But that's not what this entry is about. It's about my experiences with undergraduate research. I'm sure all of you know by now about MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Click here if you want the official site. But the basic idea behind UROP is to take undergrads and expose them to individual research. You know all those textbooks you read? The information had to come from somewhere. It came from people publishing their original research in peer-reviewed journals. MIT has a program dedicated to giving you the opportunity to put some of your thoughts in a textbook.

I've had the distinct pleasure of having three UROPs during my time as an undergrad here. The first was on the now defunct MIT ChemECar team. ChemECar is a competition to build a car powered by a chemical reaction that can achieve certain standards in speed, accuracy, and precision. Back in IAP 2006 we gave it a shot. Our idea was to power the car using a galvanic cell. To control how far the car went, we'd use an electrically conducting solution as a circuit breaker. When the tank of electrically conducting fluid ran out, the circuit would break and the car would stop. It was a good idea, but we were too hosed to see it to completion. We made good progress during IAP, but once classes started we didn't have time. Nevertheless, it was my first exposure to a wet lab (a lab that makes use of chemical solvents. Examples of dry labs include physics and EE labs) and an opportunity to do something original.

My second UROP I started in Summer 2006, and it was undeniably the best UROP experience I've had here. I worked with Eric Verploegen (soon to be Dr. Verploegen: Congratulations!!) on "thermoelastic liquid crystalline side-chain block copolymers for actuator applications". That's a bunch of big words for a simple idea. 1: Attach liquid crystals (the things that make the digits on your calculator) to a plastic. 2: Make the liquid crystals line up. 3: Apply an electric field to the plastic, move the liquid crystals, and thus turn electric field into macroscopic force. I got the opportunity to learn about polymer synthesis, an entire host of materials analysis techniques (dynamic mechanical analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, polarized optical microscopy, small and wide angle x-ray scattering, nuclear magnetic resonance), and even take a trip to two synchrotrons: The one at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the one at Cornell. Synchrotrons are pretty cool, check out this Wikipedia page to find out more about them. I worked with Eric officially for pay/credit during Summer 06, Fall 06, IAP 07 and volunteered during Spring 2007 to help train my replacement. The UROP culminated in a paper we published (linked here.)

My third and final UROP was at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Plasma physics is a tough branch of physics to study, particularly because a lot of the equations (MHD, for example) are impossible to solve analytically (except in simple, ideal cases that aren't applicable to real systems), and computationally expensive to solve numerically. Nevertheless, I tried to do numerical analysis of the propagation of radio waves in fusion plasmas. In order to achieve magnetically confined nuclear fusion, we need a way to heat a low pressure gas of tritium and deuterium to tens of millions of Kelvins. The best way to do this is by blasting the gas with EM radiation, turning it into a superheated plasma. My job was to make a determination of how much energy would be absorbed by a plasma of certain parameters (density, magnetic confining field, particle orbits), given radiation of certain parameters (intensity, frequency, polarization). Of course, at the time I'd only had up to 8.03 and was attempting graduate level plasma physics. I knew I was over my head and stopped UROPing in Fall 2007. It certainly showed me how much I liked physics, though.

My advice to you is to get involved in the UROP program here. I forget how many students participate each year, but it's on the order of 80%. However, I would also advise you not to limit yourself. A lot of people come here and feel like they need to stick with a single UROP so they can get published. That's what grad school is for. Use your time here to figure out what you like. Save your nobel prize for when you're older.

MIT is the greatest place I know to study any sort of math and science. Walking through the new Center for Theoretical Physics , I'm struck by how much this place seems like an academic ivory tower. Nothing made that more apparent than standing in front of a chalkboard with three other students listening to the incredible Robert Jaffe explain the intricacies of quantum scattering from a one-dimensional coulomb potential. I can't imagine that kind of one-on-one attention being too common. The low student-to-faculty ratio is definitely something you should take advantage of during your time here. Your opportunities are only limited by the amount of sleep you need (or in some cases, the amount of caffeine you can ingest before losing your sense of sanity).

While the opportunities in math and science are boundless, I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that there is more to life than just differential equations and chemical reactions. Going to MIT helps to give you the tools you need to change the world. Let's not forget that there actually is a world out there, a world that exists outside our little academic ivory tower. In my senior year I realized that I've perhaps dedicated too much time to purely technical pursuits. And I've begun to feel a certain yearning to do something completely different.

My sophomore year I took up writing. First writing about pure science in the class The Science Essay (which I highly recommend) and eventually progressing to full-fledged fiction. I still make time to write, even if its only a page a week. Right now I'm working on a piece combining fiction and science. It's titled "Through the Double-Slit: Adventures in Quantumland", and it's about (you guessed it) quantum mechanics. The story is inspired by Alice in Wonderland, and the style by the book the Phantom Tollbooth, one of the seminal books of my childhood. I'm also learning to play the piano. I find that I'm particularly fond of the work of Erik Satie.

So what does this mean for you? Basically, don't lock yourself in your room and run numerical simulations for your entire undergraduate career. Try something new. Find something you love, something completely different from your everyday life, and stick with it. Don't neglect the side of yourself that would rather fingerpaint than do stochastic calculus. You'll enjoy your time here more if you get a full experience, rather than one covering only the sorcery of mathematics.

And now, it is 11:30 PM and I have an entire quantum mechanics pset and a biodiesel cost analysis due in the next 48 hours, neither of which I have started (because I've been practicing piano). And I have a cheesecake to bake for my girlfriend's birthday. Nothing like a well-rounded life to keep you busy.

When we last left each other, I'd finished the hardest semester of my undergraduate career. I received my first D, but I fulfilled enough graduation requirements for both degrees and got a whole lot of planning experience being the operations officer for NROTC.

IAP '08 came and went without a post, and that was intentional. I took 10.493: Integrated Chemical Engineering Topics over IAP. After my abysmal performance in ICE back in the fall, I decided to put my all into that module. I did, and I think it paid off. For some reason my grade hasn't posted to WebSIS yet, but I'm pretty sure it's an A. I can't remember the last time I got one of those. Probably back when I was a freshman.

This semester is my last hurrah. While my total number of units dropped, the actual difficulty of the courses increased. Let's take a look at my registration this semester:

8.04: Quantum Physics I
I finally feel like a physicist. Up until this point, I've felt like a kid walking around in his daddy's shoes pretending to be a grown up. Now I feel like I'm beginning to build a fundamental understanding of the way the universe works. This is a great class, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in physics, even if you don't plan on majoring in course 8. At the very least, it will make you question how the world around you works. In fact, I'm still struggling with some of the results of what I've been told. Of late, I've been wondering about the following:

Quantum mechanics says you cannot predict, in a deterministic fashion, the location of a particle at a given time. However, you can predict the probability with which a particle will be found over a set of locations. Once you measure a particle's position, it's probability distribution turns into a spike (because you've found it, the probability that the particle is anywhere else becomes zero. This property is called wavefunction collapse, and to the best of my knowledge its true nature is still a mystery). A small amount of time later, you know that it must be somewhere near where you just found it. However, the same cannot be said for an equally small amount of time before! You can say nothing about the location of the particle before you actually measured it, regardless of where you find it.

Ok, that's all fine, I guess. In the face of experiment and mathematics I can swallow my disbelief. What I don't get is this: Quantum Mechanics is a "deeper" theory of reality than classical mechanics, yet in the limit of large quantum numbers (things with everyday size have large quantum numbers), quantum mechanics reproduces classical mechanics (a result called the correspondence principle). However, we know that classical mechanics looks the same regardless of the direction of time. That is, if I know the position and momentum of a classical particle, I know where it is and how fast it's moving immediately after AND immediately before. How does a theory that says we can't say anything about where a particle is before we measure it give rise to a very well-understood theory that is invariant under a reversal in time? I'm sure there's an answer, they just haven't taught me enough yet.

By the way, the lecturer this term is Marin Soljacic. After being bothered by a beeping cell phone, he decided to invent wireless electricity (I guess we should credit Tesla too). I should decide to invent something.

8.044: Statistical Physics I
Thermodynamics from a physicist's perspective. Thermo and I are old friends. We met back in sophomore year and have been inseparable since. This will be the third class that explicitly concerns thermodynamics, and the nth class I've taken that includes some sort of thermo. I'm enjoying it, if only for the eerie familiarity.

8.593: Biological Physics
My favorite class this term, and my first graduate-level course. Finally, biology the way I've been waiting to see it! I once read an article that said "Biologists think that if they try really hard, they can solve any problem with arithmetic." I've found that to be true in the course 7 classes I've taken here. Not to denigrate the biologists I know in any way. It's just that the courses shy away from heavy duty mathematics. I say if you've got it, flaunt it. This course gives a rigorous description of selective but representative biological phenomena (vision, protein-protein interactions, etc) using the machinery of calculus and statistical mechanics. The problem sets are longer and harder than any I've seen before, but they're also fewer and certainly worth the effort.

10.491: Integrated Chemical Engineering II
Continuous process design. Right now we're working on a computer simulation of the production of biodiesel from used vegetable oil. I regret that I don't enjoy this sort of thing as much as I do physics. But its the last ChemE class I need for my degree, and I'm doing a lot better this term. I'm too close to stop.

21M.051: Fundamentals of Music
A long, long time ago, in another life called "high-school", I was a musician. I wasn't great. In fact, I was pretty average. Once I came to MIT, I gave it up. But after going for 4 years without music, and being a senior who'd finished his hass concentration, I decided it was time to go back. Fundamentals of music centers around learning music using the voice as your primary instrument. So we sing all the songs that you learned in elementary school (including "Hot Cross Buns" and that song about the Kookaburra). We also learn how to play the piano. I can't say I like it more than any of my physics classes, but it is certainly a refreshing interlude.

What else is new? 87 days until I graduate. I have a job. But more on those things later.

There was so much I wanted to tell you about last semester, but I didn't have the time. I think it would be kinda silly to go back and try to write posts about that stuff now, so this post is dedicated to my favorite memories from Fall 2007.

Navy/Marine Corps Birthday Ball
Each year Boston NROTC hosts a formal celebrating the founding of the US Navy (on 13 OCT 1775) and US Marine Corps (10 NOV 1775). This year we went to the Park Plaza Hotel. It was a lot of fun: live music, good friends, and all the cake you can eat.

Greg '08, Me, Jackie '08. 3/4ths of MIT's graduating NROTC class

Kristen '09 and Vanessa '09

My girlfriend Kristen '09 and me. Who says you can't find a girl at MIT who's beautiful, smart, and can cook?

Boo's Cruise
The senior class cruise on Halloween. Hence the name "Boo's Cruise", though I've always wondered if it had another meaning though. Like a good senior I went, and various debauchery ensued. Some pictures are omitted to protect the innocent (and guilty).

Katy '08 as Goldilocks. I don't know what's up with that face

I was superman, Julianna '08 was a border patrol agent

A-Entry Thanksgiving Dinner
A new tradition we started in A-entry this year. Each person was asked to bring a dish and we all got together to eat. A-entry is pretty diverse, so there was a good selection of food there. Everything from meat lasagna (which I made) to trail mix and donuts (which our Jamaican residents provided. They'd never had thanksgiving).

Drew '10, Jenny '11, Kristen '09, Kristina '08, Kevin '10, and a bunch of other crazy people waiting for food

Kevin didn't seem to trust the food

Me with my lovely A-Entry co-chair, Leslie '10

Lynn '11 surprised that there's ham on her plate. Lynn cannot multitask at all. In fact, if you try to talk to her while she's watching TV, it seems like she's ignoring you. But she's not. She's like your computer when you try to play Elder Scrolls IV with maxed out settings and try to burn the entire second season of Battlestar Galactica to DVD. She needs time to process

A Phi Holiday Mixer
Each fall Alpha Phi hosts a party celebrating the holidays. Sorority events are dry, so it's a nice break from the ridiculous antics you might see at a frat party. Normally there's hot chocolate and cookies. The logs (my favorite acapella group) performed too.

Meeting Paul in person! It's not everday you get to meet a blogger

My favorite A Phi lady Leslie '10, and one of the coolest people to ever major in Course 10, Mariah '08

The logs performing. Absolutely incredible

So we do have fun sometimes. Even the cranky seniors =)

That’s what this post is about, sort of. Every decision you’ll make here carries with it an associated opportunity cost. Everything you decide to do will keep you from doing something else. You want to go to that fraternity party tonight? That’ll keep you from getting an early start on your project. Wanna stay up late doing homework? It’ll keep you from waking up early to work out and make you fall asleep during class. Everything carries an associated cost, and the key to doing well at MIT is figuring out what costs you can bear.

I had a lot of class this semester. Here’s a snapshot of my registration:

69 units is more than most people take here. Especially on top of being the operations officer for Boston NROTC. So what did it cost me?

1. Academic performance: I had too much on my plate. Because I took so many classes, I didn’t do particularly well in any of them. I ended up with a 3.9/5.0 semester GPA and a D in 10.490. I’ve never gotten a D in my life, and I’m sure many of you are in the same boat. It’s quite a humbling feeling; one I hope you are fortunate enough to avoid. But I can’t change it now. When I apply to grad school, there’ll be a glaring “D” in my Fall 2007 semester. The saddest part is the reason why I got a D. It wasn’t because I couldn’t do the work (any of my team members will tell you I could). I just didn’t have time.

2. Relationships: I didn’t get to enjoy the company of my friends. I spent most of my time studying or doing psets and projects. I didn’t get to spend time with my girlfriend either, which of course caused a bit of tension between us. She’s a wonderfully patient and understanding woman, but even she gets tired of being ignored.

3. Hobbies: I was in training for a triathlon before the semester started. That stopped the 2nd week of school. I love writing and didn’t get to take my writing class seriously. I’ve wanted to get back into music for a long time (I played the trumpet in high school and was in marching band), and yet again I’m forced to delay it until next semester.

4. Sleep: I didn’t get much. ‘Nuf said.

And of course there are other things I missed out on, but I won’t mention those here.

Alright Derrick, so you couldn’t do a lot of the stuff you wanted to do or thought about doing. Suck it up. What did you gain?

Enough units and graduation requirements to finish my second degree on time. A pretty good understanding of E&M and cellular dynamics. That’s about it.

Was it worth it? Do I regret it? Both of those are good questions, and the jury is still out. I’m committed to this second degree in physics because I want to get a PhD in physics after I finish my naval service (which I still haven’t told you about. I promise I’ll do that soon.) I’ll never know how much fun I could have had if I dropped the second degree. And when I apply to grad school, I’ll never know how my second degree affects my chances of admission.

Would I do it again? My answer is a cautious yes. I love physics and I don’t want to give it up. And I have to admit, like some other academic masochists, I get a rush out of competing with MIT. What I did this semester will make my victory in the spring even sweeter.

How does any of this affect you? Learn from my example. Sometimes you want to do too much. You can’t do it all. Every day, take a good hard look at what you’re doing and make sure you’re happy with the choices you’ve made. As Lulu said, do what you love and f**k the rest. There isn’t time here for anything else.

What am I going to tell you about today? ICE. And I don't mean solid water. From the subject listing and schedule:

10.490: Integrated Chemical Engineering
Presents and solves chemical engineering problems in an industrial context, with applications varying by semester. Emphasis on the integration of fundamental concepts with approaches of process design. Emphasis on problems that demand synthesis, economic analysis, and process design.
P. I. Barton, G. J. McRae, B. S. Johnston

Every major at MIT has a course that's famously hard. For aero/astro majors, it's "Unified Engineering," which they simply call Unified. For computer scientists, it's "Laboratory in Software Engineering," also know as "Java Death Lab." For physicists, it's "Experimental Physics I and II," shortened to "J-lab" (an abbreviation of Junior Lab, as it's most often taken in the junior year.) And as you could've guessed, for course 10 majors like myself, it's Integrated Chemical Engineering, which we shorten to ICE (because we're so cool.)

ICE is a capstone senior design course. The idea is simple, and I think it's a good one. ICE is a synthesis of all the chemical engineering topics you've learned: mass and energy balances, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, reaction engineering, and if you get lucky maybe even some cell biology and biological engineering. To "prove your worth" to the department and earn a degree, you're asked to use your expertise to tackle a realistic, complex problem.

It sounds cool, and it actually kind of is. Our project this year was the production of Lucretex, a valuable silicon-based organometallic polymer (the course instructors are so witty). Our company, Diversified Chemical Processes, was in competition with CalTech Industries to produce 310,000 lbs of Lucretex for the cheapest price. CalTech could do it for $9/lb. For the project to be successful, we had to beat them.

ICE is fairly open-ended. There are a few psets early in the term, and then you have the rest of your time to work on the project. Unfortunately, because my entire team was really busy most of the time, we didn't start working on the project until last Saturday. It was due on Wednesday.

What'd we do to finish on time below $9/lb? It took a lot of work. I pulled 3 all-nighters in a row. 72 hours straight. Three days can be a long time. Before you all freak out, what I did was very uncommon and is the result of having ROTC in addition to waiting until the last minute for my ICE project. But I'm telling you the story like it is, because that's what you deserve.

We approached the problem like this: We'd come up with a processing scheme, say three reactions and three separations. We'd optimize each process, and then we'd optimize the entire string of processes as a whole. Then we'd do all the calculations to figure out cost, waste, production rate, etc.

We went through countless arrangement of reactors and distillation columns, but nothing worked. We always got between $12 and $16 per pound. It got around to Tuesday night and we still weren't any closer. Morale was low:

At around 3:30 AM I took a 30 minute nap on the floor of the lounge. Far too soon, my partner Joe woke me up.

"Boone, wake up. We need your help."
"Huh?" *wipes drool off face*
"We can't figure this out."

In my sleepy haze I grabbed the marker from him and went to the dry erase board. I started writing. What came out was another process scheme. More complicated, but it showed promise. There was tension in the room.

"Boone, do you think this will work?"
"I don't know."
"We only have time to calculate one more process. And if it's not below $9/lb, we lose."
"Yeah, I know."
"What do you think?"
I thought for a second. "Let's do it."

We took a huge gamble. I had no idea if what I'd written down would work. I was half asleep when I wrote it. Faith is hard to come by around here, but I stockpile it for situations like these.

We worked on into the morning, taking naps in shifts:

Finally, we got to the end of the process. Julianna plugged all the operation parameters into our master spreadsheet and read out the final cost: $8.07 per pound.

We were all ecstatic. Joe and I immediately got up and started dancing. Julianna doesn't dance much, but we could tell she was happy too.

We wrote up the project quickly, and turned it in at 2:56 PM, four minutes before it was due. And then we took a team photo:

Joe '08, Me, Julianna '08

MIT gets tougher and tougher every year, but I won this battle. You'll win your battles too, no matter how poor the odds seem. I slept like a rock for 2 nights straight, and woke up today better than ever.

So until next time, everyone

Take it easy.

5:30 - 6:00 AM: Wake up
6:00 - 7:15 AM: Mandatory NROTC Workout
7:30 - 9:00 AM: Naval Science Class
9:00 - 10:00 AM: Electromagnetism II
10:00 - 11:00 AM: The last two thirds of cell biology lecture (I miss the first third because it conflicts with my 9 AM class)
11:00 - 12:00 AM: Integrated Chemical Engineering
12:00 - 1:00 PM: Lunch/Time to breathe
1:00 - 2:00 PM: Astronomy Lab Lecture
2:00 - 3:00 PM: Frantically read for my seminar in Japanese Politics and Society
3:00 - 5:00 PM: seminar in Japanese Politics and Society
5:00 - 7:00 PM: Dinner/Homework
7:00 PM - 12:30 AM: Astronomy Lab

Last Monday (actually it was Tuesday morning) I was on my way home after astronomy when my phone rang. It was Julianna, one of my ICE (Integrated Chemical Engineering) team members. It was 12:30 AM, but she knew I was awake.

"Hey Boone, I went to office hours for ICE tonight."
"Cool, how'd it go?"
"I just found out we did our entire economic analysis wrong. Can you come over and help?"
Yeah, I can come over.

We worked for a couple of hours, and I found myself lying on the floor of the lounge debating the finer points of reaction scheduling in a batch process with our other team member, Joe. I'm not sure why I was on the floor, or how I got there, but I guess I was on the floor because that thing I was staring at was the ceiling. Then it hit me. I realized that this would make a good blog post. This was what MIT was all about.

Wait, Derrick you can't mean MIT is about being ridiculously overworked and not getting enough sleep. Well, that's certainly part of it, I'll admit. But that's not what I was getting at. I may have been overworked and tired, but I wasn't alone. There were people with me, just as tired and overworked, who wouldn't let me down. I wouldn't let them down either. That's what MIT is about: putting together a group of like-minded people who can overcome any challenge, no matter how difficult. We worked together and finished around 3:00, at which point I went home and got some well-deserved rest.

The moral of the story: you can't do MIT alone. That's important, so let me repeat it. You can't do MIT alone. You'll need friends to teach you and support you, to make you laugh and to keep you from crying. So just remember, when you're exhausted and you still haven't started your pset that's due in 8 hours, you're not alone. We've all been there, or are there right now, or will be there soon. Help is all around you.

MIT is certainly an unusual place. Case in point: no one really asks how your day is; they ask how your week is. That's because most MIT students take this place one week at a time. For me, each week is like a round in a boxing match. And this week, I went down hard. MIT landed a good right hook and I hit the mat. Talk about being knocked into next week. You win this time, MIT.

All you prospective students should expect weeks like that. There will be sleepless nights. There will be weeks you have to choose which work to do because you have too much and can't do it all. And there will be weeks where you feel like you're not good enough. Just remember to get up and keep fighting, because you will make it. And when the match is over, you can walk out of the ring with your head held high and know that you're a stronger person for it.

Ok, enough of that. This post is actually about how I spent my Saturday. I was invited by several of my friends to my first Red Sox game. I'm a senior and I've never been. Naturally I couldn't pass up this opportunity (especially given the horrid week I had), so I paid way too much for some tickets and decided to go.

On my way to the student center, I passed a football game. MIT vs. Dartmouth. I thought "Wow, sports do exist here." I have the proof:

We even have cheerleaders!

My friends were late, so I stuck around a little while. I didn't stay to the end, but we were losing when I left. Oh well.

We all met up and walked over to Fenway for a late lunch. Nothing like eating with friends to relax you.

Jackie '08 and Lawrence '08

Erika '08 and Rene '08

After enjoying a full rack of BBQ ribs:

We walked around Fenway in the massive crowds of people:

And managed to snag some Red Sox paraphernalia before it sold out:

Julianna '08 and Lawrence '08

Don't let anyone tell you that MIT students don't have good hygiene. Obviously, Lawrence has an incredibly clean nose thanks to Erika.

They shut down the streets around Fenway at game time, so there were a few street performers. I thought these guys were particularly good

Because it was our first time, and Julianna was in the lead, we got lost. Lawrence, however, came to the rescue and pointed us in the right direction:

Finally, we all made it:

The seats weren't bad. We sat in the back of the outfield. A little later Sasha '08 came to join us:

Don't be freaked out. She always looks like that.

I hadn't been to a baseball game in a while, and I forgot how quickly they went by. An hour and a half after we got there:

RED SOX WIN!

So it was a day of firsts. My first bad week this semester came to an end. I saw my first MIT football game, complete with cheerleaders. And I attended my first Red Sox game. Make sure, even if you have a lot of work, to relax sometimes and hang out with your friends. It makes a world of difference.

We all see the world with the same eyes. Mine work just like yours do. My sun is yellow just like yours is. However, we come to different conclusions because we approach the world with different experiences and preconceptions. Those differences are the scratches on our minds. They are what make us unique. This entry is about showing you the scratches on my mind, what makes me the person I am. So when you look through my mind and see MIT, you'll know why I see it the way I do.

I was born in Yokosuka, Japan, but I don't remember any of it. My earliest memory is from 1987. I'm 10 months old, looking at the display on the microwave, while my mother holds me and gives me a bottle. Fast forward to 1991, and I'm a little boy playing outside my parent's house in North Carolina. My father teaches me about math and science early, and I get hooked. Sometime in 2000 I read about relativistic time dilation and fall in love with physics. In 2003 I'm a high school senior, the drum major of my marching band, the captain of the science team, and incredibly sure of myself.

I had no idea I'd be where I am now.

The next nine years of my life fall into place during the spring of my senior year. I'm accepted to MIT and decide to go. My parents don't have the money to send me, so I join the Navy and convince the department of defense to pay for my education. I'm sworn in as a midshipman, participate in a week-long introduction to the Navy, and on August 28th I take my first steps on campus as an MIT student. This blog is about everything that has happened since.

So now that you know all about my pre-MIT life, maybe I should tell you about what I do here. I'm majoring in Chemical-Biological Engineering and Physics, which is actually a recent development. I mentioned that I fell in love with physics early in life, but I never considered majoring in it. I came to MIT with every intention of being a chemical engineer and working in the biotech industry. During my junior year, I realized that I missed physics (yes, I was a bit nostalgic for 8.01 and 8.02), so I took 8.03. I had a great time and thought “If you like it this much, why not major in it?” So I did.

I'm in Navy ROTC, which means the Navy pays my tuition and I become an officer after I graduate. It's a pretty sweet deal, with the exception of getting up at 6 AM a couple times a week. I won't try to recruit anyone, but if you're curious feel free to ask me questions.

I'm also in MacG house government. I, along with my co-chair, represent the three floors of MacGregor I call home to HouseComm. Being in house government, at least in MacGregor, means going to weekly meetings that if not hilarious, are at least mildly amusing. And there's food sometimes.

The National Society of Black Engineers gets a bit of my time too. Last year, MIT's team FLOW won the NSBE academic championship (Go Beavers!) and all the team members got free Xbox 360's. So don't let anyone tell you being smart doesn't pay off. And if someone does tell you that, do what I do: ignore them and go play Gears of War.

Ok, that's about it for me. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you. But even more I look forward to you coming to MIT and having some experiences of your own.