love letter to the ‘tute by Fatima A. '25

this spring, i am doing a study abroad semester at Imperial College London. what this means is that i have been away from MIT for a little over the past month (classes here start early January) and will return to MIT for the fall semester.

i decided to do this for a lot of different reasons which i won’t go into in this post but the overarching reason is that i decided this would be good for me.

i am taking four math classes (which i will talk about in a later post) which are all fun! i am cooking for myself because schools in the UK apparently often don’t have dining halls. i am exploring London and hopefully, nearby places as well (which i will also talk about in a later post). right now, i just want to talk about how much i miss MIT.

i spent junior fall in a very weird state of mind for a lot of reasons, one being that because of the study abroad, i felt like this was sort of my last real semester at MIT. this is obviously not true, i still have two more semesters left. but it was a goodbye of sorts.  i was more conscious of trying to get done with some of my requirements. i did a CI-M,⁠01 everyone at MIT has to take two communication intensive courses in their major. these courses have a lot of writing and presentation components. the class i took was Seminar in Topology! finished my last PE class and declared Writing as my concentration (finally!) and also finished it! i also transitioned someone for the treasurer role for MIT SAAS, a role which i have had for 3 semesters (i guess, this does not necessarily imply an ending, but it sort of does. and regardless, it makes me feel Old). i also had to say goodbye to my graduating friends, some of whom i know will not be around next year and some of whom might not be around next year.

in that sense, it does feel like an end. there is something so beautiful about living with your friends, being able to just walk down the hall, knock on someone’s door and ask to talk or get dinner or do work. and i know that i won’t be able to have that with some of my friends anymore.

for the first couple of weeks, i was trying to be Cool (although failing remarkably) and shrugging off the feeling of missing my friends so much that it physically hurt. and then, while talking to one of my friends, i realized. it is just like that. i miss my friends and it hurts.

and it’s not only the people that i miss. i miss everything. i miss our wing’s main lounge where so many of us hang out and work all the time. i miss walking into the empty lounge during the day and staring out at the river by the windows especially when it’s sunny. 02 Dennis always says it's the best view in the house and now i really know what he means i miss the tower of plushies on the beanbag. i miss that there would always be someone there at all hours of the night and that when i was in my room, i could hear people laughing and talking outside.

i miss passing by the Chord as i go from building 4 to 34 for my classes (i have done this for multiple semesters now). i miss the outfinite, which is forever superior to the infinite. i also miss the infinite… i even miss 26-100.⁠03 one of the largest lecture halls on campus i don’t even like 26-100…

i have been so lucky with almost all the classes i have taken at MIT. i miss all the cool professors i have had over the past five (that is such a large number) semesters at MIT. and all the kind and patient and helpful TAs i have had. one of the main differences between classes here and there is that there are no TAs for any of the pure math classes. this also means that there is literally one hour of office hours every week. office hours are one of the things that i have taken so for-granted before. and even on top of that, the math department has something called the Math Learning Center, which consists of tutors for a lot of the introductory and some not-so-introductory level classes.

i also miss all the club events and the student group performances. this semester, so many of my friends are part of different productions on campus and i am sad i won’t be able to see any of them.

i miss next⁠04 my dorm dining and all the dining hall staff. Zimi Z. ’25 says people who live in dining hall dorms think of food as a social experience. i miss that.

i am thinking about how comfortable i feel around MIT people, in general, not even just the people i know. i am thinking about how much everyone at MIT cares about what they do. i am also thinking about how a lot of people at MIT do so many different things and how remarkable their multi-faceted interests are. i have always thought that one of the greatest resources at MIT are my own peers who are all so smart and so cool in their different ways and i am just feeling that so strongly now.

i am thinking that, oh my god, i love MIT :enter skull emojis: