don’t build the torment nexus by Anika H. '26, MEng '27

After 4 years of undergrad at MIT, I’m back for an MEng (our engineering masters program) and I feel ancient. I first stepped foot on campus in 2022, and now there are class of 30’s. By the time they graduate I’ll be practically prehistoric. Being old doesn’t automatically make you wise, but I’d like to think I have a little bit of wisdom to share. Note that this is mostly train of thought, so these tips are in no particular order. Also I haven’t had time to draw much, so you guys get frogs doodles instead.

american bullfrogs are the largest species of frog in north america and will eat anything that fits in their mouths.

dumb questions

While I think you should ask questions all four years of college, you should especially ask a lot freshman year. You guys are young adults, mature enough to live independently on your own for the first time. But at the same time, the rest of us who’ve already experienced MIT for at least a year think you guys are little babies. Like not in the derogatory way; we think you will be experiencing a lot of firsts and will benefit from support to get used to college.

Which means if you have any amount of social anxiety, you should ask as many dumb questions as you can while it’s still socially acceptable. I swear it will be so much less embarrassing asking something when no one expects you to know anything, than when you’re a senior googling basic concepts before an interview. As important as it is to know how to self learn, it’s a lot more efficient asking someone directly.

Foundational knowledge is so very important. It doesn’t matter if you learned it in highschool and forgot, and it doesn’t matter if all your friends know it already. Ask everything you need to properly learn. It’s infinitely worse to be sitting in an advanced class confused about a new concept because it builds on something you never properly learned (I’m speaking from experience, don’t be like me).

Lastly, your lecturers and professors are generally chill. In grade school, teachers would shame you for asking them to repeat something because you weren’t paying attention. But since most professors here are normal reasonable people, they’ll answer anything for you and the handful of other students in the room that probably have the same question. It won’t bother them to repeat one slide out of the 50 they run through that day. However, if you’re still too nervous to ask the professor, ask your neighbor. If they know it, your question is answered. If they don’t, chances are you’re asking a good question that other people also need answered so you can raise your hand confidently.

red eyed tree frogs will open their eyes suddenly to scare away predators.

sucking

As many of you new frosh get thrown into the deep end for the very first time, many of you will fail tests, drop classes, and flounder for dear life. And even more of you, regardless of whether you struggle, will get imposter syndrome. I have it, my friends have it, and the route setters at the MIT Walker climbing gym certainly have it because the difficulty of the routes are several times harder than what it’s rated as. (The ratings are bullshit and the V1s are at least V3s.)

You will suck. And you will feel like you suck. And it might take several years to stop feeling like you suck.

People come to MIT from different backgrounds with vastly different skillsets. I sat in lecture on the first day of Intro to Circuits barely knowing what an op-amp was, and elsewhere in the room, someone had already built a working computer from scratch in high school. You’re all here in the same place not because you know the same things or because you’re all equally genius, but because you have shown the potential to make the best use of MIT’s resources.

“Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something” – Jake the Dog from Adventure Time

Don’t hinge your self worth to how good you are at a skill. It took me a long time to start to unlearn that from my upbringing. It’s difficult to get rid of that thought completely, so I instead I tried to attach myself to the depth of my passion for engineering and learning. How can you truly say you love a subject until you fail over and over again and keep coming back for more?

Also, don’t compare yourself to people around you if you can help it. It gets 10 times worse at a place like MIT where everyone is cracked. I don’t have any good solutions for this one yet cause I’m still working on it :p

Very recently, even after three full years of knowing how to use test equipment, I forgot to put on an attenuator and broke a 400 dollar NanoVNA. Radio Society added me to the list of value in broken equipment we have cost. The funniest thing is that the people at the top of that leaderboard are some of the best electrical engineers I know. They’ve spent enough time learning to accidentally fry projects and blow things up.

And based off of Radio Society at least, the more mistakes you make, the more you learn from them, the more competent you become.

because desert rain frogs are so rotund, they can’t hop and can only waddle. their screams sound like dog squeaky toys.

social skills

Make friends! make pset buddies! Don’t make enemies even if you’re going for a rival’s to lovers thing which I promise works a lot better in fiction than in real life. You are a wee frosh with light in your eyes, and you can literally ask to sit down at any table in a dining hall, and chances are people will be happy to talk to you for the duration of your half-hour meal. It’s also fine if you just don’t click with someone. Aim to be good acquaintances, and try your chances elsewhere. On a campus with 4000 students you’re bound to find a friend.

While it’s much easier to make friends with your fellow frosh, try to make friends with upperclassmen as well. They know when all the best parties and where all the free food events are. They know which classes are fun, and which ones will drown you in labs. Upperclassmen tend to be a little more tired and cynical than your average froshling, but they have valuable experiences, and are usually more than willing to talk to you in exchange for a few of your extra dining swipes.

One thing I’m sure you’ve all been told if to build a good relationship with your TAs and professors. Many of you will try to do that by going up to the professor after class, introducing yourself, and asking a question about the class content. While this certainly won’t hurt, there are 20 other students trying to do the same exact thing, and 15 minutes later, your poor professor kinda just wants to go home. What you should do instead is to make a consistent effort to show up and engage with the class. Throughout the semester, attendance will slowly dwindle to 1/4 to 1/2 of the lecture hall (unless it’s a HASS class with mandatory attendance). If you continue asking questions in office hours and on piazza and showing up to lecture, you’ll be making a much better impression.

surinam toads embed fertilized eggs into their backs and hatch our fully formed froglets from their backs.

some other tidbits

Don’t use LLMs to write your essays and psets. It can be a useful tool to check answers and review course material, but using it to avoid work and speed through a class defeats the point of taking the class. Your psets have a lot more value in your brain than it does in ChatGPT’s database. Don’t let Sam Altman steal your tuition.

Try not to take classes that use LLMs to generate course material. I’m unfortunately starting to hear about classes with AI generated textbooks, syllabuses, and nonsensical problems, and I’m also starting to hear that those classes are going terribly. If it is a major requirement, try your best to petition out of it.

If you have the energy, join clubs, get involved with campus events and politics, try activism, or if you’re a grad student, join the union. College is one of the best places to start learning how to practice autonomy and expressing yourself. As a student, your voice matters more than you think.

Don’t get blackout drunk at your first party, but if you’re there and you see someone passed out or vomiting a lot, you should call for help. First of all, this is common sense, but also MIT’s Good Samaritan policy will protect you from getting in trouble even if you are not supposed to be there.

Ever heard of the November Rule? Frosh should ideally not be dating anyone until November 1st. Build yourself a friend group and support system of other people. And please please do not date your upperclassmen this early. Their friend group will inevitably become your friend group, and when you break up, they will take their friends and you will have only the few acquaintances you met in Calc class because you didn’t have the opportunity to make your own circle.

If, against your best judgement, you break the November Rule and end up sad or generally do not have anyone’s shoulder to cry on for any reason, or have a social conflict or anything you need to talk about, talk to your GRA. It is in fact their job to help you and direct you to other resources.

Use s^3, also known as Student Support Services. They will help you with most student life related things, but the majority of people go to them for support on assignment extensions. If you get sick or injured or need to move an exam date because of a conference, you should go visit s^3. They also give extensions for mental health reasons but usually won’t budge unless it’s very very severe. However, a common cold usually doesn’t take that much bargaining. These last two sentences are completely unrelated and I do not condone lying to s^3.

In general, exercise common sense. you can be a little bit stupid but don’t be too stupid.

and most importantly…

budgetts frogs have huge mouths that take up a third of their bodies.

be a good person.

before you are student at MIT, you are a person living among other people in this world, and you will live among people for the rest of your life. Be kind to others, be kind to yourself, and assume ignorance before malice. It’s fine to dislike people and argue, but don’t harrass or antagonize people, don’t steal other people’s stuff or food out the communal fridge, dont gloat about how easy a class is in front of someone who’s obviously struggling, slow down your e-scooter when there’s a lot of foot traffic around, etc etc.

And for the love of all that is good, PLEASE don’t make the torment nexus or the newest missile guidance system or a health insurance claim denial algorithm with higher profit margins. Yes, the job market is really bad right now, but I promise you can get an equally high paying job doing something less terrible with an MIT education.

the torment nexus, for those who don’t get the reference

You have an opportunity to study at the best technical school in the world, and I sincerely hope that you can use your newfound knowledge and community to make our shitty world a better place.

newly discovered in 2021, the zombie frog got its name because the researchers looked like zombies digging them out of the ground. they look like overweight muppets.

Stay safe and good luck with your first semester!