Claim: MIT is a sports school, not a tech school.

Proof: ⁠01 i have done neither logic nor math in a terribly long time so bear with me here Since this claim is a two-part claim, [MIT is a sports school] AND [MIT is not a tech school], we will set about proving both parts.

Part 1: MIT is a sports school

I could go on and on about how MIT has an excellent athletics record: from the Admissions page alone, we have the largest NCAA Div III varsity program in the nation, we have over 470k square foot of recreational space, and we have the most Academic All-America citations out of any DIII school in the nation.

The blogs prove it too: I’m unfortunately not a jockblogger,⁠02 though I WILL have you know that I was nominated as sports girl of the year at my primary school, and it’s all been downhill since but our most recent jockblogging icon & queen Emiko P. ‘25 has written some MANY excellent blogs about her time as a varsity athlete, and Gloria Z. ‘26 and Kano T. ‘26 also wrote a great blog about gyms at MIT.

But even as your average chud at MIT who goes outside once in a blue moon and prefers to rot in bed over a morning run, I would like to contribute proof that MIT is a sporty school.

MIT has a rigorous PE requirement: if we want to graduate, we have to earn eight (8) PE points and meet the swim requirement by taking a swim class or passing the swim test. This generally means that you have to take 4 PE classes (though of course you are welcome to more if you wish) throughout your time at MIT, and you also have to know how to swim. Moreover, we have a fun little Pirate certificate, which certifies you as a pirate and helps you join the ranks of other notable pirates like Blackbeard, Ching Shih, and Matt Damon⁠03 although that one was an honorary pirate certificate .

I’ve taken some great PE classes in my time at MIT: I’ve done Archery, Air Rifle, and Weight Training, all of which were really fun and quite informative.

one of my first attempts at archery... i believe i was the green arrows so as you can see i did uh very interestingly

CAN YOU TELL I WAS SO PROUD OF THIS OEN

shoutout matt lavita my rifle instructor goat bro was so chill

he even put us in his intro slideshow for future rifle sessions LOL

weight training was also really cool because we got to go to the newly renovated special varsity-athletes-only training gym for this pe class (which was indeed rlly nice)

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You can’t really go wrong with PE classes at MIT. The worst they can be are just chunks of mandatory study breaks where you can’t think about classes, but exercise in general is just really fun. People mostly don’t take them for two reasons: being too hosed to fit anything into their schedules, and a secret second reason I’ll elaborate on soon.

Part 2: MIT is NOT a tech school

Look. As much as I love this school, as much as we have groundbreaking research and engineering every other day, the tech at this school kinda SUCKS. Why do we still have janky physical keys for accessing all our dorms? Why do the doors at Lobby 7 swing so erratically and activate at a questionable frequency?⁠04 so i can't find a citation for this, but basically these are heavy automatic doors that you have to pull and patiently want for the hydraulic pressure of the door to swing it slowly open; on the inside, there are pressure plates you step on in order to get outside. it's SO jank. Why does the print service at this school have file size limits for uploading? Why does the wifi spazz out every other day or so??

I’m not spiteful enough nor nerd enough to answer these questions, but they haunt me every day. There’s a running joke about MIT: we build frontier technologies, only for export.

Anyway, to bring these claims together in an effective case study, I bring you:

~ ✨ Janet gets screwed over by PE Registration✨ ~

PE Registration happens at 8am. It happens three times in the Fall semester (two for each of Q1 and Q2, one for IAP⁠05 Independent Activities Period, MIT's January term ) and twice in Spring, which is oftentimes the only reason why many folks (myself included) will bother to get up anytime remotely around 7:45am.

People usually notify their friends and family for the occasion and celebrate / commiserate depending on the outcomes of the PE registration roulette.

the dedication to PE registration means that u wake up whenever PE reg is happening... even if it's 5am in the morning...

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Anyway, this time it was no different. Since I’m an ailing senior with terrible time management skills, I still need to take one more PE class⁠06 uhhh and the swim test but uhhhh let's not worry about that one for now to graduate.

my turn to alert chat that PE reg is today

uh oh

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Since it’s such a big deal, and I did want a good PE to round off my experience, I actually moved a flight I had scheduled at 6am in order to ensure that I could register for PE at 8am.

Rule one of PE registration is that you always pre-plan what you want and go for Quick Registration on the website, because you gotta MOVE FAST. The most popular spots (mostly just the Pirate Certificate sports, along with some that are rare and interesting eg. Pilates) will fill up in an instant, so you better optimise whatever you can.

I decided to be ambitious and try for fencing, which is always one of the most difficult: it’s a Pirate certificate sport, there’s often only 1-2 classes, and the class sizes are small. Not sure why I did that because I haven’t gone through the war of PE registration in the last full year. Hubris…

the way to read the number columns is, from left to right: remaining open spots (0, obviously), number of people on waitlist, and capacity. you can see that archery has a capacity of 98 people, pistol + rifle has a capacity of 60, sailing has a capacity of 90, and fencing has a mere 32… sob

Rule two of PE registration is that you always have multiple tabs open. And multiple browsers open. In fact, get a second laptop if you can (I’m mostly joking). This is how I ended up looking crazy locked in at the airport at 7:59am in the morning.

I’M READY CAP’N

This year, I decided to be a little scientific and had one laptop on the airport wifi, and the other laptop on my hotspot. The internet speed test results said that it was okay, so I was counting down to refresh the page in time for 8am sharp.

i’m sooo ready….

Rule three of PE registration is that the site WILL crash, and crash badly. When too many clients request the same server, the server will go down. Unfortunately, the tragedy of the commons exist, so you just gotta spam requests yourself aswell.

i was too busy locked in at war to take a screenshot but just imagine this is what it's like. if you google ddos attack webpage down it's like the same thing

oh yeah and even when it loads sometimes it just can't render anything properly but u have to click anyway

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But really, the most important rule of PE registration: there are no rules.

Because otherwise how do you explain the fact that I literally saw the light (the registration button) and then the site crashed AGAIN and then I got hit with the freaking waitlist… and then I switched to pickleball and got hit with a waitlist again… when I tell you I had a million very choice words running through my head, I was not kidding. The PE registration RNG gods were not on my side today.

I LITERALLY SAW THE LIGHT (moments before disaster (my site crashed and reloaded (resulting in my place getting knocked off) 💀💀💀))

me 2. what IHTFBAPES stands for is left as an exercise to the reader

it's ok my friend lived this exact experience 2 years before me

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Anyway, all this is to say that nothing really matters. I’m registered for Aikido, which I’m still decently looking forward to, and there’s still an ample catalogue of PE classes to take. We cope and we ball.

IHTFP⁠07 I Have To Flaunt-the PE-capabilities-of-this-Institute, justttt to be clear , man…