Introducing the New 2017 Bloggers by Elizabeth Choe '13

A couple months ago, Petey posted the blogger application, and a few weeks ago, he, Selam, Yuliya, Allan (via phone from some very hip coffee shop in Seattle), and I gathered to select the bloggers who will join our Family of Bloogyness this year.

60 entered. 7 survived the The Blogger Reckoning.

It wasn’t really like that. We spent FOUR HOURS in our committee, after we’d each already examined every application on our own, painstakingly ensuring that our decision process was as thoughtful as possible, debating the implications of each choice, exploring hypothetical alternatives and permutations of our cohort, duking it out (I mean, as close to duking it out as is possible with Allan, the gentlest and most thoughtful soul I know)…It was just as deliberate and emotionally draining as a regular admissions decision committee and did I mention that we spent OVER FOUR STRAIGHT HOURS deliberating?? *dramatically clutches chest*

Anyway, without further ado, here they are!

The Freshmen 

• Jack-William B. is originally from Cape Coral, FL but now lives above the Bulgarian National Ping Pong Champion. He is a sucker for Maseeh’s cookies, drones, and creeping on MIT faculty pages.
• Nisha D. hails from Petey’s neck of the woods (Nashua, NH). I used to think I was obsessed with things until I read her essay on her Final Fantasy 7 obsession. An excerpt:

I don’t have enough characters left to adequately describe the full extent of my obsession, so bullets it is.

• Own a necklace replica of Cloud Strife’s sword, which I wore to major competitions (and also to my MIT interview)
• My face while answering a surprise Final Fantasy question in quiz bowl finals, while wearing aforementioned necklace: https://ibb.co/m2Nsea
• Literally learned an entire language so I could play FF7 in Japanese (aka ultimate weeb goals?? hell yea)
• Own five FF7 posters, a Moogle plushie, AND Moogle slippers (Moogles are a Final Fantasy mascot)
• FANFICTION (5 years of it)
• Cried legitimate tears of joy for the first time in my life when a Playstation 4 remake was announced
• Rewatched the movie every month for about three years
• Since FF7 came out in 1997, this response is exactly 1997 characters

• Afeefah K. of Arlington, TX wrote 345 words on her love of pizza bars (#relatable) and has one of my favorite blogger avatars of all time. She also does cool henna on herself and is a walking encyclopedia of Pinterest inspirational quotes.
• Elissa H. from Great Neck, NY is a cat person who used to think her dad’s actual name was “Dad,” short for “Dadward.” I’m not sure how I can follow this up with another fact. All I know is that I actually cried tears of laughter and have been calling my dad Dadward ever since I read her essay.

New Upperclassmen!

• Jackie M. ‘20 has been lurking around the blogs for a while, as she cites THE Sam M. ‘07 as her blogspiration (omg me too), even going as far as incorporating “shambolic” into her lexicon. She makes psychedelic lab coats from Goodwill finds.
• Danny and Allan G. ‘20 are twins from Sunny Isles Beach, FL who, for the first time in the history of the blogs, will be TWIN BLOGGING from a TWIN BLOG ACCOUNT, because as much as we wanted to avoid being gimmicky, they are actually two copies of the same person. So… hang on to yer butts, because this is going to be one entertaining ride. They really, really love musicals.
• Taylor V. ‘19 plays basketball for MIT, is a mechanical engineering major, and her blog from her time in Italy made us all ~*sWoOn*~ with writer envy. Allan actually threatened to fight all of us if we didn’t choose her. Ask her about wind turbines or her dogs.

Welcome to the blogger fam!