Things I did instead of thinking by Ellie F. '28

I know a lot of you are stressed. You have busy brains with rodent teeth that need to chew on something or you’ll grow wild and mad, and so you turn to chewing on college applications. Perhaps you’re like how I was—not-thinking about MIT decisions, much like how a child does not think about the marshmallow in front of her, or how you’re not thinking about a white elephant right now. Maybe, like me, your brain would do better on a different chew toy, brightly colored perhaps, the kind of treat that has nutrition or enrichment like the toys tigers get at the zoo.

I turned to hobbies, making things with my brain and hands⁠01 mens et manus am i right or just doing the equivalent of dangling some brightly colored yarn in front of a hyper cat. I know it helped me. Maybe it could help you too?

Minesweeper

Okay to be fair I’m not that proud of this one. I was semi-addicted to Minesweeper⁠02 specifically the Google one it’s so bright and happy! in the months leading up to decision day. I could play with absolutely no thought. The numbers and colors burned into my brain until every night, as I started falling asleep, I unconsciously envisioned solving Minesweeper patterns like that scene from Queen’s Gambit with the chess on the ceiling (I never watched Queen’s Gambit so idk if this is actually accurate). This is an actual, documented, studied effect called the Tetris Effect! Aren’t brains cool?

was more excited about this than i should have been

honestly i dont know why im exposing myself like this

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Drawing

I’ve been making art my whole life, but I had put it on the back burner as college apps neared. Once those dreaded apps started, though, I suddenly felt that restless urge to study the lines of a ship and the blushes and shadows of a face. In stats I concentrated on the hatching of clouds instead of p-values,⁠03 born to calc, forced to stat 😔 in comparative government I rushed sloppy notes in favor of drawing the portraits of the economists on the slides. 

the most beautiful name for the most beautiful ship

fluffye...

a sketch I made a few days after visiting MIT last fall

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a bean man lives in a bean can

karl is lowkey a hair icon

me n who? i dont remember why i drew this

forg

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I also got back into digital art, rediscovering my fascination with bright colors and cool lighting. I played around with brushes and being bolder with colors and forming the planes of a face with hints of red and tints of blue.

this was a study of Carl Bork's aspen paintings, one of which had stuck in my head for over a year

this was meant to be a quick study lol

inspired by the paramount sign near boston commons!

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Drawing planes

Around this time, I inexplicably started devouring airplane videos like my cat devours food when I’m ten minutes late feeding her. I would screenshot pretty liveries I liked and send them to my friends.⁠04 I think they got a bit worried about me… During lunch, or after school, at Quiz Bowl practice, I’d find those pictures to draw in my sketchbook.

a 3-second clip of an etihad plane changed everything (my youtube algorithm)

three sketches of boeing supersonic transport prototypes

mmm pretty planes...

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Puzzles

Puzzlehunts are beautiful collections of clashing ideas, wordplay, obscure references, frustration, and fun. I started puzzling at the end of eighth grade, but as high school dug its claws into me, I found my time to sit down and stare at strange images and confusing crossword clues dwindled. After November 1st, though, I got that itch again. So, we got the band back together (the band being one other puzzly friend) and blew through nearly all of Galactic Puzzle Hunt 2023 and some of Cardinality Puzzle Hunt 2023 05 Galactic and Cardinality are two big puzzle hunt teams as well. 

Two months later, my near-obsession about puzzlehunts rewarded me with my first group of MIT (and assorted) friends—a bundle of enthusiastic, silly people who I’d stay up late with, chatting and chasing loose threads down Wikipedia rabbitholes and making memes about particularly obstinate puzzles. 

I swear I’m not being paid by Big Puzzle, but if any of this sounds interesting to you, you should check out these cool more beginner-friendly puzzles: Colby’s Curious Cookoff, DP, Puzzled Pint (sometimes).

Crochet

There is nothing quite like making something soft and purple that you can hold in your hands. I learned the basics of crochet over the summer at Mathcamp,⁠06 from the super talented Cecelia! but one week before a friend’s birthday, I decided it was time to pick up my hook and yarn again, like a retired bank robber accepting one last job with the gang. I never really got the hang of using patterns, but I found I could improvise and Macgyver simple plushies pretty well. 

You can make a lot of things with just a few simple skills. You’ll need a crochet hook, a skein of yarn,⁠07 it will eventually grow to a dozen different colors, trust me and a yarn needle. I’d recommend learning chain stitch, single crochet, increase, invisible decrease, magic circle, and basic yarn sewing. It sounds like a lot but it really isn’t. For something more fancy, color changes are cool too! Give your friends a yarn heart to make them smile :) Try making yourself a gift of a flower or a cute blobby animal! 

bernard :)

a guy (im better at making eyes now)

a dude

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Modular Origami

While I was at Math Prize for Girls,⁠08 A girls’ math contest hosted at MIT every year I was entranced by the instructions for a simple origami cube laid out at our lunch table. Within a few days of returning home, I fell in love with modular origami, folding Sonobe units⁠09 great way to get started making cool modular origami instead of completing homework, looking up tutorials for fancier designs, and tearing and folding so much paper that my fingertips became red and sore. Modular origami has caught many a math lover in its snares, and I love the therapeutic repetition of folding modules, the fun symmetries and colorings of a great stellated dodecahedron, and just holding a 3D paper structure in my hands.

the innocent start of an addiction

isn't she pretty?

OOPS my hands slipped

series of origami i made over thanksgiving break

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If you’re sitting here with restless hands and an overactive imagination about mid-December, or if you’ve always been thinking of trying a new hobby, or if you miss one you used to love, or if any of the things I’ve described seem interesting to you, then let me, an 18-year-old who was probably once described as wise for her age by an elementary school teacher, encourage you, a cool reader of the MIT blogs, to go for it. Join that club. Buy that book. Pick up that guitar. Try out that recipe. Lots of things in our future are out of our hands. But this—making ourselves a little more interesting, a little more knowledgeable, a little happier—this isn’t.