MIT Open House by Maggie L. '12

Whenever I hear the term “open house,” I think of panthers.

Flashback to 2004: a few weeks before high school started, I moved from Texas to California, and during a typical afternoon drive with my dad, we saw a house for sale. It was October and we were still living in an apartment three months after the move, so I wasn’t surprised when my dad pulled over “just to have a quick look” while the open house was going on.

We walked into what would eventually become my new home, and there was this carpet sporting a bright “Go Longhorns” shade of orange, and a life-sized stuffed panther doll in the middle.

To this day, I have no idea what was up with that panther. We got the house, ditched the carpet (we’re Aggies fans by the way), and the panther was lost in the process of moving in.

MIT is having an open house of its own this weekend, which will be the first of its kind in about 30 years. This event, if you didn’t already know, is going to be big. While Campus Preview Weekend welcomed several thousands of prefrosh and their families, the “Under the Dome” Open House is expecting tens of thousands of visitors to MIT’s campus. The jam-packed schedule includes activities relating to arts, energy, sciences, engineering, air and space flight, architecture, entrepreneurship, and MIT culture; the Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) program is hosting its own activity, too, and I’m really looking forward to how people respond to it.

The program is hosting “Deliver,” a hands-on, interactive activity that we, the GEL students, participated in during an Engineering Leadership Laboratory last Fall. “Deliver” will be held in the Stata Center every hour on the half hour, in room 32-144.

I don’t want to give anything away because that would diminish the fun and excitement (don’t worry, there will be a post-activity blog!), but it’ll be interesting to see whether groups fall into a lot of the same “traps” that we did when going through this activity. If you’ve been following my blog for a while and you’re curious about how GEL develops engineering leaders, “Deliver” will give you a quick taste of the program’s effectiveness.

With 407 and 10 hours, give or take an ear until I graduate, this open house is eerily coinciding with my experience of moving out of Texas. It’s exciting to be the open house attendee; it’s bittersweet to be the open house “host.” I’m thrilled to share my MIT experience with alums, prospective students, and families, but I’m becoming more and more aware that my time here is winding down.