Monday, March 03, 2008

• The Entry You've All Been Waiting For.

  For those of you who lack the time / will / interest to read this entry, I’ll summarize: MIT is fantastic.

  For those of you who don’t, go make yourself a bag of popcorn or something, because this is a phenomenally long blog entry which took me way too long to write, but which will hopefully be helpful to other people long after it’s written. Namely, like, three weeks.

  Because the best place to start is always the beginning, we commence our grand tour at 5:29 pm in a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan, a pleasant little town approximately one centimeter south of your left-ring-finger-knuckle.

  THURSDAY

  the aforementioned 5:29 pm- We leave my house in a flurry of “WHERE ARE MY CLEAN SOCKS?”s and hasty goodbyes because I suck at packing and have made us 14 minutes later than the planned departure time. Things go smoothly at the airport, I get plans finalized for Friday and Saturday and at

  a little after 7- we take off for Detroit on our 26 minute flight, which lands at

  7:42- and promptly taxis for 20 minutes. While in flight, the captain informed us that the weather in Detroit was “clear with a westerly wind of 6 mph.” We land, and it starts to snow and blow and snow some more. We don’t really notice, though, because we’re at

  Dinner- at some Mexican place in the airport with awful service and awesome burritos. Realizing that our plane is almost done boarding, at

  9:03- my mom and I ditch my dad to board the plane and let him pay the bill at the restaurant. My dad gets on a few minutes later and we’re all ready for our 9:14 departure to Boston, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, at

  9:19- we’re informed that “due to the current weather conditions, flight control has pushed our estimated time of departure until 9:34” and are thanked for our patience.

  9:34- About that leaving thing. We’re still at the gate.

  9:43- PROGRESS. We make it out of the gate, but are shortly told that our air conditioning system isn’t functioning (IT’S 20 DEGREES OUTSIDE. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM.) and that we need to go back to the gate to get it fixed.

  10:14- A woman is singing to herself behind me. WHY WHY WHY.

  10:21- Thank you, anonymous mechanics. We finally leave the gate to go get de-iced.

  10:55- I wake up from a nap to the sound of us getting noisily de-iced, which is an awesome thing to watch if you’re completely conscious and running on time. Neither of which describe me at that moment.

  11:23- Lift off for Boston, baby.

  12:39 am- Touchdown in Boston, Massachusetts, and this place is already awesome.

  12:48 am- “Ladies and gentlemen, there are currently fire alarms going off in the building” (the entire plane groans, and you can tell everyone’s just thinking you have got to be fucking with me) “but it’s simply a routine test so you’re all set to go.” Thank you, Northwest Airlines.

  

  1:44 am- BED. I was way too tired to record everything else. For serious.

  FRIDAY

  7:36- Wake up, shower, dress, eat, gather parents, head towards campus where, at

  10:19, Friday, February 22, 2008- I see the great dome for the first time. Remember that snow I talked about in Detroit? Yeah, it’s now in Boston, and will end up dumping something like half a foot by 1:30 AM Friday night.

  It’s a beautiful sight.

  

  10:30- So, I’m supposed to meet the Jamie, the girl from the sailing team that I’m overnighting with, in Lobby 7 at 10:45. We’re uber early. I decide to walk around and take pictures.

  

  

  10:47- Jamie and I find each other pretty easily and we leave my parents to go on their Campus Tour with all the nervous juniors and their parents while Jamie and I go to 7.013. To summarize my day of classes:

  7.013- The lecture was on Molecular Biology- namely, translation. I followed the entire lecture and made a game out of calling the next topic to be discussed. I totally felt intelligent until

  8.02- where I just read the entire issue of The Tech because the whole of class was spent solving a problem on which I would probably have counted as a negative amount of assistance. After this, though, I got to eat at the café in the

  Stata Center- which was awesome and healthy and rather tasty.

  24.something or other- was Introduction to Western Music, which convinced me that I have no desire to take a music class at MIT. A music composition class could be awesome just judging by the way this class was taught, but I was not a fan of the massive amount of musical analysis going on, regardless of the fact that I was able to follow it, unlike the majority of

  18.03- which was surprisingly less over-my-head than I expected. Granted, the only part I actually understood was slope fields, but I got the general gist of what was going on, though if you gave me a pset on it I would probably have cried.

  But back to using present tense because it’s kind of fun.

  3:00ish- We head over to meet the sailing coaches at the Sailing Pavilion and by now it’s really cold and there’s enough snow to make me think I’m back in Michigan. Anyways, my dad gets there with my stuff for the overnight visit about the same time we get there, so he comes and sits in on my meeting with the coaches (which was fine, because it was an open invite sort of thing anyways). And this brings us to

  LESSON #1: My dad is really cool. Seriously, had we not visited MIT, and had he not sat in on the meeting I explicitly told him I wasn’t sure I wanted him sitting in on, I would never have known this. As it was, I ended up getting to hear about all his old sailing escapades in college, the boats he’d sailed on after college when he was racing in the Great Lakes, and essentially an entire part of his life that I never knew about. And it was kind of cool. The coaches were really interested in it and they were swapping stories and such, and had my dad not been there I have a feeling it might have been rather awkward and I’m not sure I would have made much of an impression on the coaches without him there to break the ice. So thank you, Dad. You’re awesome.

  Back to Massachusetts, though. So we head back to MacGregor and I dump my stuff in Jamie’s room (I’M REALLY SORRY I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN PICTURES. Or you can just use the ones here.) and head over to McCormick around 7ish which brings us to

  LESSON #2: McCormick is actually pretty fantastic. One of Jamie’s sorority sisters lives over there, and it’s basically an all female hotel. Bathrooms are clean, the kitchens are really nice, the dorm itself is very neat, and the girls there are really, really cool. I’d originally been all “psh, girls’ dorm, cross that off the list” but it’s actually a serious contender. So, to all you other prefrosh- don’t be hatin’ on a dorm you’ve never visited.

  Jamie had to make a birthday card for one of the girls in her sorority class who we were going to dinner with, so we had headed over to McCormick for creative ideas from Beebe, one of her friends. We were just sitting in the kitchen, chatting, and at

  8 or so- went over to Baker, picked up one of the girls we were going to dinner with, and met up with the rest of the group at the Student Center before walking to Bertucci’s. Seriously, the restaurant was phenomenal. I know the golden rule of CPW is “Pay not for food,” but I would totally be willing to make an exception to have that again. Around

  11- we get back to campus and head over to Baker. We hang around downstairs for a bit and then go to throw on our coats for a snowball fight, and as I’m just turning to go down the stairs, someone yells “Hey, are you Shannon [insert last name here]?” Not exactly something you expect to hear in a strange dorm 832.97 miles from home. So I turn around and our 10 second conversation goes something like this:

  Me: haha, Yeah, who are you? [gee, Shannon, that was subtle]

  Her: Oh, I’m Christina. Ben Jones just texted me and was like, “Hey, find this girl named Shannon and convince her to come to MIT.” But I was going to stay in the dorm all night so I didn’t expect to see you. So are you for sure coming?

  Me: Like 99.9 percent sure.

  Christina: Well that’s no fun.

  Me: I could say that I’m going to U of M if that’d be more exciting.

  And then I don’t remember what was said, but it ended with me heading downstairs for some frolicking in the snow.

              So after watching Jamie and her fellow Floridian sorority sister play around in the stuff (I didn’t bring boots and was just throwing snowballs from the sidewalk), we decide to head over and check out the snow fort that’s being erected in a parking lot snow mound by none other than Christina and a group of her friends. As someone remarked after it was done, “That is probably the best engineered snow fort ever built.”

  

  Seriously, though. Awesome, right? And while the snowball fight that ensued afterwards was fun,

  

  Beebe and I were freezing and headed back to McCormick to make hot chocolate. It was awesome, just sitting and talking about majors and MIT and life and meeting some of the girls from around her dorm. Reference Lesson #2. It was great. We had thought everyone was coming up to have hot chocolate after they were done, but it turned out that instead pancakes were being made in Baker’s kitchen. So we cleaned up and headed over there. By now it’s around

  1:30 am-ish- and a bunch of us are just sitting around a table at Baker, waiting for pancakes and talking about YouTube videos, among other things. The pancakes come out, and after they’re gone it’s decided that we need to go watch some of these videos, so we head up to one of the guys’ rooms. Jamie and I head out a little before 3 and by

  3:02 am- I am sound asleep.

  SATURDAY

  9:38- WHY AM I AWAKE.

              Unfortunately, my body has this nasty habit of knowing what day it is and expecting an appropriate amount of sleep. Namely, for the amount of sleep on a Friday night x, x should be > 6:36. Anyways, I get up, we go to Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast, we totally go the wrong way to my hotel and I conveniently get a tour of Star Market before we get back on track. We finally make it back and turns out my parents went shopping on Friday and I now am the proud parent of a stuffed beaver and an MIT pendent which is currently in my locker at school. Yay daily reminders of high school mediocrity. After showering and such we head back to campus, where, at around

  12:19 and after- I meet Ben Jones and Nance and Matt McGann and McGreggor! (Christina also shows up later- this is 3 times I’ve seen her now. Keep track.) First of all, these guys are awesome, in case the whole PetSmart story wasn’t enough to convince anyone of that. It was awesome just talking about MIT and what have you and actually meeting the people that admitted me. As McGreggor said when I met him, “Hi, I know you but you don’t know me. I’m McGreggor. Nice to meet you.”

              I was totally going to say “it was awesome!” at the end of that paragraph but did a ctrl+f and I’ve already used “awesome” 10 times. So I’ll just link you to these videos instead because you probably need a break right about now anyways and both make me about as happy as I was when I was meeting all these guys.

  1:30-ish- Paul and I meet in Lobby 10, Paul compliments my dad on his shirt (Notre Dame Fighting Irish- brilliant, Dad), and my Dad is instantly reassured that MIT may not, in fact, be the heathen breeding grounds he once thought it to be. Between that and the Hart Nautical Museum we discovered later on, he was pretty much convinced that it was on OK place. Easy enough, right?

              So Paul shows me his lab space in the Langer Lab (I’d honestly forgotten how much I’d missed the smell of a lab, which sounds weird, but is really true), shows me around the Stata Center (which is apparently pronounced properly like beta, only with an st), and then I head back to my hotel. By the way, thanks, Paul.

  2:42- My dad has come down with some nasty stomach business so my mom and I decide to go lunch and souvenir hunting (my grandma wants a collared MIT shirt) in the COOP in the Student Center which, conveniently enough, also houses Anna’s Taqueria which I’ve been meaning to try the whole trip. Based on my albeit limited experience, the chicken burrito is phenomenal. Definitely recommended. We go back to the room, lounge around, and about

  6:30- head to Pomodoro, a fantastic Italian restaurant in the North End. Not too much later, Christina and a few friends show up. This makes it 4 times that I’ve run into her. Coincidence? I think not. Stalker? I think so.

              Regardless, Pomodoro was fantastic, and the Chocolate Mousse Cake that I got at Modern Pastry was rather delicious as well.

  

  

  

  By the time it’s

  8:35- we’re back in the hotel room and even though Forrest Gump is on, I simply can’t justify denying myself sleep for a movie.

  SUNDAY

  9:08- My parents are somehow showered, dressed, and ready to go by the time they wake me up. I could have slept another 3 hours easily, but whatever. We grab breakfast and then head to the MIT Museum which brings us to

  LESSON #3: Admission to the MIT Museum is free for anyone on Sundays from 10 until noon. So if you’re going for a weekend, check it out. It’s totally worth waking up early for.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

              After the Museum, my dad and I go check out the Hunt Nautical Museum, which is essentially a museum of model ships and ocean engineering, but it is pretty cool (I almost said awesome again).

  1:00 to 1:55- My parents take me to mass in the chapel, which will likely be both my first and last mass at MIT. They are not pleased to hear this.

              We head back to the hotel, check out around

  2:29- and then grab some Starbucks and go for a walk around campus. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and like I told my parents, “I have to take pictures of this for my blog.” They’ve actually gotten the nerd lingo down, now, which I commend them for. I didn’t get a single sarcastic remark regarding me having a “blorg” as my mother used to call it. So, without further ado, here is your miniature tour of campus. Locations are given using this map, the arrows indicate the direction I was standing when the shot was taken, and all photos can be expanded by clicking on them.
  

  

   
  I tried really hard to get this panorama shot to work (and that thread that keeps appearing is from my glove, sorry), so your best bet it to somehow try to view a larger image of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Like all good things, though, the visit had to come to an end. We grabbed a bite to eat at the Così by campus, took a taxi to the airport, and by 8 pm I was completely out of sight of Massachusetts until April 10.

  A few final thoughts, though:

  LESSON#4: A sorority could be awesome- I had originally toyed around with the idea, but I loved the camaraderie the girls in Jamie’s sorority had, especially never having had sisters of my own. I’m definitely going to look into it seriously next fall.

  LESSON #5: Apparently Bexley is the best kept secret on campus? I got a really weird impression of it from what information I could find on the internet, but apparently it’s a completely random mix of people who live there and all of them love it. The location right across from 77 Mass Ave doesn’t hurt. Allegedly they aren’t real nice to prefrosh because they don’t want a ton of people trying to get into it, but one of the girls on the sailing team lives there and I could probably get a tour from her. So that would be cool. A note- this is all just gleaned from information I picked up, so take it with a grain of salt.

  LESSON #6: People are, in fact, attractive at MIT, no matter how shallow stating this makes me seem. Maybe this is just based on my rather underwhelming experience at UChicago, but I was definitely not expecting the level of physical attractiveness that I found at MIT. This could, of course, be explained by the set of people I met over the course of the time I was there, but I was still really pleasantly surprised. I was explaining this I was to one of the girls, and her response was “Oh my god, I know, right?” So apparently this shock over the general appearance isn’t limited to me.

  LESSON #7 (gee, what a great number!): MIT is awesome. But you knew that already.

  I’m not sure whether it’s appropriate to say whether I was going home or leaving home at the end of the weekend, but if home’s where you belong then I’m in the wrong part of the country.

  • 11:45 PM
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