Summer by Snively '11

There’s something I’ve noticed about the summer (well, my summer): It’s different than the school year. There are many many many reasons why it’s different, but there are a few key reasons that most affect me.

1) Campus == Empty
A lot of what makes MIT MIT is the people you’ll find here. I didn’t used to be very social, I lived in the middle of nowhere and was very good at keeping myself busy, be it building stuff in my garage, wandering around outside, reading, what have you. Once MIT started I began life on Conner 2 (2nd floor, Conner side of Burton-Conner dorm) and I no longer had to find ways to occupy my time, they found me. Trips to Boston, chillin’ in the floor lounge, going to see Wicked, snowball fights with Conner 4, whatever it is, it probably involves most of the floor’s help. It was neat all of a sudden constantly having company and friends to help with stuff. Over the summer, no longer. Sure, I mean, there are some people around, but not like during the year. During the summer it’d be pretty hard to just wander out into the hall and yell “Pour House???” and have a bunch of people yell “I’m in!” back at you (The Pour House is a bar/grill/restaurant in Boston that has half priced burgers on Saturday).

There are getting to be more and more people on campus but not the type of people you’d expect. Interphase just started so I see a lot of bright-eyed prefrosh running around with backpacks but they’re all living in Next House. There’s some conference or something happening somewhere on campus that has caused Conner 4 and Conner 5 to become filled with a bunch of Asian people I’ve never seen before, and there was a summer camp that I think is over now. I believe RSI is started up but I don’t actually know how to recognize those kids, and I keep seeing kids with poster boards and suits wandering in and out of Baker so something is going on there. Other than that, in terms of actual MIT students, campus is quite empty. Of course, this isn’t made any better by my work hours, the second thing that’s different about life during the summer.

2) My sleep schedule is wonky
During the school year I had a pretty consistent sleep schedule, go to bed somewhere between 12 and 1 and get up at around 8. It netted me a good amount of sleep and gave me time to do homework. Unfortunately, here in MIT land, a 9 o’clock class (which my schedule was full of) is considered buttcrack of dawn early and is a time slot loathed by almost everybody. Lucky me, I’ve had 9 o’clock classes since the year started and then I looked at the classes I have to take for my major (Mech E, course 2). Every single course 2 class starts at either 9:00 or 9:30 for all four years of college. Wonderful, I picked the major with the worst possible times for classes.

For better or for worse, my MIT sleep schedule has absolutely nothing to do with my summer sleep schedule. You see, instead of a 9:00 AM class I instead have to be at work by 7:30 AM. I work in Rhode Island, meaning I have to catch the 6:25 AM commuter rail to get there. Of course, the commuter rail leaves from South Station so I need to get there first, meaning I have to leave the Kendall MIT T stop at 5:48 AM. Before that I need to wake up, shower, get ready for work, and then travel to the T stop, bringing my wake-up time to 4:45 AM. Yum.

I finish work at 4:45 PM and catch the commuter rail back at 5:23 PM. I get back to Boston at around 6:40 PM, take the T to the Kendall MIT T station, and then eventually get back to my room at 7:00 PM. If I were to go to bed right when I got back to the dorm I would get 9:45 of sleep. I don’t go to bed right when I get back though, I answer e-mails, check blogs, watch YouTube, and catch up on TV (thank you thank you thank you ABC for putting your shows online in HD. I’ve been watching The Mole, probably the best reality show out there). I usually end up asleep by 11ish, giving me almost six hours of sleep, something you’ll learn to live on at MIT.

3) It’s harder to do Laundry without TechCash.
MIT has this awesome payment method known as TechCash. It lets you store money on your ID card and use that to pay for a variety of things. Since you always have your ID card on you, you theoretically always have money on you. My college loans feed partially into TechCash and I make good use of it. I use it for laundry, food, The Coop, Economy Hardware, and anybody else that’ll take it. Unfortunately for me, my TechCash ran out and my loans don’t carry over through the summer, meaning I have no TechCash. For those of you who know me, this is not an insignificant thing. I live on TechCash. I also launder my clothing with the help of TechCash, but since I can’t do that anymore I find myself rummaging around in my room for quarters more often than I’d prefer. It’s hard to just “find” 24 quarters to do laundry, but I’ve been managing so far. I think I’ll have to buy quarters soon though, finding another 24 isn’t going to happen.

Oh, and don’t use the washer in the corner.

Yes, this is the actual layout of our laundry room

4) There’s not a lot to blog about.
My life has been reduced to work, internet, sleep, repeat. As such, there are very few exciting things for me to blog about. Amazing things happen at work every day but because of all sorts of nondisclosure agreements I can’t tell you about them. I’ll try to write an entry about work shortly and fill it with as much stuff as I can but I’ll have to leave some things out. I could write about admissions (admissions blogger, what?) but we’ve hit this cool period of limbo between classes. Class of ’12 is pretty set to go and doesn’t have a whole lot left to do for the summer except wait for housing results and pack (note to self, do entry about packing) while the potential ’13s don’t even have an application to work on yet so there’s not a whole lot to do with that. This is why I haven’t been updating as frequently, because frankly, you’d be bored and I don’t like boring people (double meaning fully intended).

So now I leave you with a nice little video that has nothing to do with college, MIT, admissions, or anything else. Can I be fired for this? Meh.