GUYS IT SNOWED!! by Allison E. '27

AHHHHHH!!!!

I love snow!! I’ve been checking my weather app slightly for the last month or so, and every once and a while a [four days from now: 30% chance of <0.05 in. of snow for 20 minutes] has popped up. A spark of hope!! Then, I’d check the weather again an hour later, and it’d be gone. And I would be sad. Rinse, repeat.

About a week ago, that “30% chance of <0.05 in. of snow” popped up a couple times for yesterday (Wednesday, 12/6), but in the last fiveish days leading up to Wednesday it switched to just cloudy. I gave up hope. I resigned myself to an incredibly banal Wednesday—except extra sad because I’d have to wake up at 8:00 am for PE class registration :(

And so… Tuesday night, my roommates and I put the combined might of our six alarms together to make sure that we all woke up. And then we proceeded to stay awake until 4 am, because “hey, can just go back to sleep after registration anyways, yeah?”

7:50 am. The alarms ring. We get out of bed. We pull out our laptops and refresh the registration site over and over until 8:00 am hits. It’s the third time⁠01 there are 2 PE quarters per semester, plus one during IAP and one? during summer we’ve done this, so we’re just on autopilot. And then the site loads! And for the first time, I don’t screw up registration, and I get a class I wanted—beginner ice skating!! (btw, MIT has some pretty cool PE classes that you should check out!)

AND THEN.⁠02 ok i kinda messed with the 10 minute chronology of this story—this happened just before registration–but like…. the narrative structure is nicer this way >:)

One of my roommates looked out the window. And IT WAS SNOWING.

I shall repeat my opening line: AHHHHHHH!!!! Sleep was no longer an option.⁠03 Meanwhile, my roommates crawled back into bed because they’re from the Northeast LOL I changed out of pajamas as quickly as I could, terrified that it would stop before I could get outside. Pants, shirt, sweater, jacket. Should I brush my teeth? Should I put on actual snow boots? Nah, no time. I ran down the stairs and out the door and IT WAS SNOWING!!!!

I think the PE registration adrenaline decided to combine with my first-snow adrenaline to turn me into an out-of-control gremlin making actual out-loud excited gremlin noises. Some of my friends were also yelling excitedly (albeit in our group chat), and so we met up in the massive field across from dorm row to frolic!

And ok, it’s not a lot of snow (as my parents so kindly informed me after I sent them pictures 🥲), but photos can’t capture the amazingness of snow actually falling from the sky. Plus!! There was enough snow vaguely sprinkled around to still have fun. We stole snow off cars to make snowballs, drew things in the barely-covered grass, ran around in circles, and even made some snow angels!

After fooling around outside for a while we headed to Next’s dining hall to grab breakfast, and by the time we’d finished eating, the snow had stopped, and everything on the ground had mostly melted. It was a little disappointing, but we didn’t really expect it to last. 

In fact, I’m really just amazed that we were all awake to witness the snow at all. Without PE registration, there’s no way in heck we’d have all been awake at 8:00 am. It was the most excellent timing, and despite my two previous failures, I can now say that I officially a PE registration supporter(?). Anyways, yay snow!!!