hokey pokey by Janet G. '27

The school year has begun again. I’m glad to report that some things never change: aside from all the frosh complaining about why building 26 is bunched between 12 and 36,⁠01 yeah the number system sucks  the massive flurry of dormspams as clubs begin to campaign for energetic frosh labour, there’s also the various ice breakers so that everyone can pretend to be friends with each other in a 30 person class. 

The icebreakers that I’ve done this year are somehow more interesting than usual; my anthropology class teacher asked us to say our name and a small story related to our name, and my 6.1210⁠02 Intro to Algorithms, a class that is currently kicking my ass TA asked us for our favourite ice cream flavours. 

If you ever meet me, one of the first things you will figure out about me is that I’m a Kiwi.⁠03 the colloquial name for a New Zealander I’m sure you’ve noticed the spelling that feels slightly off,⁠04 the U belongs in labour!!  and people do often introduce me as the token New Zealander.⁠05 and occasionally Australian, if they want to earn a jab and some choice words from me  Throughout my freshman year, I’ve managed to collect a pretty sizeable list of “things that tip people off”. 

Some of these items include: 

• my accent (“can you say no for me?”)
• my confusion at what a foot ⁠06 to this day, no one has ever told me whose foot it is and why do we care about their foot is 
• my confusion at what it means for a day to feel like it’s NINETY DEGREES (ah yes sometimes i too feel like a square, which is far more likely than me getting boiled alive in 90 deg C)
• writing the date the ‘wrong way’ (so apparently, 9/12 is september twelfth and not the ninth of december). 

Apparently, ice cream flavours now also belong on this list. My favourite flavour of ice cream is hokey pokey, which is vanilla ice cream dotted with these tiny balls of delicious golden crisp honeycomb toffee. I knew from previous experience that people here had no idea what hokey pokey was, and for once I wanted to be slightly more normal and surely choose a flavour that wasn’t as stand-out-weird. So when the introduction train finally came around to me, I was like, this is my chance. I’ll choose my second favourite flavour. 

“Hi! I’m Janet. I’m a sophomore planning on studying 6-4 ⁠07 Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making and 7,⁠08 Biology and my favourite ice cream flavour… is boysenberry.” 

The room paused for a moment. The TA looked at me, and was like,

“huh. boysenberry. haven’t heard that one before.”

Somewhere in the room, someone snickered.

“did she just say poisonberry?”

And that’s when I knew I fucked up. Apparently, Boysenberry is not an American ice cream flavour EITHER? 

My childhood was spent running barefoot to the dairy to buy a $2 ice block. I only realised that squirrels were real when I arrived in America. Even the night sky looks different: I’d never seen the Big Dipper before coming to New England. There’s a lot of moments at MIT that remind me of how different this school is from the place where I grew up. This is as exciting as it is daunting; when everything is different, you get the chance to become someone different too. 

Maybe this is the point of these icebreakers. Everything is about who you are now and what you will become. What’s your name? Where do you live? What do you want to major in? Who do you want to be? There’s no talk about what you’ve done. MIT is full of a particularly concentrated brand of academic overachiever. You’re not special if you’re smart, incredibly hardworking, or incredibly lazy.⁠09 in the effortlessly studying the day before and still getting straight As way. besides, tough luck doing that here – i sure had some reckonings with my first year in college =D  When academic overachievement is no longer your defining feature, who do you become? I’ve seen friends who chill out and play minecraft until 3am; friends who fell in love with glassblowing and help make the prettiest pumpkins; friends who jump into poker and just earn a lot of money while having fun. My friends who are most assured in themselves are the ones who let themselves explore and try on different identity-forming things. 

I’ve explored a bunch too! I did a lot of debating before college, but when I joined I decided that I didn’t want to feed the hyper-competitive part of myself. ⁠10 i have many thoughts on debating; however i will say that it's one of the best things that i ever did and that i will always be a debater at heart :') the nuances of this are complex and deserve another blog! i just wanted to emphasise that debating was bad for me, personally, at this stage of my life lol. Instead, I joined clubs that really work towards building things collaboratively, and now I work with many of the coolest people I know in HackMIT. ⁠11 a club that organises mit's largest undergraduate hackathon. a hackathon is where people get 24 hours to build a project! it's also a community filled with many loves of my life <3 I learned to whittle things down and not try to do 7 extracurriculars at once, to not take on so much responsibility and delegate better. I’m a Kiwi, obviously, and I’m still figuring out that part of my identity; do I want to have it be so emphasised? 

I think it’s okay though. My friends know me more than just my labels. They know me as Janet, the one who they made grilled cheese with at 3am, the one who they shopping carted to the 5.111⁠12 one of the Chemistry classes that fulfill a General Institute Requirement (graduation requirement), and also one of my fall classes  final, the one who they pulled an all-nighter psetting with. College is great! It’s really been a chance for me to explore and figure things out, and also to feel enabled to say cheesy shit like “yeah yeah but have you considered the real identity are the friends we made along the way”. 

Nice to meet you! I’m Janet. I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a Kiwi, I study CS and biology, and I want to find things I love in the world and highlight them. My favourite ice cream flavour in the world is Hokey Pokey, and you should come try it with me sometime!