A head-and-shoulders illustration of Jenny. She has light skin, medium-length brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, and is wearing a dark pink hoodie.

My design won an MIT merch contest by Jenny B. '25, MEng '26

I don't know why

Author’s note: The original title was going to be “I DUPED THE COOP!” but I decided that was too much. I still wanted to mention it though.

 

Back in March, the Harvard/MIT Coop announced their very first merch design competition for the graduating Class of 2025 (that’s me!). Four winners were going to be picked overall, with one undergrad and one grad student from each university. Each of the winners is going to win $500, and four finalists were going to win $100. The objective was to “craft bold, memorable designs that capture the unique spirit of the Class of 2025.”

I’ve thought about making custom merch since freshman year, but I’ve just been too lazy to start. So when I got the email from the Coop, I knew it was my calling. This was the universe telling me to go for it and make my dreams come true.

a scraggly drawing of a neurotic beaver with a graduation cap and a diploma next to it. it's crying and its eyes are bugged out, and there are two partially-deflated balloons floating next to it. the upper text is handwritten and says "class of 2025," and the bottom text says "massachusetts institute of technology"

What I submitted

Under the “What inspired you to draw your design” question in the submission form, I wrote some bullshit about how I wanted to capture the complexities of the Class of 2025 experience: coming out of the COVID lockdown and right into college, not knowing what to do after graduation, realizing that your friends are moving away, waiting for grad school decisions, etc.

I wrote all that because it’d be funny to write a serious justification for whatever the heck this was supposed to be. I didn’t expect to win; that wasn’t really my goal. All I wanted was to make somebody on the judges’ panel laugh, or at least mutter a perplexed “…what?”

Turns out, I’m not the only one with an odd taste in graphic design.

a screenshot of an email that says, "Dear Jenny, Thank you for your outstanding submission to the Coop's Class of 2025 Merchandise Design Competition. We were impressed by your creative work and are pleased to share that you are one of our winners! Your design will be featured on the Coop Instagram page soon, and purchases by your fellow students should be able to begin shortly. We’re currently working with our supplier to print your design on a t-shirt and will keep you updated throughout the process."

I got this email in the middle of a media studies class I was taking. I had to excuse myself to go the restroom so I wouldn’t interrupt the class discussion about online privacy with my idiotic laughter.

Mind you, the Harvard/MIT Coop sells official Harvard/MIT merchandise. Visitors from all over the world come into their stores, so I’d imagine it’s important for them to capture the essence of their respective universities. But now, the MIT Coop had to figure out how to publicize this neurotic rat-animal-thing along with their usual selection of merch. Boy, they tried.

an instagram post by the MIT coop with both of the winners' shirts, but my shirt's design is slightly blurred out
If you squint hard enough, you can see him.
a focused, more cleaner shot of my shirt design, in an instagram post by the MIT coop
Ahh, there he is! Oh yeah, they printed the design a lot smaller than I thought. I hoped it was going to cover the entire chest.
picture of t-shirt at the coop
They're real! This is at the MIT Coop. They hung these up in the corner.

When I went to pick up my $500 check, I expected them to go “haha SIKE!” and then laugh me out of the building. Nothing happened, and I successfully deposited my check. That money probably came from an innocent alum who thought they were supporting a library or something meaningful like that. It found its way into my hands instead, and a week later I spent a part of it on GTA IV.

I really want to know what the judges were thinking when they made me a winner. Did they not get enough submissions? Did they want to prank the Board of Directors and the general public? Or did they see something in this vulnerable and anxious creature that they resonated with?

To be fair, I wasn’t entirely lying in the submission form. I’ve tried writing a senior year post that would wrap up my personal college experience, but every attempt ends up going on and on about how I should’ve done things differently. I guess I’m not alone in this post-graduation ambivalence though, because whenever I showed this drawing to my friends, they would say something like “IT’S BEAUTIFUL” but then end with “God, I feel that though.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also made fond memories at MIT. However, it can feel disappointing to not get the story-book college experience that I hoped for. But this is one of those fond memories, and I get to brag that I designed official MIT merch. Props to the Coop for taking a chance on my ugly, yet endearing, creation.