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An illustration of Richard's profile. He has dark skin, short black hair and is wearing a maroon collared shirt.

Pictures from a Semester of Classes by Richard O. '28

The Sequel Society Didn't Know It Needed

So about a week and a half ago I handed in my last final in Johnson Athletic Center which marked the end of a very long first semester at MIT. So like before, I’m gonna continue to give y’all a glimpse of whatever just happened here these past three months…but with pictures (because I like pictures).

Part 7: The Battles Go On…

So the whole Students and Sleep vs. Professors and PSets Thing? Yea that never ended. But all it takes is a few student center study sessions, a few office hours, and a lot of late-night dining hall food to survive thrive.

Photo of a lecture slide highlighting three pictures of MIT professors with captions that say:
Didn't have the first, but loved the second (8.01) and third professors (18.02A - the one presenting the slide) - (they'll be back later)
Photo of chemistry demo that resulted in a bright burst of purple light
Professors here also like to do some cool demos when they're not crafting their beloved assignments.
Photo of a math problem asking students to calculate the gradient of a stench field emitted by cheese and deduce the path of a rat who follows that gradient.
And then sometimes, homework questions make you wonder what they were thinking about when they did craft them?
Photo of an economics problem asking students to read an article about lunchlys, feastables, prime hydration, caprisun, and kitkats and discuss how they are complements in demand followed by a 1 point bonus question asking the students if they would consume any of the snacks and to respond in one word or fewer.
Favorite 2 questions from this year.
Photo of a calc problem asking students to deduce the rate of change of pheromones emitted by a spider centered at the 3 dimensional origin by another spider who walks towards the first spider.
Spiders will be back later.
Overhead photo of study group at table.
Student center grind never ends and is usually fueled by food from late night Maseeh Dining

 

 

Part 8: Random Things I Did Instead of My Assignments and Studying

This section is pretty much a catchall for all the miscellaneous things I did this semester.

Photo of students in a circle wearing hardhats getting ready to tour the Metropolitan Warehouse Building.
First favorite thing was a tour with my DesignPlus group of the Metropolitan Warehouse which is being renovated for the Morningside Academy for Design (MIT MAD) and the school of Architecture
Photo of students walking towards Metropolitan Warehouse Building
Not allowed to share photos of the inside but trust me when I say this will probably be my favorite building on campus when it opens my junior year.
Photo of students walking up construction stairs on the side of the Metropolitan warehouse building.
Best believe I'll be blogging about this place in the future.
  • Can learn more about that building here.

 

Photo of tables set up giving out candy in the infinite during Halloween.
Halloween in da Infinite!
Photo of candy table in an office in the infinite.
Smuggled some candy with friends right before calc lecture.
  • Can read more about Halloween on campus in Janet’s detailed blog here!

 

 

Picture of student leaning over pool table to make a shot.
Played some pool during an election day watch party in MacGregor's game room
Another photo of student putting pool stick behind their back to attempt a trick shot.
...but no matter what anyone tells y'all I'm actually goated at 8 ball...even if it takes me 10+ tries to get my last ball in.
Outdoor photo of students lined up in front of the student center waiting to get ice cream from an ice cream truck.
Then later in November, the Undergrad Association decided to give out some free ice cream and boba in front of the student center for everyone so made a pit stop there with my DesignPlus group after our seminar.
Photo of students standing in front of Lobby 7 waiting in line for ice cream and boba.
And man was it packed.
Overhead group circle photo of student in the DesignPlus group standing and talking over ice cream
Yap and Ice Cream.
Overhead closeup forehead photo of a student eating ice cream.
and some .5s
Closeup picture of girl eating ice cream from above.
Didn't even try to wait for boba cause the line was so long.
Photo of student lounge with students seated in couches watching the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight.
Jake Paul vs. Tyson watch party - 2 hours of my life I'll never get back
Photo of yellow fall leaves against a blue sky.
Fall!
Photo of MIT building 7 surrounded by trees changing color against a clear blue sky.
Building 7!

 

Spent Thanksgiving on campus and had dinner in CC.
Is it good bro?
Late night walk from Walker Memorial. Emphasis on the late.
Photo blog isn't a photo blog without a dome picture.
Rainy city vibes are the best vibes.
Not even gonna try to give context for this photo.
Caught this Moon halo but the photo doesn't do it justice.
We listen and we judge heavily...59 hours of YouTube...

 

 

Part 9: MIThenge

Anyways, besides the whole school part of this school, there are a lot of other unique things that happen on this campus during the year, and being a person who loves taking photos, MIThenge was one of those things I was really excited about. In short, there are about two times during the year when the sun aligns perfectly with the infinite, and tons of people crowd the halls to get photos of it…including me.

Photo of people lining up their phones in the hallway
Photo of the hall as I struggled to decide which side would get me the best shot.
Photo of the infinite hallway before the MITHenge starts
The calm before the sun
Photo of people leaning in to take photos of the sun
As the sun grew closer the hallway flooded with cameras.
Photo of people leaning in to take photos of the sun
Loved seeing the gradual glow in the hallway though.
Photo of the hallway as people clear the line of sight for the window.
And now it was time...
Photo of the sun shining through the infinite window after the line of sight clear up.
Was a lot brighter than I expected.
Photo of the sun shining through the infinite window after the line of sight clear up.
But was really beautiful to witness in person nonetheless.

 

 

Part 10: BU Expedition

So at some point in the middle of the semester one of my friends was like: “Let’s go explore Boston University.”

So we did. Probably the most impulsive yes I’ve ever given. Still enjoyed it and took some fun photos.

Photo of Boston sunset over the Charles
Boston sunsets really are my favorite
Portrait of friend under Boston sunset.
And they make for great pictures
Another photo of the Boston Sunset.
Couldn't get enough
Strollin along.
Rock that reads
Nice little message on a rock by the river.
Photo of train tracks over the Charles river in front of trees during the fall
Love fall colors.
Photo of graffiti that says
Always wonder how graffiti artists manage to get their work in some places?
Photo of the Boston University Bridge with biker and cars crossing.
Crossing the BU Bridge.
Photo of sign on light post reading
BU!
Photo of two students crossing the road with a walk sign visible in the background.
Here

 

 

 

So yeah we pretty much just checked out their buildings which all looked really cool.

View of a BU building from below.
BU Theater!
Photo of cat walks in the BU theater.
Looking at the Catwalks made me feel like I was in some really intricate machine.
Photo of triangular stairs in BU comp sci building.
BU comp sci building was probably my favorite one there. Loved the in and outside.
Photo of stone BU building.
Favorite shot from the night.
Photo of spider on web connected to a light pole.
Bug warning, but caught this spider who I hope isn't centered at the origin (0,0,0) like the one from the PSet earlier.
Closeup of spider
Little guy will never have to worry about studying for finals ever.
Photo of three people hold chicken wings together in a
Made a stop for some food at this place called "BB.Q Chicken" that was nearby and would 10/10 recommend.
Photo of student posing with a turkey roaming freely on campus.
Also there was a random turkey walking around the campus?
Photo of student standing and smiling on the Harvard Bridge.
Finally made it to the Harvard Bridge and took some pics as we walked back across the river.
Photo of a biker in a bear suit riding across the Harvard Bridge.
Bear Suit on da Bridge??

 

Part 11: The Super Calc PSET group that I had fun locked in with…

As I noted in my first photoblog, PSets are not about the problems, “but rather the friends we make along the way,” and those same people in that dome picture from 18.01A ⁠01 Calc I option that spans half a semester which is then followed by 18.02A which is the Calc II class that spans both the remainder of that semester and the following 1 month January term as a way to get your calc requirement out of the way before the spring semester became some of my closest friends here on campus. So here are some pictures of the stuff we did to have fun lock in this semester.

Mathematicians by night.
Yappers and snack enjoyers later in the night.
Crumbl cookie escape the night before a Pset was due because why not. (Jaelynn's editing skills were so good bet you didn't notice that someone was photoshopped in after leaving early)
Carrying our pink boxes to office hours.
And then their final destination on floor 2 of the student center.
Oh we also got Toscanini's Ice Cream in Cambridge despite it being like 30 degrees outside
Spencer and Ice Cream pt.2
Also this is a PSA to never get salted caramel ice cream because I get the word "salted" is in the name but that scoop tasted more salty than anything I had ever consumed in my life...unless, of course, you're someone who likes eating salt...
And nothing takes away the pain from a calc midterm more than Chipotle on the Google rooftop garden!
Took this picture after chasing my chipotle bag that was being blown away by the wind
Gotta love a game night during fall break.
Also if you ever play UNO with the swap hands rule and no jump-ins you'll probably run of cards during the game because everyone's hands will make up a good portion of the deck. Hence the many cards in our hands for the photo here.
  • Storytime: So one of the TAs for 18.02A has a crazy response time. Like you can send him an email and get a reply in less than 5 minutes. So one night while we were working on an assignment we all got confused over something for one of the questions. So we decided to put his reply speed to the test. Mind you it was 11:30pm when we emailed him and if I ever got an email past 9pm, it wouldn’t get a reply until 8am the next day. So we sent him the email and surely enough in 4 minutes he sent a reply…and then commented on how late it was to be sending him an email. So after feeling a little guilty, we all sent him a thank you photo in response for helping us so late.

 

 

 

I also don't think people truly appreciated just how beautifully the professor for this class sketched stuff in 3D on the blackboard so this is an appreciation slide for his artwork.
No Desmos 3D or GeoGebra...
Just a pure 3-Dimensional visionary.
I truly commend this man.

 

Part 12: Richie Declares War against “The Institvte” for Finals Season

Finals season. As Aiden beautifully describes in his blog on studying for finals, this part of the semester was more about the math that went into a passing grade than studying for a passing grade. But nonetheless, we balled anyway.

  • And no, that wasn’t a typo in the heading. On most of the main buildings on campus, all the U’s are spelled with V’s since they are meant to be in Latin so I like using the school’s government name as it’s written for official business like this.
  • Photo of the MIT Dome highlighting the V's used instead of U's in the building lettering

    The MassachVsetts InstitVte of Technology

     

In total, I had four finals to prepare for after the last day of classes on Wednesday the 11th:

  • Monday: 8.01 (Physics I)
  • Tuesday: 5.111 (Chemistry) and 14.01 (Intro to Microeconomics)
  • Thursday: 18.02A (Calc II – half the course content because the other half of the course continues through the January IAP term)

Now my biggest opp in this war was chemistry simply because I and that subject don’t have any, so in the same way Aiden imprisoned himself in building 4 to study for physics, I holed myself up in our dorm’s multipurpose room the day following the last day of classes and started brain-dumping everything I could remember from that subject on two large whiteboards. I then made a list of stuff to review that I couldn’t rewrite from memory and after doing this I started to realize that this method really helped me draw the line between what I did and didn’t know in a class so I ended up doing the same thing for all the other classes I had finals for and at some point I started to feel like a maniac who was just scribbling non-sense equations on a wall.

 

One of many chem brain dumps
How the physics practice problems had me feeling.
Locked in .5
Always go to office hour review sessions. They will save your life.
Picture of holiday decor put up in Lobby 7 after walking back from office hours.

 

  • So after that Thursday of pure chem review, I put together the remainder of my action plan for the next 7 days of war.

 

Photo of studying schedule for author: Friday: 8.01, Saturday: 14.01 + 5.111, Sunday: 8.01 + 14.01, Monday: 5.111+14.01, Tuesday/Wednesday: 18.02

 

  • So the weekend flew by with me reviewing pretty much everything except calc cause I had all Wednesday to review for it and very soon it was Monday and time for my…third…final of the year (I already had finals for 6.100A – “Intro to Comp Sci” and 18.01A – “Calc I” since they were half terms prior to this).
  • Now side note, MIT is very lucky to have some really cool physics faculty. For example, one of our physics instructors runs an Instagram channel with 1.1M followers as of the moment I’m writing this whose videos you may have stumbled upon while watching Instagram reels or something. Another has spent the past 40 years teaching the 8.01 course at MIT and it just so happens that the class section I was in this semester that he teaches turned out to be the last physics course he would ever lecture so on the very last day of school this semester, the entire physics department came out to celebrate him while he was trying to explain some practice problems to us and it was all really wholesome (He’s also the same professor from that slide at the beginning of this blog that “teaches you patience”).
    A picture of the cake the physics department got for this professor's last day of teaching 8.01.
    Picture of Mohamed giving a speech about the professor.
    A very thought-provoking picture of this professor in south America at the age of 21 that he shared with us at the end of this review session noting that his favorite part of teaching for 40 years was the students.

 

  • And last but not least, the final instructor that I got to interact with this semester was one whose name is probably very familiar to a lot of people on campus simply because of how much he helps the entire 8.01 community when it comes to physics exams. But Mohamed, as Aidan notes in the Tuesday section of his blog, is actually such an amazing person and professor that if he asked me to be a physics major personally, I would probably consider it…for a few moments before reverting back to a comp sci major. But pretty much, whenever it comes to exams, this professor drops these 4-hour-long review videos that after putting on 2x speed will make the whole 8.01 community feel like they somehow magically downloaded all the information that they need for an exam and it actually makes sense. So the moment I get a Canvas notification saying “Mohamed sent you a message in Canvas” right before an exam, I know I’m ready for anything.

So anyways:

  • Monday. 8.01. 9AM. Johnson Athletic Center. Just me, my pencil, and my knowledge from the review video.
  • 3 hours later. Noon. Test Complete. Boom. Knocked out. Beat that battle and had three more to go. Richie: 1, Institvte: 0
Ominous gray clouds that Monday morning...
The nerve wracking walk to Johnson Athletic Center
The masses arrive.
Slowly making the ascent to our impending...exam.
Didn't know how packed to expect the exam room to be but I did not imagine this.
So very locked in.
Exam debrief over boba was necessary.

 

Tuesday was two finals back to back. Chem and Econ. Econ was chill so I spent most of that Monday going over chem again. So back to the whiteboards I went.

 

  • Tuesday. 5.111. 9AM. Johnson Athletic Center. Just me, my pencil, a calculator, and my brain still trying to convince myself that there’s logic behind the whole particle in a box model and I wasn’t being brainwashed by “big chem” into believing the whole thing isn’t made up.
  • 3 hours later. Noon. Complete. Boom. Knocked out. Was actually so much better than I thought it was. 2 more tests to go. Richie: 2, Institvte: 0

 

Post chem .5 celebration.
I found it so ironic that the sky had been all gloomy and gray that week and then the moment we stepped out from the chem exam it was all clear and sunny...
Cue "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles

 

 

  • Tuesday. 14.01. 1:30PM. Johnson Athletic Center. Just me, my pencil, and my love-hate relationship with Econ.
  • 2 hours later. 3:30PM. Complete. Boom. Knocked out. That final was probably the nicest thing that class treated us to all semester. 1 more tests to go. Richie: 3, Institvte: 0
Here goes round 3
Cooked? Locked in? Cooked? Locked in? Cooked.....?
Nah, Locked in.

 

At last, we were down to one last battle. 18.02A (Calc II). Genuinely love that class. Used the remainder of that Tuesday as a mental break from finals and took some time to myself and then locked in the whole day on Wednesday and used the same whiteboard method I’d been using previously with some practice problems they posted for us.

 

Group photo of students at table enjoy wings and checking their final physics grade.

Also had a mini 8.01 final grade reveal over Buffalo Wild Wings with some friends that Wednesday.

 

  • Thursday. 18.02A. 9AM. Johnson Athletic Center. Just me, my pencil, and .5 photos that the professor and course instructor let me take of them and my friends right before we started. 
  • 2 hours later. 11AM. Complete. Boom. Knocked out. No more exams. I was free. War was over. I could go home! Richie: 4, Institvte: 0
Attempted .5 of the professor.
Better .5 of the course instructor
Locked in.
Locked out.
Super serious locked in.
Post-Final-Exam group photo with the professor and some other people in the class!
Farewell Johnson. 
FREEDOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Came downstairs to tables full of sweet treats and hot chocolate to celebrate the last final for most first years!
Cheeeeese.


Part 13: The Greatest Prison Break Out of the Century…Richie Goes Home


Afterward, I had 3 hours to clean my room, pack 2 weeks of clothes, and get some food before my Uber to the airport got to campus. So after a quick Dunkin’ trip, I walked back to my dorm and started packing while enjoying my newfound freedom accompanied by my favorite music.




  


  

        
                

        

          
                      
Leaving the bubble.

                  

      

                  

        

          
                      
Sun still out since chem ended.

                  

      

                  

        

          
                      
Back in the busy city.

                  

      

                  

        

          
                      
Almost out.

                  

      

                  

        

          
                      
Airport group pic.

                  

      

                  

        

          
                      
Almost out...

                  

      

                  

        

          
                      
Almost out.....

                  

      

                  

        

          
                      
Almost out..........

                  

      

                  

        

          
                      
Almost out.....................

                  

      

                  

        

          
                      
Almost out................................................

                  

      

      
      

      

      
      
    

  





 


So the Uber arrived around 2:30ish and I and the three other friends I rode with got to the airport around 3ish. So from there we all took a group photo together and headed our separate ways into our different terminals. Took me about half an hour to get through TSA and reach my gate and from there I just chilled and listened to music for some hours while waiting for my plane.  And it was once I got in my seat that I decided to take time and really reflect on all that had happened this past semester.


In the span of four months, I had done so many new things and met so many new and amazing people. I took classes that really tested my limits but also took classes that reminded me why I enjoyed learning in the first place. I found spaces and mentors that have helped me to continue exploring my goals and passions here on campus. I learned a lot about myself, the ways I learn, the ways I deal with stress, and the ways I interact with others. And despite how challenging it all felt, I’m just really glad to have found a way to grow from everything this semester and really look forward to taking all these lessons into my future semesters here.


Night photo of the national harbor from airplane window
Aerial photo of the National Harbor as my plane lands in DC.


 


Part 14: To be continued…


I’ll see yall in May/June for the end of this trilogy. Try and guess what the title of the last edition will be between now and then.


 


 


 


 


 


 


          


          
                      
    
      
  1. 
      Calc I option that spans half a semester which is then followed by 18.02A which is the Calc II class that spans both the remainder of that semester and the following 1 month January term as a way to get your calc requirement out of the way before the spring semester" ⁠
        
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    2.