And now, for a brief interlude from our regularly scheduled finals whining. by Shannon M. '12

Sometimes, I forget how much I love MIT, and then I realize that the following conversations can literally happen nowhere else in the world.

So a few weeks ago, I was heading over to my sorority house to study one Friday night when I ran into a couple of my sisters.

Them: Where are you going?
me: Back to the house… to study….
Them: False. You’re coming with us. We haven’t seen you all week.
me: I mean… okay.

I am not a hard sell on the let’s-do-something-besides-work front.

Anyways, the problem with this is that I am literally in a pair of free Crocs I got at Notre Dame one time, powder blue men’s basketball shorts, and a navy BoSox hat with my usual black North Face. (No, I do not usually go out in public like this. It was a bad week.) Needless to say, I am not about to walk around Boston in this outfit, so I borrow one person’s jeans and get a shirt from someone else and we’re on our merry way.

… and in true MIT fashion, come home a few hours later and camp out in the basement of our house to work.

This is not the point of the story, though. The point is that a week or so later, I get the following text from my friend Sarah.

Sarah: hey, do you still have my genes? could I get them back sometime?
me: i mean, I have like 99.99% of your genes…
Sarah: crap. i definitely did not even catch that. i meant jeans.

So I give her hard time and promise to drop off the pants at Baker when I get a chance.

Fast forward to last night, when the nerdiest, most MIT text exchange I have ever had occurs. And this is why I love MIT.

Sarah: Genes?
me: crap, I keep falling asleep before I make it back to baker. Will return your genes later tonight… oo la la.
Sarah: can I have a copy of reverse transcriptase with that too? I would like to make some cdna… you can be my virus lol
me: I’ll do what I can, but remember that you’ll need some dna helicase to unzip these genes.
Sarah: as long as you bring ligase… its getting hot in here and something needs to piece me back together.
me: no worries, I’m on it. I’ll even bring some primer over to get things started.
me: and while this might be the weirdest conversation I have ever had, the good news is that you totally sound ready for 7.013. and I do have your jeans.

And yes, this is a conversation between two sorority sisters… only at MIT.