bloggers.addAll( newBloggers); by Lydia K. '14, MEng '16
System.out.println("Hello, World!");
This summer we (Matt, Kris, Chris, the ‘15s, and I), after a rigorous and emotional selection process, hired, from among 62 applicants (including Snively), four freshman bloggers and two seniors (not including Snively). In addition, we are welcoming a new guest blogger from GEL, the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program.
Thank you to everyone who applied. Reading your applications was a huge joy to all of us, and the final decisions were not easy. If you applied and didn’t make it this year, I highly recommend trying again next summer. I got in as a sophomore, the second time I applied.
Without further ado, our new bloggers—
Freshmen
Joe B. ‘18 is from Falmouth, MA, an hour and a half from MIT, where there are faeries and sprites and an undiagnosed dark force. Right now he lives in East Campus. He is planning to major in course 6 or course 18, in part to find out what will happen to the Earth once the rabbit population collectively weighs more than the planet it lives on. Joe is also an extremely talented musician. I tried to listen to one of his songs and I ended up listening to his entire SoundCloud. Here is one of my favorites:
Joe wants to show you something that might be cuter than the cutest thing.
Joel G. ‘18’s mind palace is his living room floor. He plays by his own rules, which is fine, because there are many ways to skin a rabbit (and besides, his rules are pretty good). His hobbies include breeding carnivorous plants, genetically modified spiders, and dragons. This sentence is a lie. So is the sentence before it. Right now he lives in Burton-Conner and is thinking about majoring in course 6, maybe.
Joel wants to show you this.
Michelle G. ‘18 is from somewhere in New Jersey, where she may or may not have had a dark, traumatizing life experience involving rabbits. She is a YouTuber, a tumblerer, and a listener of angsty acoustic music. Right now she lives in Senior Haus and is thinking about majoring in course 6-3 and linguistics.
Michelle wants to show you her favorite blog post on her second-favorite admissions-related blog.
Yuliya K. ‘18 is from Donetsk, Ukraine, where she almost had a pet rabbit, and, more recently, Powell, Ohio. Right now she lives in East Campus, where she recently pulled her first ever all-nighter. Yuliya has an uncommon perspective in and enthusiasm for mathematics; appropriately, she is planning to major in course 18 (theoretical).
Yuliya wants to show you something that might also be cuter than the cutest thing.
Seniors
Chel R. ‘15 lives in Simmons. Her major is a unique combination of the technical and the human: course 21E (CMS and course 6) and course 21W. She has written several novels, and is currently working on another one for her senior thesis. In a past life, she was my roommate at Random.
Chel has previously appeared on the blogs to talk about stories in the age of the Internet. You might have met her in the Sherlock fandom, among others. Right now she is really into The X-Files. She wants to show you this video about science.
And the rabbits? They were delicious.
Danny B.-D. ‘15 grew up a few blocks away from the American Museum of Natural History. Today, he is East Campus historian. Danny is majoring in “8, with EECS classes sprinkled to taste.” He has also appeared on the blogs before: once as EC historian and once as the creator of CourseRoad, an invaluable tool for procrastination planning your future at MIT.
Danny wants to show you the thought-provoking making of the machine that makes. He didn’t tell us much about rabbits, but apparently the teddy bear was almost a possum.
GEL
Neerja A. ‘16 is majoring in course 6-1 and minoring in theatre. Her professional interests are in optics, electronics, signals, and international development. Through GEL she is hoping to develop the skills necessary to truly apply what she is learning at MIT and take technology to market.
My experience with GEL is limited to a guest lecture in 6.UAT by Professor Joel Schindall, co-director of GEL. 6.UAT is course 6’s mandatory soft-skills class. I’m still growing (which has come into stark visibility in my first few weeks as a TA), but the things that I learned about punctuality, public speaking, negotiation, and presenting myself I learned largely from 6.UAT. Dr. Schindall’s guest lecture was specifically about being an effective employee: applying work in the right directions, interacting productively with superiors, and delivering on promises even when the delivery is ostensibly in someone else’s control.
There were a few short modules in 6.UAT that ended up having a massive positive impact on the way that I think about the work that I do and the way that I interact with the people around me. One of them was the negotiation section and one of them was Dr. Schindall’s lecture. We had a short conversation after lecture about my non-punctuality (“Hi there! My name is Lydia. I am the least punctual person I know.”) and my work experiences. He was surprisingly appreciative of my honesty and my enthusiasm for growth, and his approval helped me believe in myself enough to improve. I didn’t end up applying to GEL but I am extremely glad to have experienced Dr. Schindall’s lecture.
Below is a talk that Dr. Schindall gave at the MIT Club of Northern California. He covers some of the same ideas that he covered in 6.UAT: in particular, I think it’s worth your time to listen to his “A Tale of Two Employees,” which starts at 6:50.
That’s all! I’m excited for our seven new bloggers to start blogging soon (immediately, to be specific). They’ll be able to tell you more about themselves and their stories, past and the unfolding future at MIT.
Once again, thank you to everyone who applied, and please join me in welcoming our new bloggers!