Pictures from a Month into Classes by Richard O. '28
and I'm thrivi... surviving?
MIT is a weird school. Seriously. If I asked you to picture a normal scene on this campus, you would probably be wrong (very, very, wrong). In the past month, I’ve done everything from holding a ferret in our hallway to climbing a rock wall on the side of a student-built wooden fort next to a 360-degree student-built gyroscope ride in the middle of one of our fields. I’ve seen students participate in a petting zoo in front of our dorms and watched my roommate smash random electronics on the sidewalk with a metal pipe. I’ve consumed an inhumane amount of boba which seems to be the number-one catered item for all events on campus and casually stood in an elevator and spoke with a co-founder of AirBNB who was giving a talk on a different floor (and I had no idea who he was the entire time we were in the elevator) – but this sense of unseriousness while having fun is one of my favorite things about this school because it reminds me that formality is something we don’t actually have to follow when we don’t want to.
So with that, I’m going to try my best to give you all a glimpse of my fun, ridiculous, and intense experiences these past few months…but with pictures (because I like pictures).
Part 1: Early Move-In
- So it turns out Virginia is a fairly long drive from MIT and driving there starting at 1 AM on a Tuesday isn’t ideal… but either way, I was too excited to complain.
Part 2: SIE FPOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
- As you can probably tell from the title, this part of my orientation period was my favorite and for good reason. During the summer before move-in, MIT opens applications for these things called FPOPs 01 First-Year Pre-orientation Program that offers Freshmen up to 20ish different programs they can engage in ranging from Entrepreneurship to Chemical Engineering which basically allow students to move in a week before orientation to learn about a specific topic or area of interest. I ended up getting into an FPOP called Social Innovation Exploration02 An FPOP program offered by the MIT Priscilla King Gray Service Center that's centered on learning about, identifying, and addressing food insecurity where we learned about different ways to address food insecurity in the Boston area and on campus which was a topic I felt tied perfectly with my interest in food accessibility.
- During the SIE FPOP, we got to take a trip to the Boston Haymarket where we learned about food in a local context and got to try some of the produce ourselves.
- During the week there were a lot of social activities that were also planned for us and one of my favorites was our trip to the Boston Fine Arts Museum.
- The crazy part is I almost decided to skip the museum trip entirely and just go back and chill in my dorm, but I got convinced to stay by my FPOPmates and I’m really glad that I did.
- The FPOP officially ended the Saturday of that week and our group had a small award ceremony on the Kendall Rooftop Garden to celebrate!
Part 3: REX, Rush, and Everything in Between
- The REX 03 Residence Exploration program where students are given a week to explore the cultures and communities of other dorms and participate in a dorm exchange process to switch buildings if they wanted to and Rush period, where every dorm, sorority, and fraternity tried to put on their best show to get freshmen to switch to their living community for a week, was where I saw some of the most unexpected things on a college campus? Sadly I missed out on some of the more thrilling activities that included paintballing, smashing up a car, jetskiing, boat rides, top golf, and escape rooms.
- And mixed in with all these activities were a lot of class-wide things that ranged from our group photo on Killian Court, to talks in Kresge, to the grand finale which included a huge migration by the MIT 2028 class to the New England Aquarium via the T 04 Subway to get all over the Boston/Cambridge area .
Part 4: School Actually Starts and the Rainbows and Sunshine Go Away…
- This one speaks for itself…
Part 5: Students and Sleep vs. Professors and PSETs
- I genuinely thought I would be ready for whatever MIT would throw at me and man was I wrong. But hey P/NR am I right? 05 For the first semester at MIT, freshmen are graded on a system called Pass/No-Record where instead of letter grades on our transcript we just get a P if you pass and if you fail, the class just disappears from your transcript to help us get accustomed. So basically don't stress but if you do stress, don't stress.
Part 6: The Rainbows and Sunshine Return (kinda…)
- There are some days when the rainbows and sunshine return though and this usually happens when I get to do things with some of the different communities that I’ve found on campus. In particular, my SIE, Design Plus 06 A first-year learning community in the MIT Morningside Academy for Design where I get to learn about design in application and am currently working with other students on a vertical garden project in Haiti (more about this in a future blog maybe?) , and Chocolate City 07 New House living community where I've found a community of brothers that I literally don't think I could enjoy MIT the same without communities have really helped me find my place here on campus and explore a lot of my interests outside of academics.
- And in the middle of studying for midterms, a bake-off competition with the Chocolate City and Juniper living communities became a well-needed and memorable break from academics…(spoiler alert my team won!)
- And most recently, I finally got to leave campus last week for class dinner with the freshmen and seniors in CC where I got to see some real views of Boston and try food that wasn’t from a dining hall.
Part 7: To be continued…?
- Can’t pretend to know what’s in store for me at this school anymore so stay tuned for more.
- First-Year Pre-orientation Program that offers Freshmen up to 20ish different programs they can engage in ranging from Entrepreneurship to Chemical Engineering back to text ↑
- An FPOP program offered by the MIT Priscilla King Gray Service Center that's centered on learning about, identifying, and addressing food insecurity back to text ↑
- Residence Exploration program where students are given a week to explore the cultures and communities of other dorms and participate in a dorm exchange process to switch buildings if they wanted to back to text ↑
- Subway to get all over the Boston/Cambridge area back to text ↑
- For the first semester at MIT, freshmen are graded on a system called Pass/No-Record where instead of letter grades on our transcript we just get a P if you pass and if you fail, the class just disappears from your transcript to help us get accustomed. So basically don't stress but if you do stress, don't stress. back to text ↑
- A first-year learning community in the MIT Morningside Academy for Design where I get to learn about design in application and am currently working with other students on a vertical garden project in Haiti (more about this in a future blog maybe?) back to text ↑
- New House living community where I've found a community of brothers that I literally don't think I could enjoy MIT the same without back to text ↑