A Blogographical Biography by Rachel F. '12
...although whatever 'blogographical' means, I somehow doubt it applies to a blog containing graphs.
At 8:57 AM on December 15, 2007, I was admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, class of 2012. The topics of my application essays were:
- the process by which I knit a replica of the spawn of Cthulhu
- coding in history class…instead of playing Starcraft
- FIRST Robotics and the circle of life
- producing an incredibly nerdy musical at math camp
In spirit, not much has changed over the last three years.
Hi. I’m Rachel, possibly more frequently referred to by my Athena username, rfong, although we have to be at least Facebook friends before that’s socially acceptable. Here at MIT, I learn the mysterious words and ways of computers, that I might bend them to my will. My hobbies include anything that involves construction, deconstruction, aesthetic optimization, or efficiency optimization. I live in East Campus with a ginger cat named Reese, who takes his REM a lot more seriously than I do.
Sometimes, he relinquishes his dignity entirely and follows me to the bathroom.
“Why pay homage to this false porcelain idol when you could be worshipping my fluffy glory????”
Admissions blogging is a pretty new thing for me, so please don’t be disappointed if I initially fall short of your expectations.
Over the course of my blogtastic tenure, you may find that I tend to describe concepts in ways that are overliteralized to the point of meaninglessness. For example, my field of study, computer science, is centered around developing methods to get small amounts of data from very large amounts, while my physics major friend spends his time dirtying clean paper by reorganizing collections of squiggly pencil lines.
I won’t lie: I’m going to be spending a lot of time describing the curvatures of squiggly lines. But I hope that looking at all those squiggly lines together, in their intricate arrangements, can help give you a better sense of the big picture.
Metaphorically, that is.
Heeey! Welcome to the blogs!
you can have a pet at MIT?!
In a strange way (too strange to explain in a short comment), you listing the topics of your MIT application essays has built up some more confidence in me about my chances. Just reading those 4 things made me look at my own topics in a much better light than before. Thank you for sharing your essay topics!
And it’s very nice to meet you!
Welcome to the MIT blogs! Your cat is awesome. He kind of looks like mine.
Nice first post! The first post is always the hard one. I had a hard time with mine on my very own blog.
Awwww, you graduate ’12, the same year I graduate high school…so there’s another blogger I will never get to meet if I get matriculated into MIT :c
Nice pictures!! (I stalked a little around flickr as well
at least I think the account I was staring at 5 seconds ago belongs to you…) Include more pictures! (they’re great!)
Wait, are you a new blogger (and if so, how’d you get to blog in the spring?) or were you hired in the fall and are only just starting?
Robert: Four dorms, as well as some frats and independent living groups, allow cats. My floor has five cats and a parrot, and we also used to have a rabbit, a hedgehog, rats, and some turtles, but they ‘graduated’.
I’m glad you feel better about your chances — that’s exactly why I posted my essay topics. I’m pretty sure it’s the weird, personal essays like that that get the admission staff’s attention, but of course you’ll have to ask them if you want to know exactly what goes on in the back room.
Anon: I applied as a blogger last fall and got deferred because there were too many 2012s. They decided to hire me about a week ago; I think one of the ’12s retired.
Everyone else: Thanks!
Well depicted writeup,couldn’t have asked for more!!..
I’m assuming your blog picture is a reference to L from Deathnote. Epic.
Corey: I’ve never watched death note, but now that you mention it, the resemblance is terrifying