A Comprehensive Guide to My Favorite Places on Campus by Nisha D. '21

Some people may remember the sporadic posts that I made in this format. Some of these went viral⁠01 if you know..you know and some remained fairly unread, but I *think* that most of them ended up being useful – or at the very least informative – to most of the people who read them. That’s where this post differs. It is probably not going to be useful or informative to anybody, except for future me who wants to reminisce back on my glory days at MIT.

So, for future me: here it is. A map of all the places that I loved at MIT, color coded and everything.

west campus is not included because i’m gonna be real, i think i only ever entered most of the dorms on dorm row ten times in TOTAL…

From left to right, top to bottom, here they all are.

Pink Circles (outside locations that evoke memories, or are just pretty)

• Crossing Mass Ave from across Lobby 7: always reminded me that wow, I go to MIT. And how fucking cool that is.
• Standing in the middle of the Killian Court path facing the Big Dome: same reason as above.
• Walking up Vassar after fencing practice and passing by the Building 34 lobby: in normal times, the Lightsaber Club used to meet in here and sometimes I’d stop for a few minutes and watch them go at it. It was pretty cool. Almost cooler than fencing.
• Middle of North Court facing the Stata Center: it was always really quiet and peaceful at night. There would be lots of bunnies. I’d be surrounded on all sides by enormous MIT buildings and think of all the cool shit that happens here.
• East Campus courtyard: Well…there are too many memories here to count. CPW, grilling random shit, Rush, rope swings, screaming at like 3 am, etc.
• Along the Charles facing Boston: The most amazing view at night. My parents would always comment on how lucky I was to be living in such a beautiful place, and I tried to appreciate it while I was there, but I don’t think I ever appreciated it enough.
• Crossing Ames St. and facing the Media Lab: The research inside that building used to be beyond my wildest dreams, and I’m glad that I got the opportunity to be a researcher there and surpass my own wildest dreams.

Blue Circles (locations inside MIT campus that I love)

• Kresge auditorium: I performed here once! And listened to many amazing performers. I still remember the very first day of school, sitting somewhere in the top left and listening to all the presentations, still somewhat dumbfounded that I was at MIT at all.
• Fencing room: This is self-explanatory. I spent MANY hours in this room bouting with teammates and friends, learning and improving at a sport that I hope to continue doing for the rest of my life.
• Lobby 7: At night, when there weren’t many people there, I’d just look up in awe at all the inscriptions around the base of the Little Dome, at all the huge posters, and marvel.
• Barker Library: I didn’t actually go here much, but when I did, it was mostly just to admire how aesthetic it is.
• That one bathroom in Building 4 that’s unnecessarily huge and has amazing aesthetics: this one’s very specific but man, I love that bathroom.
• Nano Diner!: Not sure what this is actually called, but all the little tables and desks in the lobby of the Nano building were a great place to have meetings or pset.
• BANANA LOUNGE: Outside of my room, I probably psetted here the most out of any other place at MIT. The coffee was absolutely garbage and honestly, I hate bananas and it always smelled faintly of bananas, but the foofs and the legos and the paintings and the yoga mats always hit different. I took some FAT pre-class naps on those yoga mats.
• Intersection of building 2 and building 14: There’s a really cool DNA helix art installation in the lobby and it’s super aesthetic. I also really like the view entering building 14.
• Third floor of building 46: There’s a huge lobby here that has great natural lighting and was a nice place to pset. There’s a place on the sixth floor as well that I called the jungle, because of all the plants, but I don’t actually know what it’s called. The view from there is really nice.
• Stata lobby: I just passed through here so many times that I became fond of it.
• Hayden library: Always a great place to pset late at night. It also had the closest printer/scanner to me. It’s being renovated right now, and I really hope I’ll get to see it new and improved sometime soon.
• East Campus #Wa101: It hurt to leave. I can’t wait to go back and visit as a grad, and reminisce on all the good times.
• Media Lab 3rd floor atrium: I LOVE this place. The dumb weird artsy chairs, the hot chocolate machine, the gajillion mice that would run around at 1 am while I tried to do coding challenges…
• Martin Trust Center: This was also a great place to pset very late at night, although theoretically, I don’t think undergrads are allowed…I’ll miss laughing uncontrollably with pset buddies at 4 am because I’m too wired on the Keurig coffee and cup ramen to sleep. I also did a LOT of coding interviews in here. I definitely failed most of them.

Red Pentagons (FOOD PLACES I’LL MISS)

• THE STUD SUBWAY: RIP…
• 7-11: Gonna miss grabbing those awful donuts at just around 11:15 pm whenever other East Campus halls didn’t snipe us.
• Saté: Most god tier food truck out there. God I will miss the orange chicken and rice more than anybody should ever have to.
• Ames St. Starbucks: My comfort place. I don’t know if I’ll ever live this close to a Starbucks ever again, but I hope I do.
• Chipotle: I am a firm Chipotle stan – Anna’s and Beantown can suck it. One bowl with the tortilla on the side could last me for a solid two meals.

After making this map, I realized that I love a lot of these places solely because I’d see them so often. So I also made this map of paths that I used to walk at MIT.

all roads lead to east campus

• Orange: paths I took to classes. Probably not comprehensive, but these are the ones I remember.
• Green: to and from fencing. And when Subway existed, the occasional detour there…
• Blue: the sad quarantine path of walking from East Campus to the Stud for food and then walking back. I would try taking different routes (left and right out of the Infinite) to spice it up.
• Dark blue: 7-11 runs with the homies
• Purple: paths I took when hungry/just wanted to be a basic bitch at Starbucks
• Red: Literally the coldest, saddest walk of shame to the Martin Trust Center at 3 am because I still had a pset to chug out.

It’s sort of nice to see that I would regularly go through all of my favorite places, and makes it even more poignant that I am now leaving this place forever. I’m going to miss it. I’m sad to leave it.

Future me, if you’re reading this, I hope that you miss MIT less than I’m starting to, and that you love wherever you are right now just as much as you loved MIT.