Announcing New Bloggers for 2010! by Chris Peterson SM '13
A digital debutante ball...
Last week, the blogging committee – comprised, as always, of the communications team here at the admissions office, plus graduating senior bloggers, in this case Chris Su – met to choose new bloggers who will be joining the team for the coming year.
It was an incredibly tough job to do. With an acceptance rate of just under 9.7%, it’s actually more difficult to land a job as a blogger than it is to get into MIT in the first place!
However, as with our undergraduate applications, the cruel difficulty of the decisions is no excuse for not making them. Decide we must, and decide we did.
So, without further ado, let me introduce to you our new bloggers!
Class of 2014
- Anna Ho was born in Singapore but has lived in London for the past eight years. Though currently on crutches after a br√ºtal Ultimate Frisbee injury – a dangerous sport indeed – she will be living up high in French House come fall. Anna, who performed her valedictory speech with her friend and salutatorian Sameer in a “Kanye West style duet”, isn’t yet sure about what she’d like to study, but with interests ranging from FIRST Robotics to MedLinks, she’s sure to find something here at MIT.
- Kate Rudolph hails from the Chicago suburbs and is a world-class mathlete. She attended the IMO Training Camp and her research at last summer’s RSI was voted one of the top-five papers out of the program. In her long experience writing for a few different blogs Kate excels at sharing how math enters her life in new and interesting ways. As someone who personally never even completed calculus – long story – I loved how much I loved reading Kate’s blogs, whether about math or otherwise. Kate will be living in East Campus, although she is envious of how the Simmons elevators play random musical tunes when certain chords of buttons are pressed.
- Natanya Kerper comes to us from the San Diego suburbs. Born in Super Tuesday in an election year, Natanya’s been an activist and debater all of her life (JSA Best Speaker ’09) and will be a double major in Political Science and Biology here at MIT. Natanya, who plays girls lax and powderpuff football, is tough as nails – as a junior, she broke her wrist playing football, which didn’t keep her from acing the APs the following weekend. She toured Harvard, but a toilet there ate her phone, so she’ll be coming to MIT and blogging for us instead!
- last but not least of the freshman bloggers, we have Emad Taliep. Emad was born in South Africa but emigrated at an early age to the greater Boston area. He’ll be studying Brain and Cognitive Science here at MIT, and writes blog entries with titles like “Eggs and Curry: The Cross-Cultural Culinary Story.” When he gets to campus, Emad hopes to join Live Music Connection; I’ll post his answer to the “zombie apocalypse question” to illustrate why:
The smell of decomposing flesh abounded. The nation was cast in eternal darkness, allowing the dead to rise. The shrewd cretins had shut down roadways and laid waste to supermarkets. The end seemed nigh. And the gigantic flamethrower I ordered was stuck in Beijing.
“I’ve gotta beat them somehow,” I said, in an impromptu dramatic monologue. “Wait…beat! That’s it!”
I called my friend David – a man so metal, he frequently drew suspicion from airport security – and told him to bring his guitar. My plan? To defeat the zombies with a logic bomb.
We’d play death metal loud enough to wake the dead, yet heavy enough to cripple the living. I took a gamble by thinking death metal could be so intense, it could actually be lethal. But, in paranormal situations, risk-taking is essential.
David plugged in his axe, amp, and mic, cranking up every dial. I put on my headphones, ready to unleash percussive chaos. As the zombies approached, David and I chugged out a window-shattering riff of sonorous death with a pounding rhythm. Our righteous metal threw the zombies into existential limbo, with the conflicting commands to die and reawaken putting their lives in flux.
“Finish them!” I screamed.
David growled into the microphone, rending the skies with his resonant voice. The Gods of Metal replied by raining down utter carnage. Lightning bolts fiercely incinerated the undead oppressors, leaving naught but scorch marks where they once stood.
That’ll show my mom not to call my drumming a nuisance…
Upperclassmen
We also are hiring two upperclassmen this year to join our blogging team!
- Elizabeth Choe, ’13, is a Course 20 major from Missouri who lives in Simmons. She plays cell in MITSO, wants to be a comedian, rejected our “Team Jacob vs Team Edward” challenge to write about “Team Leibniz vs Team Newton”, and draws things during class:
- Becca Heywood, ’12, is a Course 1 major from Colorado who lives offcampus in an independent living group. She’s traveled the world while at MIT, with a MISTI internship in Mexico, an exchange trip to the Czech Republic, an an Engineers-Without-Borders trip to Uganda, blogging throughout them all. She’s on the varsity crew team and is terrified of zombies, so maybe she’ll make friends with Emad and his Drums of Doom.
These six special folks won’t start blogging right away, as we have to wrangle them here to campus, get ’em trained, and set up into the system in early September. When that time comes, they’ll be able to tell you more about their own personal stories, which I assure you are more interesting, compelling, and better written than anything I provided here.
Once again, thanks to all those who applied, and everyone say hi to the new crew!
first
Congrats to all of you! Woohoo, Elizabeth
And yay for bloggers who have injured themselves via Ultimate! Hamsika broke her toe around this time last year.
Can’t wait to hear all these stories…
.
Especially your’s Emad. That’ll tell MY mom not to call MY drumming a nuisance
Does this mean Chris isn’t blogging this year????
@genius –
I certainly hope he will be!! Chris will be around for another year, he’s not going anywhere yet.
Yeah I’m still around…I ain’t done yet.
lol, Jeanne. I’ll never live down the broken toe incident, sigh..
YAY NEW BLOGGERS, I’M EXCITEDD!! Can’t wait to meet everyone
From an outsiders perspective, after reading several blogs, it looks to me that bloggers are picked on their ability to highlight the lighter side of life @ MIT and less on their super duper nerdy skills.
So if you are the high tech pointy nerd, there will be many other places where you can shine:)
this sucks
@Anon –
Or, perhaps we don’t feel like we need to highlight our nerd cred
great story from Emad – what would happen if –
The zombies, went to the MIT Media Lab, stole all the top of the line noise cancelling heaphones, wore them and started the battle once again?
Awesome!!! :D
Could you please post how many Team Edward and Team Jacob votes there were? Who won??
I can’t wait to read them. It seems though that they all come from big cities or out of the country. That scares me as I am applying this year. how many student come from small towns or from country life. my town is so small and that worries me. i would really like to hear what some student who don’t come from this lifestyle have to say about MIT.
@Mike ’15?
I’m from the middle of Missouri. It’s definitely not as hick as it can get, but I’ve gotten stuck behind tractors driving down roads and have hit deer before. I enjoy corn mazes. A couple of my friends from home live on farms.
It’s true that you meet people from amazing places at this school, but I’d say half of the people I’ve met are from small to average-sized towns.
Hear more about my transition to the Boston-area in my blog… coming soon! (I know, shameless plug already. I’m just that sad.)
@Anonymous, 11:05:
Noise cancelling headphones can’t save zombies from a glorious smiting delivered by the Gods of Metal. If they also wore rubber suits, then I’d need to change my plan.
Which would probably require me to fly to Beijing to grab my flamethrower.
yes,I agree, this sucks
Emad,
Your idea of placing an order for a flamethrower from Beijing reminds me of an order or electronic parts I ordered from Hong Kong a few days ago. That how the world works – 9 out of 10 things in a middle class american household seems to me made in China!
Mixing reality with fantasy made your story a really nice read!!!
Wishing you all the best!
Welcome to the blogs!
@Elizabeth ’13..Great! It’s nice to know that people who go to MIT don’t just come from the big cities. BUT i do think that MIT should highlight this a ton more. If half of the people come from small towns then proportionally, half of the bloggers should do the same. Additionally, half of the bloggers are from outside the US yet few actual MIT students are internationals. Yet, I can’t wait to see how you connect your Missouri life to boston life!
I think most of the bloggers have traveled or lived outside the US and are culturally diverse but they are not necessarily international students… (reading from their blogs i don’t know if any are actual international students)
@ Mike ’15? –
“Additionally, half of the bloggers are from outside the US yet few actual MIT students are internationals.”
…yeah, except that first part’s not true.
Elizabeth, It was great to see the graphics and to see notes in Comic Sans! At work when I used comic sans as my font of choice for development – people were initially in a state of shock!
Best wishes!
“(reading from their blogs i don’t know if any are actual international students)”
You’re right. I think Anna and I are the only two bloggers that have spent almost our entire lives outside of the US, yet both of us aren’t international, according to the strictest definition of the term.
I don’t think it’s because MIT Admissions doesn’t want international bloggers, but it’s also because there’s no quota for it, so they’re not seeking to take international bloggers just for the sake of having an international student.
Who are the departing Bloggers?
Ah, „Çà„Åì„Åù and „Åä„ÇÅ„Åß„Å®„ÅÜ to the new bloggers! (That’s welcome and congrats respectively, ehe. xD)
Emad, that essay sure has colored me impressed…I think you’ve inspired my brother to take up drumming now, on the basis that he’ll be the saviour of the world when a zombie outbreak occurs
All this has gotten me psyched – AND nervous – about applying this fall; both to MIT – and if that works out, this blogosphere perhaps?