The [REDACTED] Family Dinner 🥟 by Fiona L. '27

One email. Over forty recipients.

Scraped from search.mit.edu⁠01 a convenient place to find EVERY MIT PERSON EVER , I assembled a mailing list of faculty, grad students, undergraduates, and more. My aim was simple: to organize a dinner consisting solely of MIT undergraduates with my last name.

Through ~careful analysis~ of the Chinese cuisine in the area, the perfect candidate for the dinner was found: Mu Lan Taiwanese restaurant.

I give them an estimate of a party of 15, based on the number of people who indicated their availability. I then remember that I forget to poll the names of people who were available. (Oops) Cue a second Google Form, an “RSVP form.” I call Mu Lan telling them that the number would be more around… 7 people.

The date rolls around and everything goes swimmingly. The food is delicious. We talk about a variety of things: our different stations at MIT, summer plans, how much Chinese we each know. At the end, somebody brings up that we should continue the tradition of [REDACTED] family dinners.

the first family dinner!

That dinner occurred in March of 2024. The second [REDACTED] Family Dinner occurred just last week–at Su-Miao Hunanese Restaurant. 02 In true Hunanese fashion, the menu had no non-spicy dishes. Just options that “cannot be made non-spicy.” The food was amazing, and I’m definitely planning to go again. 03 And try their highest level of spice. To my delight, 12 people showed up. 04 Twice as many as last time! Giving me hope that {REDACTED} Family Dinners were a growing niche. I think that my planning skills have also developed a little since last time, although forgetting to ask for names in a Google Form isn’t a high bar to overcome.

My table⁠05 unfortunately, I couldn’t get one table big enough for all of us without incurring a high spending minimum shared stories about where we came from (China, Georgia, New York, California, etc.), (or, alternatively, Columbia University, Harvard cross-registration, Media Lab Phd, MIT M.Eng, New Vassar, etc.), where we wanted to be (physics professorship, Harvard business school, M.Eng, etc.), and what we feared becoming (unemployed, due to the current job market).

It was really nice to meet so many people with different personalities and different goals and at different stages of their lives–people who only had their common last name tying them together. I learned about things I never would’ve originally: MIT’s AI Ventures class, the research assistance funding for M.Eng students, and the ratio of Harvard students cross registered at MIT versus MIT students cross registered at Harvard. 06 Thankfully very much skewed in MIT’s favor. At the very end, when I fronted the check, I got clowned on for using a TI-84 to calculate each person’s portion. Which, I’ll admit, was kind of deserved.

the second family dinner!

The next [REDACTED] Family Dinner is, aspirationally, happening sometime next semester. I’m excited to see all the faces, new and old, who will show up, there to entertain my Silly Idea for the next few hours.