Welcome to My Museum of MIT by Aiden H. '28

This post is inspired by this New York Times article. Like all good things, it makes me both giggle and think.

The following is mostly satirical, and entirely my opinion. Some of these are MIT specific, and some are applicable to American colleges in general.

tl;dr don’t read into this too strongly

 Apple Pencil (uncapped)

Pen and paper are so 2008. Why actually write stuff down when you can fake write it down, with colors! Unfortunately, between the 6-12 hours you spend a day looking down at your iPad for notes, psets, etc., you’ve lost the most protective piece of you $100 writing utensil. Eh, screw it, you have work to do anyway and that Apple Store is far.

example (note that i actually do have my cap!)

Banana

Hot and mushy. Cold and stringy. Somehow perfect? MIT bananas come in many varieties, but one thing ties them all together: free. Enjoy the fruits of your labor with a fruit to pair with your labor! Spot these bananas: in bulk in a random grad student’s hand; getting brown in student’s backpacks as they go from lecture to lecture; spoiling in those huge cardboard boxes in the Banana Lounge. Potassium kings, rise!

3D Printer

At a tech school that supports student creation and innovation, there is naturally a strong subset of students who simply want to make things. But, due to x, y, z constraint of actually getting the things you need to make that robot/bioreactor/microscope/wall decor, the process of making isn’t what is actually hard for students. Introducing: plastic builder machine. Everyone and their mom either built their own, bought one, or goes to the Makerspace to use them. At MIT, you can make anything out of seemingly nothing.

Energy Drink

Welcome, youth, to late-stage capitalism! You’re beat down and exhausted, but have even more to do than when you started. But do not fear, for no matter what time of the day it is, it’s acceptable to crank out a quick 200+ mg of caffeine and get cracking on the pset. The solution to our problems is not in fixing the structures themselves, but funneling our bodies with chemicals to abide by them.

Black Puffer Jacket

Chic penguin? Gucci trash bag? Foreign goose? No, it’s me and my unreasonable loud, annoyingly large, brutally unwashed black puffer jacket, absolutely worked down the Infinite 7 months out of the year. +2 if you never take it off.

Shaky Walker Memorial Desk

Walker Memorial mostly exists in juxtapositions. So blistering hot that the TAs half-undress mid-proctor, or a Siberian cold turning my fingertips red.  A cacophony of that One Large Fan™, construction outside, and everyone’s shoes, or pin-drop silence as you hear your tears fall on the page. Yet, at the end of it all, one thing remains eternal: that Shaky Walker Memorial Desk. Every corner moves as you shift your weight to erase your entire answer. The entire surface is sticky and covered in loose led. One time a spider crawled up on to my exam, and even it got so exhausted from the sight of my problem that it left.⁠01 This is actually genuinely true. It straight up just left immediately. Shaky Walker Memorial Desk is the crushing reminder that even at your darkest moments, when you’re struggling to keep yourself together, everything around you is shaking as well.

Vester Matcha

Black lettering on plain white wall. Black wall with a fun font of white letters. Paper cup and paper straw and paper holder with a paper napkin that disintegrate when touching your $9 latte. Minimalist cafe culture is a bore, but a necessity to be in. Sure, it’s Amazon-quality almond milk and matcha powder, but the status of walking around with the effortlessly aesthetic ~green~ is enough to pull you in.

Men’s 3-in-1 Body Wash

MIT teaches you to examine every edge case of a system–to consider every possible “technicality”. And when you’re busy analyzing every possibility of x, y, z thing, you might get so swept away that you forget other, more important daily activities. Sure! It is technically soap. Not in a way that works according to anyone’s standard, but just technically enough for you to say you showered with “soap”! -10 if you’re a course 6 and hurting the reputation.

Dome Photo

Maybe parts of MIT are not totally idyllic…except one. LinkedIn picture, Instagram story, graduation picture. All of them in front of that big ass dome. And honestly, they should be! For all you’ve done, flaunt that dome as much as you want.

Starchy White T-Shirt

MIT has an endowment that allows for ~$2.32 million per student. And, while that endowment goes to many, many things for students, one of those is not towards t-shirt design. MIT will force dozens of free t-shirts on you, and together combined they could make 3 ± 2 quality shirts. On their own, though, they are some combination of black/white/red lettering with few enough threads to scratch my back every time I take it off.

Jet Tag

Statistically, you’re not course 16.⁠02 Aero/Astro Engineering Still, if you’ve had absolutely any association with BlueOrigin, SpaceX, or the like, you will have these fabric bands hanging from every surface on your backpack.

Two Big Guys Touching on One Electric Scooter

It could be the middle of the night, riding across the Charles with the wind in your hair after a night out. It could 10:58 AM, rushing to your next class down the Outfinite. No matter what time or where you are, their love is eternal. A modern Brokeback Mountain. Two frat guy student-athletes full-body touching as they share one electric scooter.

Niche Instant Ramen

A college classic. In a rush and can’t eat dinner? Want a late-night snack? Go for the classic: instant ramen. But nay nay, this is no Maruchan, for we have an H-Mart next to campus, so we dine on the exquisite, niche ramens. .75 cents/package?? Ha! These fine-dining courses can go upwards of $6. Buldak, you are our nation’s ramen.

Green Couch, Blue Wall

MIT is known for its brutalist architecture: harsh, square concrete buildings spread out across equally grey sidewalks. Despite all this, MIT makes up for its bland outsides with equal and opposite insides for its living communities. I wake up, and I see green couches and blue walls. I go to sleep after escaping from my green couches and blue walls. I am nothing without my gaudy neon interior decor that I call home.

TeaDo Boba

You’re in college, you’re likely poor, and definitely a sugar addict. Fortunately, you and everyone else has one (1) accessible option that is seemingly always open and always present, whether you want it or not. VC event? TeaDo Boba. Study break? TeaDo boba. Club meeting? TeaDo boba. Grapefruit, mango, strawberry, popping, pearls, big fat colorful straw, onigiri, and those damn plastic cups everywhere. What are you getting everyday? TeaDo boba.

Quant Merch

One of the most accurate stereotypes about MIT is that finance recruiters are hunting you down to get absolutely any of your potential math genius to make money for other people. Whether or not you buy into this doesn’t matter, for we allllll attend those super fancy free dinners with Jane Street, if not just for the free meal and open bar. And at the end of the night, the best gift is not that of a referral or even a job, but that iconic HRT shirt that you will wear until the end of time. You make 6 figures, but free clothes look better anyway.

Rubik’s Cube

Canonically, I know multiple people who Cube™ (v.) when they are stressed. In vibes and assumption, many MIT students learned how to solve a Rubik’s Cube as their first algorithm. In perpetuity, students will walk around and flick their fingers until all the colors line up in the cute but also necessary-for-my-autism sort of way.

Psychotropic Medication

The kids are not alright. Maybe this is because we talk more openly about these things, which is good. Maybe this is because we have much easier access to psychiatrists, which is good. Maybe this is because, over time, the intensity of college has grown from a personality-forming to a personality-sucking experience. Nonetheless, the kids are aware of their issues, and trying to work through them.

Free Listening Guy

He comes and he goes, but he is always on the steps of Lobby 7 when you need him. He holds a big, white, simplistic sign only telling people that he will listen for free. Most of the time people just walk on by, but sometimes they’ll stop. At a place where this is so much so say and no culture to talk about it, it takes a random man offering his time for us to open up, light-heartedly or toward our true souls, for the realest conversations to happen.

Chalkboards

High school is for those juvenile whiteboards, stuffed with that squeaky, smelly Expo Marker. The big dogs, though? We play with chalk. The dust gets everywhere, it’s impossible to read from afar, it makes awful noises, and it snaps in half at the most important moments. But who cares? This is academia, we have math to do, baby.

MassTech Pants

Y2K fashion is back and bigger than ever. And while most MIT students wouldn’t dare to flaunt the insanely low-rise jeans, belly button piercing, or hair tinsel to class, there’s a certain Couture that never goes out of style. Booty shorts, tank tops, and, of course, the sweatpants, are the proudest items of merch that most MIT students own. The Coop is for the grandparents, MassTech is for the youth.

Taken from their instagram @wearemasstech

Box Hair Dye

College is for experimenting, right? You don’t want your parents to know that suddenly you’re an alternative emo punk singer, but you also definitely want to be. Let the fleeting permanence of your existence college take over with impermanent box hair dye! Do it in the bathroom at 4 AM before a midterm, or have your friends do it in the EC courtyard during REX. It might be one of the last times you can do orange and purples streaks across your hair before an employer judges you, so why not?

Brass Rat

It’s been a long road, and you’ve experienced all of the above. Things are starting to get serious now…you’re two years into the relationship, you’re feeling pretty good about not leaving, and you think it’s time to tie the knot? And just like that, a fall proposal (Ring Premiere) and a spring wedding (Ring Delivery)! Like all marriages, it comes with its ups and downs. But you’ll both be there, through thick and thin! 💍💍💍