How I lost aura points by Jenny B. '25, MEng '26

The state that I have been reduced to

For people who aren’t caught up with Gen Zalpha slang, or people who are reading this in the far future, or people who time-travelled from a year before 2024: “Aura points” dictate how cool you are. You gain aura points when you do something cool and socially confident, and you lose points when you do something cringe. I unfortunately lost a handful of aura points in the past several days.

I lied to someone’s parents

It was Family Weekend⁠01 Parents come to MIT and experience an assortment of campus life and events. about a week ago (a few weeks ago, by the time this gets posted), starting last Friday. I forgot it was happening. When two parents asked me if Next House had breakfast, I thought they were random women for some reason and said that it was only for students. [-200 aura]

Daylight Saving Time

For some reason, the shift in daylight savings threw my circadian rhythm out of whack. A few months ago, I was easily putting in efficient work before my bed time. Lately, I’ve been spending at least half of that time watching Please Don’t Destroy videos [+50 aura] because my brain is too sleepy to think, but too awake to fall asleep. [-100 aura]

Showing my age

I used the slang word “slay” in a conversation the other day. [-250 aura]

Pigeons

I’m taking 21W.744: The Art of Comic Book Writing, which is probably my favorite HASS⁠02 Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. The General Institute Requirements include the HASS requirement, where students have to take a certain amount of HASS classes before they graduate. class I’ve taken so far. For this week’s assignment we had to submit a pitch for six different story ideas that we’ll pick from for our final project. And honestly? My first five pitches were kind of fire.

But then I had no idea what to do for my last pitch. I decided to follow the sage advice: Write what you know.

I decided this story was going to take place in Boston. What happens in Boston? Revolutions. Beer. Pigeons. At 3 a.m., I wrote a synopsis for a story where American revolutionaries Samuel Adams and John Hancock got reincarnated as pigeons who live in modern-day downtown Boston. I was really proud of myself, and it was also the only kid-friendly pitch in the entire document.

I submitted my groundbreaking contribution to American literature, only to wake up with dread when I realized that my professor was actually going to read this. [-1500 aura] Also, I learned later that John Hancock owned slaves. [-5000 aura]

Pants

Last weekend, I painted sets for MIT Shakespeare Ensemble’s production of Macbeth. I had a blast! Clocked in at 9 a.m. and had dinner with some of the crew at 6 p.m.

It wasn’t until three days later that I found out that my black pants had lavender paint on the butt, and I have no idea how long it must’ve been there. [-500 aura]

Cringe

Since August, I’ve been trying to convince Fatima that the joke “Cambridge? More like Cringebridge” is extremely funny.⁠03 If you're reading this, Fatima, I'M RIGHT. IT'S FUNNY AND I'M RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG  [+500 aura]

She doesn’t believe me, so I sent this to her a few days ago.

I didn’t get aura points docked from sending the actual GIF, but from failing to convince her that she is wrong. [-150 aura]