An illustration of Allison's profile. She has light skin, shoulder-length wavy brown hair and is wearing a striped maroon shirt with a necklace.

cpw is pretty cool tho :D by Allison E. '27

it's not perfect, but it sure is fun

i seem to be physically incapable of writing blogs in a timely fashion, so in an effort to force myself to write, this will be a rambling list of things i did this year at cpw! i was kinda less involved than i’ve been in previous years due to Being Old or smth (tbh mainly hosedness), but i genuinely think this was the most consistently enjoyable of the four cpws i’ve experienced.

[cpw explanation: “campus preview weekend” is the 3.14 days where newly admitted students (prefrosh) visit mit and participate in hundreds and hundreds of mostly student-run events. it probably involves upwards of 10,000 man-hours to pull off. truly amazing and one of the most iconic parts of mit]

1. hosting prefrosh!

one of my friends from high school, arabella, came to cpw this year, so i got to host her! was super fun to catch up and hear abt some of the events she got to see. also she brought me cookies from home :D (thank you arabellaaa) (they disappeared in about three days) (oops)

2. the plan

unrelated to cpw, but my friends and i decided that we were obligated to spend an unreasonable amount of time creating a rigorously researched apocalypse plan. this involved at least two hours of researching boats, their costs, the licensing procedures, and rental options. also lots of [lbs of seed / acre] calculations for staple crops. 10/10 would recommend

3. scioly brainwashing session

i’m part of the group that runs the mit science olympiad invitational every year, and there’s always a pretty large group of prefrosh scioly folks for us to attempt to brainwash into joining! i drew an incredibly ugly beaver on the blackboard, talked about scioly with some prefrosh, and parkoured over/under five tables because i thought it would be faster than squeezing through a crowd (it was not)

chalkboard decorated with science olympiad logo, beavers, etc.

(can you guess what my contribution was…)

4. concert choir community sing

every year, mit’s concert choir⁠01 my roommate miranda is their president!! gathers in the very picturesque & echoey Lobby 10 and invites passerbys to join in singing some well known choral pieces. i love love love the sound of many voices singing together, and as a very stressed out prefrosh in 2023, it was probably the most peaceful i felt during my very hectic cpw. i try to go to every community sing i can because the feeling of singing together with others is so nice (even if i can’t sing well).

5. meet the bloggers!

in which i participated in the annual humiliation ritual of wearing a shirt with my FACE (blogger avatar) on it. aside from that, it was super fun to talk to prefrosh! i think my meeting-new-people-and-conversing skills have improved enough since high school that this is actually really enjoyable.

6. gay beaver wedding

i shan’t spoil the masterpiece that was the east campus beaver wedding by providing pictures or any necessary context–you’ll have to wait for anika to share the full saga. it was a beautiful, tear-jerking ceremony with an excellent guest speaker as the officiant, Victor D. ‘27 using a literal stick as a conductor’s baton, and a dog that stayed in character through the entirety of setup, despite the fact that the event hadn’t started yet. there were at least 100 people present to witness the ceremony. truly an incredible experience.

7. [redacted] on the green building

I LOVE MIT SO MUCH AND IT’S BECAUSE OF STUFF LIKE THIS AHHHH

(again someone else will do an actual blog abt this because it deserves the fullest story ever)

tall building with windows lit up as colorful tetris blocks
the line to play was like 50 ppl long LOL
looking across the Charles river to see the MIT skyline and green building lit with tetris game
my friend and i walked across the bridge to see how visible it was from boston-side, and it was SO eyecatching (especially with the movement)

you cannot convince me that there’s anything cooler than this.

8. next sing karaoke

as a prefrosh at cpw in 2023, i attended at least 5 karaoke events⁠02 i love singing but am bad at it, so i take any chance to sing somewhere you're allowed to be bad at singing--by the way, next sing is an a capella group that's truly open to all skill levels, so if you're like me and want a chance to learn a bit about singing, you should check us out! . i think i went to 3 more during REX/orientation? i tell you this to establish my credibility when i say that next sing karaoke is the best karaoke event. it always draws a crowd (at least 75–I physically counted), and more importantly, the music is curated to be really well known songs⁠03 musical diversity is usually amazing, but in the context of karaoke, everyone is sad if only 3 people know the song. if you’re at a big event with a random group of people, PICK POPULAR SONGS. i will die on this hill. honestly, streaming has caused our collective music repertoire to diverge into such isolated algorithm silos, so i usually just go for pop music from the Gen Z Era Before Spotify: 2005-2015. . usually i try to help run the event, but i was a bum this time and just crashed to enjoy it. unfortunately my roommate and i also caught the prefrosh plague here…

blurry picture of ~75 people in a basement room, signing the O in the chappell roan hot-to-go dance

can you guess what song is being sung? (blurred for privacy)

9. chinatown at night

boston is a sad city where everything closes before 10 pm, except for chinatown! my friends and i like to make regular midnight pilgrimages to get dinner and hang out. i never had the chance to eat much chinese food growing up (truly a feat for someone who is both asian and from hawaii), but mit has opened my eyes to the JOYS of chinese food. yum. anyways as usual we walked ~45 minutes back to campus from chinatown–this is actually my favorite part of our chinatown pilgrimages, because it’s always nice late at night⁠04 along the specific route we take, Boston is pretty safe + safety in numbers--they can't catch all of us :D when you get a chance to be silly and obnoxious without bothering people.

honorary mention – baker piano drop

this wasn’t during cpw, but i think a few days after counts. it’s an annual tradition for one of our dorms, baker house, to chuck an entire piano off the roof on “drop date,” the last day we’re allowed to drop classes (which at mit is much much later than most schools for maximum flexibility). i have never seen such a large object fall so slowly before–it was majestic, and their aim was PERFECT. they even had refreshments, and we got to rummage through the broken pieces afterwards :D

crowd in front of a large, curvy dormitory
this is a while before the drop even happened--the crowd got even bigger
upright piano falling sideways in front of a six-story building
i'm a terrible photographer LMAO

ok yay i wrote something down goodbye y’all

  1. my roommate miranda is their president!!⁠ ↑
  2. i love singing but am bad at it, so i take any chance to sing somewhere you're allowed to be bad at singing--by the way, next sing is an a capella group that's truly open to all skill levels, so if you're like me and want a chance to learn a bit about singing, you should check us out!⁠ ↑
  3. musical diversity is usually amazing, but in the context of karaoke, everyone is sad if only 3 people know the song. if you’re at a big event with a random group of people, PICK POPULAR SONGS. i will die on this hill. honestly, streaming has caused our collective music repertoire to diverge into such isolated algorithm silos, so i usually just go for pop music from the Gen Z Era Before Spotify: 2005-2015.⁠ ↑
  4. along the specific route we take, Boston is pretty safe + safety in numbers--they can't catch all of us :D⁠ ↑