CPW: The Story So Far by Paul B. '11

Come one, come all to CPW! I don’t know about you guys, but the energy on campus right now is absolutely amazing. The Infinite Coordidor is packed with hosts and pre-frosh running to class and with families taking campus tours, the sun is shining beautifully, the steps of the Student Center are thronging with people – and I know thing are only going to get even better from here. Really, words fail me. I almost feel like a pre-frosh again. (Almost.)

Personally, today has already been even slightly more crazy than usual. After my bioengineering seminar, I ran over to the Student Center to pick up my very own pre-frosh, an awesome guy from Brooklyn named Abi (if you’re reading this, hi Abi!). After a quick stop at Anna’s and bumping into Shamarah ’12 in the Infinite Corridor, we arrived at my recitation for 5.12 (organic chemistry), where I spent an hour unraveling the mysteries of Sn2 reactions and E1/E2 elimination.

We followed that up with another recitation, this time for 18.03 (differential equations), where the ever-effervescent Jeremy explained convolution and why it matters. Abi then ran off to the Whitehead Institute to take a tour of the Weinberg Lab. To be honest, I’m actually incredibly jealous (who would have thought I could be envious of a pre-frosh?), because Dr. Weinberg – who was my professor for 7.012 last fall – is a brilliant researcher, and I imagine his lab has to be pretty cool as well.

Now I’m headed to my last class of a day, an hour-and-a-half lecture/discussion about “humanistic perspectives in medicine.” So far, this class (which fulfills part of my humanities requirement) has covered everything from the Hippocratic Oath to black-market organ harvesting – yes, it’s very intense ;) – and today we’ll be discussing Sinclair Lewis’ “Great American Novel,” Arrowsmith. (Who says MIT kids aren’t cultured?)

At 4:30, I’m heading over to the northeast side of campus for a not-so-secret meeting with several familiar faces – sorry to keep you in suspense, but you’ll definitely hear (and see?) more about the fruits of our meeting later. At 5:00 I’m due to meet Abi again at the Student Center – we’ll probably head over to Simmons (my dorm), get him settled in my room, and figure out some sort of plan for dinner. After that, I’ll be helping set up for the CPW Festival (which you should all come to, by the way: the fun starts at 9:30 in the Johnson Athletics Center) before hopping across the river to meet up with some other pre-frosh friends at Skullhouse’s Monster Party.

And from there, who knows what will happen? Oh, CPW…