today yesterday thanksgiving was a few days ago, and in the world of this post it is still thanksgiving day,⁠01 so i started writing this post a few days ago and then fell asleep. and then got caught up with making other stuff. so this may be a little late. im too lazy to change the rest of the tenses in this paragraph so just bear with me a little which means that it’s a particularly boring day for me. i woke up to grey skies and decided to go back to bed for another two hours. once i finally mustered up the willpower to get up, i found myself facing the once-in-a-blue-moon challenge: finding something to occupy myself with. 

my friend Espen S. ‘27 invents a lot of games. one of these we sometimes call the phrasing game: where you choose a Thing, and phrase it in the best and worst possible ways. an example could be my 6.1210⁠02 familiar readers of my blogs will realise that this class pervades in my life as the main villain of most of my life and often the entirety of my tuesday. aka introduction to algorithms, and for an introduction i think these algorithms are being awfully rude by giving me a bad time problem set that was due last week: you could call it “an fun intellectual exercise which challenges your understanding of dynamic programming and pushes you to confidently write your own algorithms”, or you could call it “the fucker that kept me up until 4am and made me question all my life decisions that lead to me trying to debug the worst code i’ve written in my life.” hopefully you get the gist.

this game popped up in my head today as i was digging through the boxes under my bed. when you apply this game to “the way janet structures her room”, you could say that i’m a very sentimental person who treasures even the littlest things in life. you could also call me a messy hoarder. 

anyway— the point is mostly that i have a lot of random shit that i haven’t had the heart to throw out, and since today i really needed something to do, i decided to clean out some part of my room. 

there’s this one box in my room which you could call a fire hazard. it’s stuffed to the brim with papers: past exams, letter collections, posters and programs from events i’ve gone to in the past year or so. the exams were an easy go; the letters from my friends were an easy keep. the posters are awkward. they’re some schrodinger’s-marie-kondo-esque dilemma — i do not think about them very often, but every time i do, there’s some warmth of recalling the memories that come with them which makes me hesitant to throw them away. last year we put them on the wall, but this year our suite is shaped too awkwardly for me to plaster posters all over them again.

some of my hoard of posters on the wall last year!

today i’ve finally found a solution to this problem! i am going to inventory all of the posters and programs in this blog, and get paid to store my memories here instead of keeping the wad of awkward papers in my room. 

shows & performances

fall ’23

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the boston ballet’s nutcracker was the first ever ballet i went to! Sophie L. ‘27 got her and me $15 tickets to the boston ballet (i think they have a student discount), and a whole bunch of us met up to go watch. it was really beautiful and i definitely felt very fancy, but i have to admit that i fell asleep halfway through the second act… it was still all very impressive though, would go again if i had time (unfortunately this year i probably don’t). pnr behaviour, etc.

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one of the first actual events in the year that i went to, back when i was a wide-eyed frosh who wanted to be everything everywhere all at once.⁠03 haha you get what i mean the EC community is one of those communities who i respect immensely, but unfortunately didn’t initially click and now i feel a little far from. hall rush was cool though, i really liked all of their rooms and talking to all the halls about their cultures. i learned dj-ing from putz briefly too which was cool :P i’ve forgotten all of it though 

MITSO⁠04 MIT symphony orchestra always has pretty good pieces. i honestly don’t remember much from this aside from the fact that i liked dvorak and may have fallen asleep during some of the variations…

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i think this was the first acapella concert that i went to at mit? it was very sweet. the mit centrifugues also have a special place in my heart because i was briefly in it for two weeks at the start of freshman fall, and then dropped because i had too many commitments :’) i adore the mashups and the spinning arts guest feature was also really cute! 

so i have to confess that i only watched this over the livestream… i think someone else actually went and i was on my program collecting mode which is why i have this LOL. VGO has a really good set and there’s this one bit where the cellists spin their cellos for Rainbow Road, which i thought was very funny. wish i could’ve gone in person but we had VGO perform live for Blueprint ‘24⁠05 hackmit's high school hackathon, at blueprint.hackmit.org so that was also pretty good :P 

ADT might have been the first dance show i went to! the energy was really high for this show and i really liked most of the sets, and lots of my friends were performing so i took a lot of videos LOL 

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my friend Sophie L. ’27 took a theatre class in fall ‘23 which had a final production. it was very experimental, which made it a little incomprehensible and confusing at times, but the different mediums made it really fascinating to watch. i think they broke a TV at some point and Audrey L. ‘27 has a video of Sophie throwing a big bouncy ball right at us (this was a part of the performance where the audience just threw around the yoga ball and people were singing an off-key version of taylor swift’s love story on the stage???) very much a fever dream, which seems on theme for my freshman fall. 

stupid f*cking bird: MIT LOST’s ⁠06 Live On Stage Theatre, a theatre group which runs a new contemporary (?) play every semester fall 23 play. i cannot understate how much i love LOST plays. they do a really good job of choosing great plays that i’ve never experienced before, and the marketing decisions for the play were very entertaining. i also met one of my friends Susan H. ‘27 from watching her perform here so that’s cool too :P 

so perhaps this is a screenshot of a poster rather than the real program. i kinda lost the real program oops but this was a very funny show of much ado about nothing by the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble! i went to support Claire W. ’27 who played an AWESOME cross-gender gay benedick, but also this play has a special place in my heart because i studied it in year 12 english.⁠07 second to last year of high school education, aka junior year such a funny play and one of my favs by far

spring ’24

dance troupe’s spring ’24 showcase! went to this to support my hackmit grandbig⁠08 hackmit is a club i'm in. we do 'family lines' which is similar to i think greek life where you have older people who look after you and a 'lineage'? i'm joyce's grandlittle :) Joyce Y. ‘24 <3 the contemp style was very cool and i liked the texas dance LOL i thought it was funny. unfortunately don’t remember much else. 

again, went to support friends in ADT (MIT Asian Dance Team) since a lot of friends were dancing. honestly i feel like i liked the dances less in spring vs. fall, but it might also just be that i’m more used to this style of dance performance lol. also i went in an earlier timeslot this year so the crowd had less energy for some reason

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i loved the promo for juresopark (mit resonance’s spring 24 concert) — i believe the big inflatable dinos attacked one of my lectures at some point — and also the program was really funny. their skits were also hilarious and somehow had a pretty cohesive storyline that somewhat linked to the songs iirc? i also pulled up with a few friends so we had a pretty good time screaming for our friend Kat who was performing 

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i loved remix! went during spring ‘24, it was so fun. i have a lot of friends in both MissBehaviour and MIT MoveMENTality, and they really ate. the energy of the crowd was impeccable, the guest performers were incredible, and even the breaks between songs had some of the most fun bits that i’ve seen. they worked very hard for it and it was a really good time :) 

this was the group whose music died and im a little embarassed to admit that i don’t remember their name but they did really well!!

i didn't take this photo with a potato ok i just took this as a screenshot from a shaky video. anyway peep MIT Bhangra on the stage (very cool group super high energy) and peep the tech guy struggling with the audio download... both tragic and entertaining

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Footwork XVII (MIT Ridonkulous’ annual dance showcase) was very fun. i really hadn’t seen so many dance groups in one sitting before this so it was very awe-inspiring LOL. there were quite a few technical difficulties on the day but in a way it really helped show how well the groups train — for one song the sound died out in the last minute and the group literally just continued by coordinated muscle memory, which both the crowd and i were very very impressed by. the wifi also died in kresge and they couldn’t get the soundtrack working for ages for another group ☠️but the group just went with it (shoutout MIT Bhangra for pushing through) and we had some fun improv instead 

summer ’24

bonus because technically not during the school year: the boston festival orchestra runs free events every summer, so a few friends and i popped down to one of the halls at the new england conservatory to the see them! thankful to Audrey and Phoenix for telling me about it – i really enjoyed their playing of scheherazarde, although have to admit that i dozed off again at some point… there’s really a theme with this. 

i also went to a storytelling circle with Nicole H. ‘27 when i visited her in pittsburgh over the summer. i really loved the cosiness of the space, and this was one of their little programs that they were running for the summer :) unfortunately i only stayed for 3 days so couldn’t actually experience the program for myself 

fall ’24

mit concert choir’s Fall ’24 performance! a few of my friends were performing here (this was also the day we did blogston commons, and i mentioned it briefly). as per usual, i again crashed out for a little bit, ⁠09 and this is the point that i admit that i have not gone through a single classical music performance without falling asleep at least once. something about the dark room and calming atmosphere... or maybe my attention span just can't deal with this... who knows but i did enjoy the soloists. opera singers have a very clear voice which is impressive and enjoyable in a way distinct from pop music, and i was in a anti-pop-music mood at the time so this was extra refreshing 

mocha moves’⁠10 another very very cool hiphop dance group annual dance competition! i loved the spooky theme this year and thought their pubbing posters were done very well. i unfortunately only pulled up for the half the time because i had to run to a friend’s halloween was yesterday party and i also had to review for exams the monday after. it was still very good though, and a particular shoutout to MMT’s mickey mouse set because it was the funniest set i’ve seen in a while. 

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the pillowman!! very cool. another LOST ⁠11 live on stage theatre; group that puts on live plays production. my friend Tristan C. ‘27 was one of the leads so he told me about it a lot, and quite a few of my other friends were playing in it too so i kinda had to go. the play also made me cry a lot — martin mcdonough wrote an excellent play, which i thought the LOST group did justice to. i also completely did not expect the direction in which the play went, which was a welcome surprise, because i was really forced to engage with the play as as result. sometimes when i watch media i will have read the synopsis already (oops admitting to a cardinal sin right here), which helps me stand away from the play and examine the meta of it more rather than just feel the emotions in the story. maybe this is an admittance of being afraid to trust the author… anyway watching this play live made me appreciate the value of trusting the author LOL. i also really loved the little string detailing that tied together the book, and i thought the design choices of this program were incredibly clean. 

the missing few :(

i also went to catsymptones (mit asymptones’ spring 24 concert), MIT Live’s spring ’24 showcase, mulog (mit logarhythm’s fall 24 concert), and another two MIT symphony orchestra concerts but i can’t find the program for any of them :( they were all very cute though and all of them made me think a lot about performance and joy, which maybe i will write about another day 

misc events

i went to the simmons pre-christmas study break with Maggie L. ‘27 in fall ’23 which was very cute. personal favourite might have been the homemade waffles, but i also really liked the wild babies study break where i met one of the GRA’s pet snake who was very cute!! we don’t have wild snakes in new zealand so this was pretty new to me

i remember going to this event in Spring ’24 and browsing a lot but not really buying anything; a win for my wallet, but not a permanent fix considering how much i was using retail therapy at the end of the semester as a coping mechanism 

udo is the burton-conner area director,⁠12 so bc is my dorm. we have mit faculty who live in the dorm and basically talk to the students, manage the space, and occasionally hold food events. it's pretty cool. i don't really know what the area director does either but she feeds us and lets us take udo on walks so??? they do a pretty good job imo margaret’s dog. he is very cute. this was a very cute event. udo was wearing a cute hat and i ate popcorn and patted the dog. good event with good bois 

the classic ABC, one of two campus-wide parties hosted by B3rd. i actually don’t think i went because i was away on a retreat, but their postering is iconic (the orange paper, the variants of the acronym ABC) and we found it really funny that this was the acronym in our suite. 

me1tdown, another campus-wide party hosted by the b1ners. again very clean design decisions, i believe i pulled up for a while and jammed for a bit. very fun, i really liked their deco but don’t think i have a photo of it :( 

of course, i can’t miss our own campus-wide party. we held our inaugural one last year in celebration (protest?) of the 250th anniversary of the boston tea party, and held another one this year. our floor chairs carried it by doing the brunt of the planning and work, but overall it was very fun to help out with! last year i even invited my Real British Friend Ojas G. ‘27 who pulled up in his very british trenchcoat and all. two of my friends who shall remain anonymous also accidentally broke through the roof tile while starships was playing last year. this year we had a lot less chaos i think but also homemade boba that Alex Z. ‘28 spent 4 hours making, and it was DELICIOUS so i think if you’re on campus come fall ‘25 this will not be one to miss. 

yay for C2! more fun photos incoming

alex z. '28 spent 4 hours on this boba which was really good

boba being served!

partyyyy

our dj did great. seemed like she had a fun time too :)

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i was part of the MIT educational studies program for a while! as admin, we get cards with special nicknames. mine obviously had to reference my "special heritage". for what it's worth, our resident australian's title card had the special name "ask me about new zealand" so i'll call that a win

clearly, lots of creativity here

when i went to treehacks (stanford's collegiate hackathon) on an organiser exchange! i liked the detailing on their lanyard. very pretty

as a part of MIT ESP, we also participated in a conference during january where people who organised different splashes from all over america came over to MIT campus (it was conveniently held at MIT this year) to talk about how to run the teaching extravaganza. i actually drew the logo at the back LOL

i also helped out as a volunteer for our alumni reunions at the end of the 23-24 school year. lin-manuel miranda came this year with his wife but unfortunately i just missed him MULTIPLE TIMES :( it was very sad. but also talking to all the alumni was pretty cute and kinda fun! crazy to see where people ended up lol

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these are technically not posters but it also turns out that i hoarded a number of lanyards too

ANYWAY thanks for coming along to my haul! stay tuned for the next edition as i reset my storage to make more posters for the next years :) 

(given how long this took maybe this is finally going to drive me towards a path of minimalism…)