ask me (an mit alum, maybe) anything! by Paolo A. '21 G

Hi blog readers! It’s been a few months since I’ve graduated, a time filled with road trips, starting to rock climb climbing, hanging with friends, refreshing some of my math knowledge, incredibly weird technology problems (my laptop’s motherboard has a burn mark??) and vegetating, so figured I’d say hello to all of you lovely folks in the style of Qiaochu Y. ’12’s post from the time of yore with an Ask Me Anything!

If you’ve never seen an AMA before: in the comments below, feel free to ask any questions that you may have for me. (Note that you can comment anonymously.) Feel free to upvote other people’s questions you’d especially like to see answered, and I’ll try to get to them quicker.

Examples of questions you can ask me about are:

• Favorite classes at MIT
• What I wished I did differently as an undergrad
• General questions about how-to-college (especially if you’re an incoming first-year)
• Reflections on the MIT experience
• Fun stories that I might have from the past four years
• Clubs I was involved in at MIT
• How I’ve spent my summer
• Hobbies that I have / used to have
• What I do for fun
• Food eating habits
• Thoughts about making friends and “good” conversations
• Musicals I like
• How my day is going
• Things that I miss about high school
• How I figured out my next steps in life
• My time in COVID
• The ghost toilet in my basement
• (Trying to) Lead clubs
• The nature of my friend network
• Favorite etymologies
• Growth Mindsets
• Or literally anything else that you want to ask me

I’ll try to answer whatever questions you have in good faith — though do realize that sometimes it means that I won’t answer your question directly. For example, if you ask me about what my SAT scores were, I’ll say something along the lines of “I think you’re asking this to get a gauge of what score you need to score to get in. But remember, scores aren’t everything, and more importantly, getting into MIT should never be your end goal.” Stuff like that.

I’ll be checking in on this post throughout today (August 12), minus a few hours where I’m eating food or have a meeting, and will try to answer all the questions I can. However, the comments section will remain open for another month, and while I can’t promise rapid responses to your questions after 8/12, I do promise that I’ll check in on this post every so often to try and answer your questions.

Anyways — look forward to chatting with you down below :)