I did a comedy set* in front of 1000 MIT admits by Janet G. '27

One of the markings of Young Adulthood, in my humble opinion, is the deranged night owl sleep schedule. If I was a capital-A Adult I would be retired to bed at 10pm and waking up to the chirp of the birds or whatever. If I was still a youthful child I would also be forcibly retired to bed but secretly stay up till 6am websurfing and then somehow go to school 2 hours later and be fine.

Instead, as a Young Adult who is starting to feel the effects of old age, I have unsuccessfully attempted to battle (and lose) my sleep schedule. Some of my ‘regular’ sleep periods include 5-12, 10-3, 3-11, 6-8, 10-10, ⁠01 you can guess the am-pms all you want, but the truth is that i have done all of them so on so forth. I’ve tried so many things: melatonin, blue light glasses, getting into a relationship, a nightly alarm to remind myself to sleep—

—But really all of this is to say that one of my most recent bouts of failing to beat my sleep schedule into shape involved being so tormented by the ideas in my brain that I had to text Jeremy⁠02 one of the admission officers; jeremy is our unofficial blogunc (cool blog uncle) and always gives great advice (and by advice i mean therapy) on slack at 3am.

reporting from my room at 3am Right Now to say that not all 3am me-s endorse these sentiments in the text

As it turns out, YOU CAN JUST DO THINGS🌟 Even though the Admissions Office does not plan for comedy sets in their performance schedule, they do have a student speaker⁠03 i didn't even know this was a thing, shoutout my blog uncle jeremy and blog mother ceri (who was also a student speaker back in her day!!) for making this happen at the CPW opening ceremony, and this is how I got an email two weeks later from Nikki⁠04 another admissions officer! Nikki is also our head of rural outreach and also blogs herself :) saying that I was going be the student representative welcoming the class of 2030 (!!) prefrosh to MIT’s Campus Preview Weekend.

i was elated and extremely excited to indoctrinate everyone in the wonders of a new zealand accent

my process

Writing the speech was painful, especially because I NEVER WENT TO CPW MYSELF LOL and so had zero frame of reference. So after attempting to write and rewrite my intro for the twentieth time, I decided to let it just marinate at the back of my brain and hopped on a plane for Spring break.

As it turns out, locking in is easy when you are ten days past the speech deadline and have three assignments overdue. I realised, as usual, that the problems I was agonising over was not that deep, and so I should just write whatever comes easiest to me.

i locked in

thank u nikki very cool (i love validation)

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the ceremony

So the day of the opening ceremony came, and I showed up for my sound check the hour before the show. I was initially a little worried, because the Johnson Ice Rink is big, concrete, and cold. I was honestly prepared to emotionally brace for equivalently the same level of engagement (absolute nothing), since I figured most of the kids would be tired from travelling and most of my friends mentioned that they didn’t remember anything from CPW opening at all.

look at the size of this room and imagine me delivering my speech to these empty bleachers... terrifying

is ok though because i took a selfie with ceri and chatted for a while to calm my nerves!!

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Fortunately, I was wrong. The room was ELECTRIC.

filing in!!

Everyone seemed to be buzzing from the sleep deprivation.⁠05 really i should've known from personal experience but these days i always end up falling asleep whether i like it or not so i guess im Not With The Times™ At this point, I felt better from the energy in the room, and it seemed like the other guest performers did too.

MIT Ridonkulous getting ready!! super cute (spot the interesting costume… lol)

mariachi infinito de MIT prepping backstage!

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Mariachi Infinito de MIT⁠06 Mariachi Infinito de MIT is MIT's one and only mariachi (a subtype of Mexican folk music) group! They've done many awesome performances and always have so much energy. I wanted to write about them one time since they did impromptu end-of-year carolling in the dining halls last year, which was awesome, but I lowkey forgot. Anyway they're great and you should follow them at @mitmariachi on instagram did a sick opening, and Ridonkulous⁠07 the blurb on their page says it better than anything else: Established in 2005, MIT Ridonkulous is an urban dance crew whose goal is to express their passion and commitment to teamwork and dance. In addition to performing at charity events, collegiate showcases, and competitions across the Greater Boston area, we host our own annual showcase, Footwork. Our mission is to have fun and show the world why we are so Ridonkulous! // anyway you should follow them at @mitridonkulous on most social medias or visit ridonk.vercel.app lol followed it up with fantastic energy too.

Mariachi performing!

donk performance!

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Stu then came out to the stage to an absolute ROAR of cheering, and he delivered a joke-packed speech with congratulations to the admits, shoutouts to the Admissions Officers, and unexpected information about the applicant and admitted demographics (and he apparently even tried out some new jokes this year!!). For the sake of any future adMITs in the room, I’m not going to spoil the jokes in case he re-uses them, so you’ll have to come and find them out for yourself :P

And then it was my turn to be introduced. I asked my wonderful friend Trinidad⁠08 Another Admissions officer! Trinidad is amazing and has the softest pink unicorn plushy in her office. to help film Stu reading out the intro I wrote and someone’s reaction:

And in case you missed it because the audio was a little mangled, here’s the full intro that made Petey laugh.

I’d like to introduce our student speaker, who is a current junior studying AI and Biology. She blogs for MIT Admissions, lives in Burton-Conner, and was the director of HackMIT, MIT’s largest hackathon. She’s from New Zealand and couldn’t make it to CPW back in her day, but that just means that she can empathise with how you all are feeling right now. If you find her speech funny, her name is Janet, but if you find her speech terrible or boring, she has requested that you refer to her as Chris Peterson.

And I asked a bunch of my wonderful friends in the crowd to help film SO here is my full unabridged 10 minute comedy segment at the MIT CPW admitted students Welcome!

Important disclaimers: none of this was written with the assistance of AI and all of this was written in jest and humour. The views that were represented in the videos are not necessarily my own real views and also not meant to represent the view of MIT or MIT Admissions. Also, thank you to Vinny S. ’28 for filming this version! ⁠09 also thank you to Bridget L. '27 and Caleb M. '27 my other awesome OL-dancer-kings-and-queens for filming as backups <3

After my speech, I sat back down at my seat. The prefrosh next to me had spent the whole time trying to guess where I was from; he looked at me when I cheered for Melbourne⁠10 the furtherest place from which MIT admitted someone to the class of 2030! being mentioned (hashtag oceania support) and was like “Are you from Australia” and I was like no, and then I cheered again for Cambridge⁠11 you guessed it... the closest place to MIT that a class of 2030 adMIT is from and he was like “are you from Cambridge?!?!” and I was like no, and he kept on being skeptical about my identity as a ‘fellow prefrosh’. So after I finished my speech, the kid turns to me and he’s like, “betrayal of the century”… shoutout you guys I never got your names but I hope you still comMITted after that betrayal

After that, I snuck backstage, because I had to do some work to submit an assignment, which I ended up turning in late anyway. It was fine because the Chorallaries! ⁠12 The Chorallaries (haha math pun) are MIT’s oldest mixed-voice acappella group. They arrange their own songs, regularly compete in that one competition in Pitch Perfect, travel, record their music, and perform for the community (and the occasional Red Sox game 👀). And did I mention they love singing??? Find them on Spotify/YouTube/Instagram all at @chorallariesofmit! was the last performance to close out the night, and their performance is, well, singing, but it sounded wonderful as always. I took a sneaky selfie with the behind-the-scenes Admissions team, and we also watched Julianne⁠13 another member of the admissions team yay do a cartwheel (it was a good cartwheel).

wheeee chorallaries photo since i couldn't catch them from the front

yay to the backstage warriors Nikki, Julianne and Ceri for making this opening go so smoothly yayyy

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To close off the night, my goat Caleb M. ‘27⁠14 #bloggerconnect delivered a speech covering logistics of the Orientation Leader⁠15 orientation leaders run our orientation week for the prefrosh when they first come onto campus in the fall, and are great folks who help introduce and ease the prefrosh into the campus community intros. Then the prefrosh were sent off with the awesome OLs, and the 2030 CPW Admit Welcome came to a successful close 🥳👯‍♀️🪩

I yapped a little more with the admissions team, and since I grabbed a selfie with the 2030s, I thought I should also grab a selfie with the over 30s:

the over 30s! shoutout jeremy for that pun btw. and shoutout to this awesome team that make cpw and the mit admissions experience what it is <33 also they taught stu to do a finger heart lmao #saranghae

and of course here is a snippet of my selfie (video) with the 2030s! don’t ask me why i thought it was a good idea to take a selfie when i couldn’t even include everyone in frame. anyway this is a video that will never see the light of day again BUT it was cute

like blogfather, like blogson (he has not fired me after my speech (yet))

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Delivering the speech was very fun, and I’m very grateful to how well the 2030s received it. A number of prefrosh recognised me in the CPW days after the opening ceremony and told me they found my speech entertaining and fun, which made me very honoured even if I felt abashed for being perceived.

So the moral of this story is that you should never fight your sleep schedule, actually, and wonderful things can come out of it. Just ignore the time I pulled an all-nighter because I couldn’t be bothered with sleeping and then proceeded to sleep through a 3 hour evening class with mandatory attendance…

But seriously—when you are bold enough to suggest things, sometimes they will just work out! ⁠16 and the fineprint here is that obviously it didn't 'just' work out: i had an established relationship with the admissions team as a blogger, so they knew and trusted my ability to be thoughtful and funny; they also knew about my capacity at public speaking from my time as hackmit director & international-level debater. this context and understanding definitely factored into why they were willing to have me as their student speaker when i asked. i also spent a long time thinking about the nuances of the speech and how entertaining / thoughtful i actually wanted it to be, and walked through parts of the speech with Nikki, Ceri, Jeremy and Stu to make sure everything was not too unhinged but still entertaining. so the TRUE moral is something like 'bold enough to suggest things and reliable enough to follow through with it, and many opportunities will come your way.' but that's a little too serious for the tone of this blog, which is why i have this long footnote instead Rejection therapy is great. This might be particularly relevant to those of you whose school years are coming to a close and Senior Summer is on the horizon. This summer might be the last summer in a long time where your time is completely yours; you will feel the pressure of being productive as you get to the college years, especially when you’re young and ambitious. So go have lots of fun, DON’T just study or work for the whole summer, and try out things that you might otherwise never do—as long it doesn’t get you arrested.