an infinite nine year old by Caleb M. '27

The first time I walked down that hallway, the world was white.

Many years later, I’d learn that that hallway was actually a ‘corridor’—an infinite one, at that. Dramatically, slash if I were into telling fables, I would say something like “I’d also come to learn that the world was white because of something called ‘snow.’” That would, however, be the most false thing I’ve ever said, because I obviously knew what snow was and had seen it multiple times before the day of this story. I was nine and grew up in Texas. It had snowed before.

Anyway. 

The first time I walked down that infinite corridor, I was nine years old. My parents had always believed that one of the most important things that you could do was travel—to see the world and peek into the experiences of people beyond the metaphysical walls of Sachse, Texas, where I’d grown up. They had immigrated from Ethiopia to the United States a few years before I was born, so their entire life since then had been one loooong trip away from home. Yet they made the best of it, and throughout my childhood they took my older sibling Raiye and I on a vast array of adventures across the United States and occasionally across the ocean to Europe and, eventually, back home to Ethiopia. One of my oldest memories is asking my parents to bring me back the real Thomas the Tank Engine when they took Raiye to Kentucky when I was 3 and I stayed home with my grandmother. Suffice to say, they did NOT bring me back the real Thomas the Tank Engine. I’m also not confident why I thought he was in Kentucky. Nonetheless… I’ve been surrounded by travel all my life.

The winter break of 4th grade, my dad—who had just got a new job as a professor at a college in Dallas—had a conference in a city far north from our humble Texan suburbs: Boston, Massachusetts. So the four of us packed our bags (I think I was still young enough to share a suitcase with Raiye, who was at the time 11), hopped on an airplane, and took what I didn’t know would be the first of many flights between DFW and BOS. We spent a couple days exploring the city, visiting the common, and doing the regular Boston tourist things.

everybody say “aww.” “aww!”

And then, one day, we visited two old buildings. Which isn’t shocking for Boston, but these two buildings (or groups of buildings, to be more specific) were quite special.

The first one was a green field-of-sorts surrounded by tall, red brick buildings on every side. Tall gates surrounded the complex, and stepping through felt like leaving the city street surrounding it into a whole new little world. I remember walking through the grass and looking at the trees, hearing a name that I knew well—Harvard. There was crimson all about, and the sun shone on the greenery of the Yard. Students and tourists alike roamed about, and the entire scene felt rather idyllic, a brief portal into a world of red bricks and a million sidewalk paths spearing across the greenery. 

The second one was a little less frilled with fanfare. I remember entering through a door surrounded by a bunch of columns, and there aren’t many columns in Texas so I can actually say this was probably one of the few times I’d seen pillars that imposing. The weather had turned and it wasn’t as warm anymore, and there were no huge stretches of green around this part of town. If my memory serves, it was pretty dimly lit, fairly empty. I remember it feeling very brownish-green, in that deep patina’d-bronze way. I remember a long hallway that seemed to go on and on. I remember seeing a million posters for everything under the sun covering every square inch of both walls as we continued down the scarcely populated hallway. This one might be completely bull, but I distinctly remember a poster that looked like a Target logo with red and blue rings further down the way.

Then, I remember the hallway opening into a larger lobby area. There were three big doors, and outside of those three big doors, a huge field was open for exploration and play. And what made that huge field so amenable to play? Snow.

Now. I did mention earlier that I had absolutely seen snow before because I was not three. That being said, however, I had never seen snow like this. Snow in Texas doesn’t fall too heavy, doesn’t stick, and doesn’t let you do much with it. This? This was real, authentic, New England snow, deep enough to sink in and wet enough to build with. And that, I will admit, was pretty new.

I remember as the posters and hallway slipped off my mind as Raiye and I rushed, hand-in-hand, through those giant doors and past even bigger columns and out onto the heavy layer of cloudy pillow that sprawled over the entire lawn. I remember grabbing fistfuls of it, throwing it at my sibling and giggling as I ran away from the ensuing counterattack, biting into it, building a little “fort” as well as a nine year old and an eleven year old could. I remember the beauty of that silly little moment in that ancient building and thinking little of what went on inside, because what excited me more was everything I could do outside. Those three letters that they called this structure felt so detached from my world as a fourth grader, but I knew they were three that I should remember well. And remember them I did.

The second time I walked down that hallway, I was at CPW⁠01 Campus Preview Weekend, MIT’s admitted students’ weekend .

Much went on in the seven years between these two days. I finished grade school (mostly). I became a real person with real worldviews and strong perspectives. I submitted my bid to get into that building of three letters, and screamed when I read that they wanted me. I became Caleb.

I think back on that day pretty often, especially as I’m walking down the Infinite right before passing through Lobby 10, especially when I see the Curling Club sign that I am convinced has been there for a decade, especially when it snows. I think about the nine year old who was already being told to dream about spending his days walking up and down that hallway. I was raised in an environment that championed the utmost importance of education, and the three letters had become a part of my regular lexicon from that day forward—probably, to be honest, before that. I work to build towards those three letters. I plan on finding my way into those three letters. Ten years ahead, I knew that I had to make it.

Do I feel sorry for him, dreaming about a decade away? Excited for him, that the dreams he had would come to fruition way down the line? Worried that he’s wasting his days thinking about something so far away from him in that moment and that he should be thinking about literally anything else? I’m not too sure.

little did he know, he’d call that weird building behind him home someday! that being said, don’t be like nine year old me. don’t walk in the bike line.

These days, I’ve walked down that hallway more times than I can count. Two years and change as a student, minus the days I slept in and cut lecture, plus the late nights spent crawling around campus finding somewhere to study… the numbers get hazy. I’ve sprinted down that corridor, danced down that corridor, and beyond—it’s a central part of my story as an MIT student. The Infinite is a regular part of my daily routine, the main artery of a connected campus, cramped, exciting, hallowed, hallway. These days, it’s nothing too interesting. I see it as just another part of my routine.

Yet, every now and then, when I walk just at the right time in just the right dim lighting with just the right state of mind, I catch a glimpse of the world through his eyes, and I remember the first time I walked down that hallway, when the world was white.

…

My memory of visiting MIT for the first time is one I hold dear to my heart. I always think of it as the first step into my journey as a young beaver, and I love thinking about that little kid messing around in the snow in front of the building that would eventually become his second home and the heart of his community. 

Memory, however, is a finicky thing, isn’t it?

When I was writing this blog, I realized that one thing would be the perfect addition to make this story richer—pictures! And so I went to my parents and asked them if they could pull out their old, huge hard drives to see if we could find some pictures from the trip to add to this wall of text. They obliged (reluctantly, because those hard drives are a mess) and we spent some time looking through many pictures from a decade and a half of adventures. Eventually, though, we got to November 2014… then December 2014… and finally, January 1st, 2015. Excitedly, I tapped forward through the photos until I found…

this.

This was, understandably, an earth-shattering photo to come to terms with. I remember the snow on this day so vividly. So vividly, in fact, that I am still not convinced that it didn’t snow on January 1st, 2015. So vividly, in fact, that I’ve scoured Cambridge meteorological records all across the internet to find something, anything confirming that the world was as white as I remember it. But the best I can find is that it was just… cold. Which means there were no snowballs, no bites of frozen rain, no forts. The grass on Killian was about as green as it is today in the middle of September. 

It’s really strange to try and reconcile just how strongly I remember this day and playing in the snow with Raiye with the fact that it just… didn’t happen. It’s probably just some amalgam of a handful of other adventures that I went on with my family that bled into this one episode of my youth. 

Though this specific memory may have been a false one, however, what followed was fully real. Snow or no snow, that visit was a bit of a turning point in my life, and that turn somehow seems to have led me here, to the hallowed halls of infinite idiosyncrasies and corridors of camaraderie and community. It’s a hallway of a hundred hellos, and passing all my friends throughout the day and waving at the many people I’ve met in the past two years at MIT always brings a smile to my face. It’s a small modicum of life at MIT—sometimes, it seems endless, but the part that makes it bearable is all the friendly faces you get to see as you walk right along—and then, before you know it, you find yourself through the doors on the other side.

Maybe the first time I walked down that hallway, the world was actually just grey—but in each walk down that hallway that has followed, the world always gets just a little bit more colorful.