Shannon M. '12

Until 3rd grade, I thought that “college” was synonymous with the University of Notre Dame. As in, when an adult would talk about someone “going to college,” I just assumed that they must have been talking about someone going to ND. I had the same problem with the phrase “downtown” (I thought Detroit was logically the only city that had one), so apparently someone failed to explain this multiple meanings business at some point in my youth.

Anyways, despite being a potential 4th generation student at that great university, when I first heard the name MIT mentioned in conversation as “the best engineering school in the world,” I did what any self-respecting nerd-in-training would do in the year 2003: looked it up on the Interwebz with this newfangled site called Google. And as I read about hacking and Mystery Hunt and a school full of people who actually liked math and science just like me, I decided that I was going to go to MIT.

December of my senior year, Ben Jones called me at my cash register at PetSmart to tell me mid-shift that I’d been admitted; eight months later, I was living in a triple with two of craziest people I know in the dorm that I’d wanted to live in since my freshman year of high school. Sophomore year, I moved into my sorority (Kappa Alpha Theta), where I’m House Manager and live with 40 of my best friends; the rest of the 120 sisters are always around, though, since we’re located right next to Baker on dorm row. I was on my class’s Ring Design Committee, which designed the best Brass Rat ever and sent our ring into space for Ring Premiere. I’ve had UROPs in D-Lab and the Media Lab, and now I’m in the basement of the Chemical Engineering department making fancy mayonnaise. I spend my free time eating way too much Indian food for one white kid, running 5ks to burn it all off, and blogging for Admissions to pay for it all (… and because I want you all to come here and see how great this school is).

So when a friend recently told me that “Shannon, you are so MIT,” it was the biggest compliment a person could have given me. I love this place, I love these people, and I can’t imagine “college” meaning anywhere else but the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.