Freezing My @$$ off at CPW by Bryan

As promised, I offered the chance to write a guest blog to prefrosh during CPW. This is just the first installment. There are many more coming!

If you have any comments or questions, post/email them and I’ll be sure they get to the author.
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CPW has been by far one of the best experiences I’ve had this year. When I got into MIT back in December, I must admit that while I was very, very, very excited, I had a weird breakdown for five minutes when I realized I was going to college with a couple hundred geeks. Luckily, MIT wanted to pay for my trip to CPW, so I went there with this “what the heck, they’re paying for it so I might as well go” attitude. Well . . . MIT proved me wrong big time. (Which I loved, of course.) The people there are seriously the nicest people I’ve ever met. I got lost a few times (ok, a LOT of times), and instead of whipping out my map, I took that as a chance to ask someone and meet people. I don’t think I met a single stuck-up person there, so that’s a pretty good sign I’ll fit in. :) I also loved how every time I met a new person it went sort of like this:

Me: “Hi, I’m Milena.”

Other person: “My name is ____. I actually know who you are, I’ve seen you on Facebook.”

Me: “Oh. Well… nice to meet you!!”

Oh, where would we be if it weren’t for Facebook… *sigh* Some people saw my pictures on Facebook, and a lot of them are of my host’s dorm, Simmons Hall. Well, how could you not love Simmons?! They have a “meditation room” full of balls, which I loved being in.

I spent a lot of time in my dorm (wow, that sounds nice…) with my fellow Puertorrican people on floor 7C. My host was the APR’s president, so I got to meet a lot of the Puertorrican students, and I even had dinner with them. Talking about food…. The amount of free food on campus was INSANE! There were BBQ parties going on everywhere, even though it was pretty cold outside. Although I didn’t make the most of the free food (I was having so much fun I forgot I was hungry), I did go to a few frats to have a bite (TDC having the best burgers I had during the weekend). And I also got to try those Anna’s burritos I’d heard so much about, and LOVED them.

A list of things I’d never done before and tried them over the weekend (pictures included!):

1. Having soda with dry ice.

2. Swallowing two live goldfish swimming in root beer. (Before you go ahead and think I’m gross/insane/your new best friend, a friend who shall remain anonymous had 26. Think about HIM.)

3. Going to a frat party (I went to DTD’s Goldfish party, Nu Delta’s Climax party and Phi Delt’s party on Saturday night). They were all awesome!! The picture is from the Goldfish party.

4. Walking across the Harvard Bridge. That was very interesting because the bridge’s length is measured in smoots.

364.4 smoots = 2034.6 feet, so think twice before crossing the bridge and walking all the way to Simmons Hall wearing high heels. Your feet will thank you.

This is supposed to say “halfway to hell” with an arrow pointing to MIT, but I’d have to get on the road to take a better picture, and I’d rather be alive.

5. Taking an Organic Chemistry (5.12) class in room 10-250. The professor was very funny and wanted people to “ask more dumb questions”. I had a few, but I’ll leave them for when I actually have to understand everything she says. The pictures look kinda blurry because I didn’t want to use the camera’s flash and draw attention to myself. By the way, those boards are amazing. The professor pressed a button and they moved up and down so she could write on them.

6. Watching hundreds of bouncy balls drop at Senior House. I saved a few :-)

You can’t see the balls really well because they were small, but I did my best.

7. Reading a fake issue of the Tech. Caltech decided to prank MIT by printing these real-looking Tech issues, which I thought were hilarious, but the hack could have been a lot better if they had hidden all the real Tech issues and replaced them with their fake issue. Which goes to prove, Caltech students are not as smart as they think they are. Bwahaha.

That “Facebook leaves student friendless” headline worried me. That could be me in a year!

This was very funny, especially the one about birth control.

I didn’t get to sleep much (I only slept about 10 hours during CPW), but I’m glad I stayed up as long as I could. I did loads of cool things, met lots of cool people and had a great time. CPW was great and they did a great job of convincing me to give them all of my Dad’s money in exchange for the best education I can get. I hope I see all the amazing prefrosh I met next fall!! :-) (By the way, if I met you during CPW, please facebook me!)