Walkin’ by Jackie M. '20

On Monday, the first thing on my to-do list, after an exceptionally unproductive weekend, was to make a to-do list. I was then faced, however, with a moral dilemma, a person vs. self conflict which I would both win and lose: I needed to either buy groceries or start working on my problem sets, because I had finally moved on from the stage of denial and accepted their existence. My cereal had become unpleasantly dry and decidedly less palatable since I had run out of milk. Still yet, the ink in my pens was decomposing from idleness. My thought process went as follows: I can either not buy food and do my work, or I can buy food and… probably still do my work. Wait, what was the problem here anyways? I fail to recall that anguished, indecisive mindset as I sit here without regret and eat this ice cream I ended up buying at the store. Ice cream is a catalyst for productivity anyways. The problem sets, though, I admit they were pretty tempting…

That was a joke.

The following series of images is a visual journey through some of the more amusing posters I’ve seen lining the walls of the Infinite corridor and building 66 during my daily traversals. The initial state of gratification I experience upon first viewing one of these posters, however, is always quickly replaced with a wistful “Why didn’t I think of that first?!” Credit of course goes to the respective designers of these masterpieces of convincing propaganda.

I, for one, know that this poster singlehandedly almost convinced me to switch to course 12 (Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences). Just try not to want to dedicate the rest of your mortal existence to the study of rocks. Just try:

I mean, obisidian happens too, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well, you agree?

    This one implores the viewer to perform some deep, honest self-reflection of their fine motor skills:

Well, CAN YOU?!

    Yes, here at MIT, we can even manipulate time:

Unfortunately, I have not yet worked out how to add more hours to the day, though…

    You are reading a blog post about a meta-poster postering a space explicitly not intended for posters. Wait, what?:

Or else!

    I was delighted recently to see a pile of free items in building 66, from which I managed to procure this shiny new, used piece of literature:

Not only is there a mailing list at MIT for free food, there is also a mailing list for free, ostensibly non-edible things. I’ve promised myself to read this when I “have time”, which implies that it probably won’t happen until the next geological epoch.

There actually existed at one point a Facebook page dedicated solely to the heroic cause of documenting the many tents that appear inexplicably around campus, so you can make sure that you’re getting your tuition’s worth of tents. I, for one, feel the interior of my heart warm at the thought that a non-negligible fraction of the money MIT spends may be on tents.

This one in front of Kresge Auditorium was just begging to be photographed. The way that its gentle white folds flawlessly reflected the entire visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum inspires me to propose that this tent be christened “most photogenic”:

They’re evolving!

In another instance of finding things around campus that one would not reasonably expect to find, I innocently approached the East Campus desk a few days ago only to discover that the mechanism for opening the door had been replaced by one of those things that you grip while climbing up an artificial rock wall. You know, one of those things:

The door knob of the future?

    Thanks for taking a virtual walk with me. Peace out!