reasons:
(1) I didn't really know much about Visiting Committees but thought they sounded neat.
and, of course:
(2) Free food is always good :)

The lunch in question ended approximately 41 minutes ago and seriously just made me love MIT more. The members of the Visiting Committee were, as expected, incredibly legit. If you check out this list here, you might even recognize a few names, like...oh, I don't know the McGovern of the the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT or maybe the Whitehead of MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research? Yeah, like I said: legit.

For about an hour, the Visiting Committee listened to us share our thoughts on the Brain/Cognitive Sciences major, listening to both the criticisms and the compliments we doled out. Several of the V.C. members took detailed notes on what we had to say and asked us follow-up questions whenever they wanted to know more.

They made me feel so special. Yeah, MIT has 4,000+ undergrads, but these people take time out of their days and lives to come and listen to us, to report on what we say, to champion our cause, and to make changes in the department based on our feedback.

I know there are a lot of you who still haven't fully decided whether or not to enroll here at MIT. Though I have no awe-inspiring advice or foolproof wisdom, I can tell you that if you do come here, you will be taken care of. People will seek you out, ask to hear your ideas, treat your suggestions seriously. You will have an impact on your school, your community, your world. You will have the chance to better what already exists and create what doesn't.

And you might have just as hard a time as I am right getting over the fact that I spent an hour of my life sitting next to the incrediblyy nice Susan Whitehead. Ahh!

P.S. A shoutout to my CPW prefrosh, who can now offically call herself Mihika '15 :) Can't wait to meet more of you '15s in the fall!

Sad. Thrilled. Discouraged. Grateful. Angry. Glad. These are all words that at some point or another these past few weeks (and for that matter, during my entire life, haha) could have been used to describe me.

Thanks to one of my friends, Christina '10 - an MIT alum and a fellow Camp Kesem (more on Camp Kesem in an entry coming soon!) counselor - I've had a chance to spend a little more time on the positive side of the emotional spectrum. She recently created a website called Project Happy Memory, which you can check out here. It gives people all over the world a chance to submit stories about happy moments they've experienced in their life. There aren't that many posts at the moment, since the website was launched just two days ago. But Christina told me today that there are thousands of views - which I fully believe since I myself have visited the site quite a few times =P

I wanted to share this site with you for a few reasons:

(1) Christina said I could! Yayy.

(2) I know many of you are at the point in your school year where the amount of work seems unending and the end of the semester always appears just a little too far away. Spare a few moments, check out Project Happy Memory, get your good spirit and energy back, take a deep breath - then plunge back into your work. It's worked well so far for me :)

and, lastly

(3) I feel like Christina's site is a pretty good representation of how MIT works: people here come up with ideas, they implement them, and they share them with others. They ask for thoughts, advice, suggestions, and help. They realize that they can't do things alone, that they need to rely on others, and that optimism, while hard to maintain at times, is the one thing that absolutely must be preserved.

There are soo many things that make me happy right now: friends, family, lab, etc. I haven't had the time to write anything up for the Project Happy Memory site - but I will soon.

And you should too :)

Enjoy the site!

p.s. Here's the link to the Twitter for Project Happy Memory.

My first thought when I met her was, "Whatttt. How can one person be so. incredibly. happy?!" I quickly came to realize that Anjali was not only ridiculously cheerful but also intelligent, graceful, and the kind of person who, when I'm tired and crying at 2 in the morning, will bring me a box of chocolate (Twix ♥) and offer me a hug.

I've seen her in a variety of roles over the past year and a half or so: she's been my teammate, my mentor, my TA, and my friend.

And now she's all of those things - and a Truman Scholar as well! I got a chance to interview her two nights ago, so check out the videos below. If you have any questions for Anjali, feel free to contact her at athakkar@mit.edu - or just shoot me an email, and I can forward it on to her.

Watch the videos! You'll love her :)

p.s. a huge shout-out to Jeanne '13 who once again helped me overcome my inability to upload videos, lol...

p.p.s. CPW!!!!!!!

That's something that this semester has really taught me: all that I have to be grateful for. I've got a great set of friends here at MIT who take care of me in times of ups and downs; there is an abundance of opportunities here at MIT to grow and learn more, professionally, academically, and personally; and more than anything, I am having such a great time here.

My name is Kenny Lam, and I'm a current sophomore here for Physics and Computer Science. In addition to academics, I spend a lot of my time working with the community around here: I work with the Leadership Training Institute to help high school kids learn to be leaders, I am part of Camp Kesem with Hamsika, working to make the most amazing camp experience for kids whose parents have or have had cancer, and I am also a brother of Zeta Beta Tau here at MIT, working to help the community in a brand new way.

I've taken this opportunity with my brotherhood to throw a really unique fundraiser: we're going to be rolling a giant rainbow ball that's 6' in diameter across campus. Our sponsors are willing to donate money per signature toward our cause: the Children's Hospital Boston, one of the leading hospitals in the nation, and patients from all across the country come just to get their pediatric care. All we need from you is your signature! That's literally all we're asking for from you: your simple signature will be raising almost 50 cents for this great cause!

Come out and help us support the Children's Hospital Boston: it's a chance to see some MIT creativity put towards helping the community.

Follow us:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=164507963603085
twitter.com/zbtgotb

(1) I discovered that I was capable of turning off my alarm and going back to sleep, without any conscious knowledge of my actions.

(2) I listened to my 18.03 (diff eq) professor sing in class, to general applause and awe.

(3) I ate my first blueberry bagel ever and decided immediately to eat many more in the future.

(4) I learned that the ratio of Dunkin' Donuts to Starbucks locations in Watertown, MA is like 200:1. Seriously. Soo many Dunkins.

~and~

(5) I had a blast at Culture Show 2011 :)

C-Show is an annual event put on each April by the South Asian American Society (SAAS). It brings together MIT students from a variety of races, backgrounds, and years for what is essentially one big showcase of music and dance. I blogged a little about C-Show previously, even though I didn't get a chance to take part in C-Show last year. I did this year though!

This year's theme was Inception, and interspersed between the different acts were short video sequences, scripted by Ram '13 and Dhruv '13 (this year's C-Show chairs), and edited by Rishi '14 (yup, this Rishi). These segments told the story of an inception attempt that failed in the face of true love; they were absolutely hilarious.

Partly because I was participating in some of the acts and partly because I maxed out my memory card, I only got a chance to capture a few videos of performances, one of which you can check out on here. I've been having some trouble uploading videos; once I fix it, I'll add more to my public :)

Edit: More C-Show videos can be found here; thanks to Jeanne '13 for uploading them!

Mad props to SAAS board for putting on an awesome show last night:

Enjoy the video (soon to be videos)! And look out for another entry soon about, oh I don't know, MIT's newest Truman scholar? :) Up close and personal.

Oh - and I also found one of Quinton, from the elephant parade last semester :)

Haha, I hope that was at least mildly entertaining. I definitely needed a few laughs this past week - there is sooo much going on right now: tests, problem sets, papers, C-Show dance practices (more about C-Show in a later entry), random other extracurricular stuff, ahhh. I wish there were a pause button for life.

Or maybe just a fast-forward button - because I cannot waittt for CPW 2011! I hope you '15s realize exactly how excited we all are to see you on campus. We get to find out which of you we'll be host-matched with this Sunday at a short training session, and in just a week, we'll finally get to meet you in person.

For those of you coming to CPW - be prepared for an amazing time, complete with the prospect of little to no sleep. There'll be free food everywhere, random events in the middle of the night, hundreds of people wanting to meet you, and tons of opportunities to get to know what MIT is like. I know several of you tuned into the CPW webcast two weekends ago and already have an idea of how to navigate CPW. In case you missed it though, here are some tips/general thoughts on CPW 2011:

1. Be spontaneous - You've seen the CPW schedule online, and you can tell that the 3-4 days you'll be on campus will be absolutely jam-packed with events. Definitely hit up the major events (ex. Welcome Ceremony, Activities Midway (free stuff!), Closing Ceremony, Faculty Speeches, etc) - but also feel free to stray a little bit. The point is to get to know other members of your class - so if that means missing a dose of pancakes at 2 am in favor of staying up till 5 am just talking about life, go for it.

2. Make sure to check out all the dorms - Every dorm at MIT has its own flavor: McCormick Hall (my dorm) is generally characterized as clean/friendly/quiet. Random Hall is...well, random. Burton-Conner pretty much has a different personality on every floor. Baker is almost always social and lively. Go to them all, talk to residents, and take tours - make use of this chance to get a head-start on deciding where you want to live next year.

3. Visit some classes and chat with professors - I know that one of my biggest concerns when deciding whether or not I should MITriculate centered around the workload here at MIT and whether or not I could handle it. During CPW, I sat in on an 8.02 (Physics II: Electricity and Magnetism) lecture as well as a 7.013 (Biology) lecture, just get an idea of what MIT classes were like. 8.02 was particularly neat because they did a ton of in-class demonstrations, in honor of CPW. I came away from those lectures feeling a lot better about the difficulty of classes at MIT - they're not quite so impossible as they seem :)

4. Speak with current students - despite the rampant stereotypes, MIT students are not extreme nerds who sit around on their computers coding all day. People here come from a range of diverse backgrounds, are excited by a variety of topics, and spend their free time doing all kinds of interesting things. Chat with us! Ask us anything you like - whether it's about classes, student life, crazy fun times we've had on campus. We're open to any and all questions/conversations.

5. GET FREE STUFF - Consider this your ultimate goal at CPW =P Get to events early so that you don't end up with 7 XXL shirts like I did and so that upperclassmen masquerading as prefrosh don't swipe the free stuff that was rightfully yours. On a related note - make sure the suitcase/bag you bring to CPW has a little extra room. You're definitely going to be going home with more than you what you came to campus with.

For those of you who can't make it to CPW: don't be sad! Orientation is essentially an extended version of CPW, so you have plenty of fun heading your way in the near future. Plus, I can tell you that based on the 7 prefrosh I know/have met so far, your Class if fabulous :) I actually got a chance to host one of your classmates, Aarti '15, last night as part of the Overnight Visit program (hehe, she just called me saying she's awake =P).

And I'll get to see the rest of you soon! Get pumpedddd for CPW 2011.

First: !!!!!!!! Decisions in 6 days! I honestly cannot believe it's been nearly two years since I got into this place. Good luck to all of you! I can't wait to meet some of you at CPW :)

Second: I remember when it came time for me to make my decision regarding which college I wanted to go to, I was pretty torn over my options. I was mainly choosing between MIT (which is just awesome) and the Rice-Baylor med program (which would prevent me from taking the MCAT).

I thought I'd share my thoughts on this matter - since some of you admits (and soon-to-be admits!) might be wondering if MIT is a good school for pre-med students, especially since you've no doubt heard horror stories about the impossibility of maintaining a high GPA at MIT...*

My decision to pick MIT over Rice-Baylor was based largely on the fact that I knew I wanted to go into neuroscience (which is still a relatively new major at Rice) and the fact that MIT seemed to provide a ton of great opportunities for pre-med students, especially with several top-notch hospitals as well as Harvard Med basically next-door.

College Board breaks down MIT majors as follows:

Engineering: 38%
Computer and Information Sciences: 13%
Biology: 11%
Mathematics: 10%
Physical Sciences: 10%
Business/Marketing: 7%

I'd say that's pretty accurate. While it's true that many MIT students are engineering majors, the life sciences are definitely not ignored. About 20% (perhaps even a little more - I just asked Suzie '12 who's sitting next to me, and she estimated that about 25% of MIT students are life sci majors) of MIT students are Biology, Chem, or Brain/CogSci majors. Speaking from the perspective of a Course 7/9 (Bio and Brain/Cog) student, I can definitely say I don't feel lonely in either department :)

Here's a list of some opportunities MIT provides its life science majors:

UROPs - The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program a.k.a. what almost every MIT student participates in at some point during their MIT career. You get to do research with some of the smartest people in the world, and if you're lucky, you get to publish something of your own.

Internships/Fellowships - I get at least one email every week from the Bio and Brain/Cog departments concerning available internships and fellowships. Saves me the trouble of having to look them up :)

Seminars - Undergraduates, graduates, and professors often come together to talk about different topics and latest in scientific research. I should go to more of these...

Visiting Scholars - There are soo many talks each week from researchers and scholars from other schools; take a look at the MIT events calendar - there's always way too much going on.

Street Cred - when I email people and say, "hey, I'm interested in working with you - do you have any openings in your lab? Let me know," people actually read the email - and respond :)

If you're interested in knowing more about Life Sciences at MIT, you should check out their new website - and once you do that, go distract yourself with some stumbling so you don't think about decisions until Pi Day.

Best of luck once again!

*...which is false, by the way. I know several sophomores with 5.0 GPAs right now, and I even know some seniors who have made it through MIT, participated in a good number of extracurriculars, and have never gotten anything lower than an A. Basically, my point is: it's possible to maintain great grades here. So don't let fears of a low GPA stop you from coming here!

~*~

First up: DevLinks (You can check out their page here)

DevLinks is an idea that Divya '13 and Sneha '13 came up to deal with the problem of inadequate communication and cooperation between NGOs. Having just been to India, I can tell you that it's not common, at least in India, to find several NGOs to be working in the same field of interest, in the same area, with the same target population, at the same time. Which more or less sounds like massive amounts of untapped productivity. What Divya and Sneha have proposed is (in my head, anyway) sort of like a Facebook for NGOs. Except instead of stalking the kid who used to sit on the far left side of my orgo lecture hall (Hi, Sneha ^.^), I can stalk NGOs instead =P Just kidding - mostly, it'll just give NGOs the chance to work at a much higher level of efficiency: lots of sharing/caring.

Next: EnvironMental (Their page can be found (Their page is here).

This past IAP, four members of MIT's Global Poverty Initiative (GPI) came up with a biodigester-greenhouse technology designed to ease some of the health and economic troubles faced by the people in La Vaquita, Mexico. By working with students from Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, the GPI team is hoping to build community-wide greenhouses that hopefully assist in reducing the high incidence of diabetes, hypertension, and malnutrition in the area. Regarding the biodigester side of the project: the GPI team is helping families turn manure into high quality, low-impact fertilizer, while producing methane gas that can be piped into their homes and used for cooking - all at a low cost.

~*~

I've only given you all a brief summary of the two ideas since both are described in greater detail on the Dell competition website - which you should all go check out! They'd really appreciate your votes, since that'll give them the opportunity to take their projects further. If you have any questions for these students, I'm pretty sure they're open to you contacting them. I've included Divya, Sneha, and Sivakam's email addresses below:

Divya '13: divyasri@mit.edu
Sneha '13: snkannan@mit.edu
Sivakami '11: sivakami@mit.edu

Since we're talking about international projects anyway, I thought I might also give you guys a glimpse of my report on my India trip: I just uploaded it onto my public like ten minutes ago, lol.

Okay. Back to working on my 18.03 pset :(

Many of you may know this already, but for those who don't: the MIT class ring (a.k.a. Brass Rat) is not only one of the most recognized rings in the world but also pretty much the single item with which every MIT student hopes to graduate (aside from a diploma, of course). Its been known to help MIT students snag internships, land jobs, receive timely help from strangers, and earn solid respect. Our Brass Rats show the world how proud we are of our school <3

Earlier this evening, the Class of 2013 Ring Committee unveiled the 2013 Brass Rat design; thanks to Jeanne '13, I have some pictures to show all of you :)

As we walked to our classes this morning, we saw the following, sitting demurely on the steps of 77 Mass Ave:

From that moment on, the excitement and anticipation only grew. I struggled to pay attention through my classes and focus on my UROP. I distracted myself briefly with a 30 minute nap and a trip to the grocery store. But when 7:00 pm rolled around, I gave up and left the warmth of my dorm to line up with the other '13s outside of Kresge Auditorium.

I love my class. All the yelling. The cheering. The laughing. The clapping.

2013s!

Without further ado ~ I present to you all the 2013 MIT Brass Rat:

:)

What up, '13s!

Do you see the "13" in the branch the beaver's holding? And maybe an 'IHTFP' cleverly inserted somewhere? And the 8 ivy leaves (haha, get it?) our beaver happens to be standing on?"

Props to our amazing RingComm:

RingComm

And now, all I need to do is find the money to pay for one:

Sigh...it's so worth it.

[All photo credit in this entry goes to Jeanne '13 - thank you, Jeanne!]

7.05 - General Biochemistry - In the last two classes, we learned that asparagine was named after asparagus, and that if our body pH levels dropped below 7.0 and we didn't have buffers, we'd die. As you can tell, both extremely valuable pieces of information :)

9.52 - Stat for Neuroscience - Thanks to this class, I'm finally learning MATLAB. This class is interesting in that 90% of our grade is based on problem sets, 5% on participation, and the remaining 5% on some in-class assignment that is supposedly easy. It's a new class, offered as a substitute for 9.07: the notoriously painful and (till now) absolutely required Course 9 (brain/cognitive sciences) stat class. 9.52 is superr chill.

24.900 - Linguistics - This is widely acknowledged as the golden Course 9 class, since it counts not only towards the Course 9 core requirements but also to the MIT communication requirement. Our professor, David Pesetsky, is pretty awesome. The majority of my class notes consists of me quoting him and accompanying these quotes with cartoons.

18.03 - Differential Equations - So far, I really like 18.03, though it's extremely obvious that I haven't taken a math class in a year, haha: integral of 1/(1-x)^2*dx? - yeah, definitely had to look up partial fractions all over again.

CMS.100 - Introduction to Media Studies - We pretty much get to watch videos in every class and check out various photographs taken over the ages. The class times are a little strange (Wed 3:30 - 5 pm, Thurs 7 - 9 pm), but class is so relaxed that it's not really a problem.

Aside from chasing a freaked-out squirrel through a corridor, I haven't had anything mind-blowing and/or crazy exciting happen to me so far this semester. So instead, I'm going to share some pictures with you guys from my last week of IAP, during which I did Women's Initiative.

The goal of Women's Initiative is to send MIT women to middle schools and high schools all over the United States, giving them the opportunity to speak with girls at these schools and encourage them to go into science and engineering fields. My partner (Sondy) and I went to 4 middle schools and 2 high schools in the Missouri City area and gave approximately seven 1-hour presentations every single day. It was definitely tiring - but it was also tons of fun. Midway through each presentation, we gave the girls a building task, asking them to compete with one another and see who could build the tallest structure out of newspaper and masking tape.

Some of the girls started out with absolutely no interest in us or our presentation. They avoided eye contact, ignored our suggestions, and refused to participate. A couple minutes into the building activity, however, they completely got into it! The tallest newspaper-tape structure ended up 10 feet tall; it only took 15 minutes for some teenagers at Elkins High School to make it :)

The one that was 10 feet tall

If you're a middle/high-schooler, you should get your science administrator to check out this page, so we can visit YOU next year. And if you're curious, you can check out the presentation Sondy and I gave here.

p.s. I know it's a little early. But I'm still wayy excited for CPW 2011 :)