Bad Ideas events I went to (another late IAP post) by Anika H. '26

IAP is one of my favorite times of the year, because it’s the best time to do stupid things at the canonical school of smart people with minimal consequences. And every year, we celebrate this fact with a whole weekend of absolute tomfoolery. With that said, I proudly present to you some of the dumb shit I participated in.

dig yer own grave on the front page of The Tech

hot ones MIT edition – Bonfire, Random Hall

This was probably the one event I was most excited to go to. There were a lot of chicken, and also pages filled with integrals, in case you preferred mental pain instead of physical pain. It was free food, so I made my way up some floors to Bonfire to see, unsurprisingly, people eating chicken, chugging milk, and dying of heat in the middle of winter. I started on the medium spice, and it was pretty good. I ate one because I was hungry and felt like doing some integrals. And then I got bored, so I asked people what the worst one was, and they said it was a sauce called “Da Bomb”.

It can’t be that bad right? WRONG. My pride as an Asian with spice tolerance was shattered. I was fine for the first 3 seconds, so I took a few bites, though the sauce tasted weirdly bitter. And then it hit. It felt like I ate a mouthful of hot coals straight from the forge of Hephaestus himself. From then on, the spice got logarithmically worse, and I was fighting for my life in between gulps of milk. I gave up on finding cups and was chugging it straight from a bowl. That way, when I was not actively drinking, I could soak the lower half of my face in milk to feel less of the pain. I’m extremely glad that I’m not lactose intolerant, because if I was, the amount of milk I drank would have been a way bigger problem than the spicy chicken. By the end of the event, I was quite full— of mostly milk.

i eat hot chicken and regret my life decisions

If you ever decide to try something like this, I would highly recommend drinking as much milk as you possibly can. Casein (a protein found in milk) binds to capsaicin (the spicy chemical), making it much more effective than water to wash out the spiciness. Remember, what goes in one end must come out the other. Unfortunately for us, our bodies don’t completely digest all the capsaicin we ingest. So if you somehow managed to tough out eating it without neutralizing any of the spice, you’re gonna have a hell of a time on the toilet in a few hours. (I didn’t, the milk works)

face hurts less when dunked in milk

pronoun fight – AIW, Random Hall

In this fight, you are to bet your pronouns, or the letters of your name, or both. I wanted to bet my name so that I could go from being called Anika to being called Aia (aiya). I tried to lose letters, got too into it, and ended up with extra. The “fights” can be anything the two parties agree too, and can be anything from staring contests, to Super Smash Bros, to boxing. Basically, anything within reason.

The default fight is a wrestling match, and I was relatively decent at those, given that my opponent wasn’t too many weight classes above me. I wrestled some number of times, including one where I went with an arm behind my back because I was fighting a frosh who had no prior experience. Unfortunately for him, I ended that one pretty quick. I lost waterbottle flipping against Pablo and a round where I tried to kick a small target on someone who’s running away from me. By the end of the event, after watching many spectacular matches and dabbling in a few myself, I went from being Anika she/her/hers, to Aniaih she/her/hers/he. It wasn’t quite the result I hoped for, but it was really fun.

water bottle flipping

2^n dumplings – Next House Country Kitchen

While I was here for two hours, I didn’t actually end up eating all that many dumplings, because most of my time was spent hard carrying the wrapping station. I learned how to wrap them properly from my family (shoutout mom and grandma!), and have gone to this event every year since freshman year. We went through several packs of premade dumpling skins, and I showed new people how to make them as they came in. I don’t how much we ended up with, but I think it could have been anywhere from 2^7 to 2^9 dumplings.

cursed tiramisu – Burton Connor TV Lounge

More free food! Visitors were encouraged to take a lady finger (a type of biscuit), dip it in a mystery flavor, and then coat it in custard and cocoa powder. The flavor of tiramisu you got was chosen by the wheel of doom. There were some good options on it, like caffeinated chocolate, and some terrible ones like Spagetti-os and soy sauce. I was quite lucky for the most part given how many I ate, but got Spagetti-o’s once and decided to call it a day there because of how bad it was. I’m very very happy I didn’t get soy sauce. The few poor souls who got them looked like their taste buds were begging for mercy.

When I decided to take a break from tiramisu, I was in the corner learning how to play pool, which I soon learned that I absolutely suck at. I would often miss the ball right in front of me, but by some miracle, I managed to sink two balls in the holes in the span of an hour. Ryan also taught some of us how to play Gatas, where you would run around the table flinging the white cue ball at the 8-ball. I found this a lot more fun and a lot less challenging.

Some events that I briefly stopped by:

Dig Yer Own Grave

We weren’t allowed to dig the traditional 6 feet, but EHS did let us dig a 4 foot hole next to building 5, which I think is a pretty good compromise. I stopped by for a few minutes to help shovel rocks out the hole, but went back in because it was freezing and I left my jacket in a makerspace three buildings away.

Outdoor forge

I like bending hot glowy metal into funny shapes.

HOT COALS IN YOUR AREA!!!!!

Rat Cake Competition

Lots of rat shaped cakes. Lots of good cake rats, but only one was crowned the king of rats.

a scrungly boi