Snowed In at the Fraternity by Erick P. '17

On Tuesday, January 27th, Snowstorm Juno hit. Classes were cancelled for Tuesday and Wednesday. My Momentum competition was pushed back to Friday (whew! more time to prepare). You saw blizzard coverage on the MIT side from Ceri’s post “IAP & Snowmageddon“, now here’s the coverage from the Boston side of the river as the humble brownstone I call my fraternity home was pelted with snow. Seriously, look at the view from our windows.

The snow packed onto the balcony taller than me before we cleared it out.

Did you know blustery was a word? I didn’t. I got an email from Yelp that said that this was very blustery weather and thought they were making up words to sound cute. But apparently blustery means characterized by strong winds. Try using that word in a sentence today, it’s fun to say.

It’s funny. Less than two months ago, the weather was much less a blustery snowstorm and more:

This picture was taken on December 1st…December freaking 1st. Super warm outside.

Now, compare it with the picture below taken January 27th:

Oh well, winter is crazy, but we were prepared for fun in the snow. With classes cancelled, we spent all day around the house, grilling hot burgers in our basement kitchen, occasionally venturing out into the streets of Boston to take some good snaps.

Happy Blizzard from Phi Kappa Sigma!

This whole IAP in general has been very productive, especially for me. Spending most of my time at the house, I’ve gotten the chance to catch up with my fraternity brothers on how they’re doing and what they’re up to. That got me thinking. Most of the time on this blog I just talk about me, but I’m just one undergrad in a sea of four thousand. Even all of us bloggers put together are just a tiny fraction of the wealth of stories, experiences, struggles, and triumphs that can be found from talking to anyone here. Since it’s my mission to give you as complete a picture of MIT as I can, I’m excited that I’ll be sharing other people’s experiences in the future with you so that you can get to know them too, not just me. I know that for me, the stories of what my fellow undergrads are doing around me are a testament to the amazing environment of growth MIT is.

One example comes from Arman ’17 and Rowzay ’17. They’re doing the 6.470/6.148 IAP Web Programming Competition, and the website that gets the most Facebook likes in their tier wins a “Webby”. Arman and Rowzay made a website that merges typing speed tests with learning geography to create a fun, unique experience. Check out GeographyWPM and vote for them if you like. (And good luck trying to beating my score of 90wpm in Central America!)